English Dub Review: Sorcerous Stabber Orphen; “Deep Dragon”
Overview (Spoilers Below)
Orphen, Majic, and Claiomh begin their journey by entering Fenrir’s Forest, which they find to be far more hostile than they expected.
Our Take
In addition to finally kickstarting a proper adventure for Orphen, this episode also gives us a fair bit more insight into his unwanted travel companions.
The facepalm-inducing-but-appropriately named Majic (Seriously? Majic?) is an intrepid young man who looks up to Orphen like a teacher, as we saw as early as the first episode. Intrepid appears to be an understatement as he is seen using his magic haphazardly for selfish and reckless means, from peeping on a naked Claiomh to conspicuously raining snakes down on his opponents. All of this in spite of Orphen constantly warning him of the dangers of becoming a sorcerer.
Majic will almost certainly be the slightly annoying, glaring liability of the party that will frequently land Orphen into various kinds of trouble. He is also a notably quick learner of magic though, so perhaps his talent will eventually mold him into a competent ally.
Claiomh, the noble lady we’ve briefly seen trail Orphen before, is a boisterous, overeager young woman who is often seen sweating the small details. At this point, she seems like she is here to provide the occasional comic relief and the (hopefully) far more occasional fanservice. She brandishes a sword at one point and claims to have some training in it, but in practice has yet to be useful in combat. Orphen deploys her to rescue Majic near the end of the episode, so his trust in her to accomplish this may be indicative of some competency.
To get to their objective of reaching the Tower of Fangs, the party must first pass through Fenrir’s Forest, none of the denizens of which don’t take kindly to sorcerers. So, of course, the first night in there Majic gets horribly lost and as a result, the whole party encounters a bunch of people from a village who hate sorcerers. While Orphen has no trouble dispatching the villagers, Majic’s novice magic skills fail him and end with him getting shot with a revolver and abducted. Interestingly, in this world seeing someone wield a six-shooter is much stranger than a magic snake falling out of the sky. Additionally, guns appear to be banned in this world, which raises some world-building questions.
On the topic of world-building, the latter half of this episode is more or less dedicated to it. The village in this forest worships a being known as a Deep Dragon. But contrary to what we have seen before, namely the dragon monster we saw Azalie transform into, the beings called Dragons in this world are not the typical large, winged reptiles we oft see in fantasy stories. Here, Dragons are one of six beast races that have stolen magic from the gods. The Deep Dragons are giant wolves called Fenrirs, one of which is the deity of this village, and, presumably by its name, the entire forest as well.
Of note, the only other type of Dragon mentioned here are the Nornir, called the Weird Dragons, which are an all-female humanoid type of Dragon. “Weird Dragon” is a great and oddly appropriate fantasy-style way to refer to humanoids, especially in comparison to beasts. Also, from the scant bits we gleaned from how religion works in this world, these Weird Dragons may be the subject of worship for another branch of people. These two adjacent pantheons of gods and the religions structured around them are fascinating and mysterious concepts that act as stark opposing forces to sorcerers. How Orphen interfaces with them will surely provide some of the conflict going forward, and hopefully some more elucidation will follow.
Another quick note is that the only reason Orphen and his party were found out at all is that the two dwarves we always see trailing Orphen came to the village and ratted him out. These two are perennial, unfunny agitators who seem to persistently follow Orphen everywhere he goes for some reason. Don’t they owe him money? Shouldn’t they be glad he seems to have forgotten about them and run away while they can? Seeing them needlessly stirring up trouble is a tiring and flimsy way to start conflict for Orphen.
The reason that these dragon-worshiping villagers hate Orphen so strongly is that the Deep Dragon hates sorcerers because sorcerers are humans that stole magic from them, which they originally stole from the gods. Being mad that someone did what you did to benefit themselves seems like a petty kind of anger.
But this anger is an ancient one, as we see when a Deep Dragon shows up to overwhelm Orphen. Orphen launches into a tirade of questions, and the Deep Dragon employs some sort of wide-ranging mind magic that paralyzes everybody, including the villagers. The visual effect of this magic causes all of the colors to go negative, which sells the vast, arcane power of this ancient beast. The Deep Dragon has his own set of questions that are far more vague in nature, the resulting confusion of which probably strengthens the effect of the mind magic.
A lot of interesting questions were raised in this episode; we’ll see if answers await us in the next.
