English Dub Review: Isekai Cheat Magician “Summoner”

Overview:

Taichi arrives to save the day.

Our Take:

My complaints from last episode still stand: why is Taichi singled out in the guild to be this be all end all? It still doesn’t make any sense. We learn that he’s being groomed by the enemy to rise into some sort of power, which is fine, but the guild? His friends? It still seems a little ridiculous.

Here’s where the poor writing really comes to shine though. I will say this as many times as I need to: just because a story puts in story beats and tropes that might work doesn’t mean they do work. It can throw in all the lengthy death scenes and tragic background music that it likes, but that doesn’t mean that it works on an emotional level. The reason why people react to tragedy strongly is because it utilizes audience investment: by staying with characters for a long time, characters that have been expanded in the narrative have more depth and people become attached to their journeys. Because of this attachment, people care when their faves die, or even if people adjacent to their faves die. It’s capitalizing on investment in a character and their journey.

Anna, on the other hand, was properly introduced last episode and was killed off in this one. We also get some lines about how Taichi was the first person to treat her like an individual, except we really know nothing about the assassin society at all. We know that failure is punishable by death, which is logical for that kind of society, but that’s pretty much it. We don’t have any information to compare her previous life to this one, because we don’t know any better, we just have to take her word for it? A character telling me that they feel a thing without me having been shown that they feel a thing doesn’t really have any emotional impact; it feels very eh. We don’t know Anna, not really, we’re just supposed to feel bad for her death because death is sad and the music tells us that we should feel bad, which is leaning on some bare-bones things. This could have been interesting and impactful, but only if they had bothered giving characters the time and background they need to have life.

Also, that she was killed off solely so that Taichi can make a sad face… well, that sure is a choice. I’m not giving this show any points for falling back on typically sad things to make me feel bad for fridging.