English Dub Review: Sorcerous Stabber Orphen; “The Chaos Witch and the Successor of the Razor’s Edge”

 

 

Overview (Spoilers Below)

Orphen recounts even more events regarding his past and his relationship with Azalie. 

Our Take

Last week we saw Azalie’s climactic revival, followed by her anti-climactic departure. I had commented in the review for that episode that Azalie’s entire character arc was resolved in less than five minutes when it deserved an entire episode. Well, I guess I kind of got what I asked for in this episode, with “kind of” being the operative words here. This is definitely an episode that further explores the relationship between Azalie and Orphen.  How well does it get the job done?

Most of the episode is yet another flashback to Azalie and Orphen’s student days at the Tower of Fangs. We briefly encounter all the faces we had seen before; Leticia, Heartia, Comicron, all doing the things we saw them doing before. It’s nice to see a little bit more of them, they’re endearing enough. But at the same time, one of them is currently dead and we don’t know if we’ll see another one ever again, so this all also feels repetitive. 

Orphen is dramatically referred to as “The Successor of the Razor’s Edge.” It is not explained what this means and based on the fact that they went out of their way to put it in the title of this episode, one would think they would at least hint at it. 

The meat of this episode is the events surrounding Azalie and Orphen returning to the village and orphanage which they originated from. The first leg of the trip is spent pleasantly reminiscing with flashbacks within flashbacks, where we see them as precious and rambunctious children. These warm moments entrench the familial relationship between Azalie and Orphen even further. 

But then all of that wholesomeness is abruptly abridged when Azalie goes mysteriously missing. A voice calls out to Orphen, bidding him go to their orphanage where he finds Azalie’s severed head and is attacked. This shadowy enemy is attacking Orphen by projecting herself into his mind, prompting him to reach deep into himself and expel her out from within. 

We already know that that is not actually Azalie’s head, but this scene still begins with a dark and concerted tone. But that tone is then quickly dispelled when the threats from this shadowy figure start becoming a little more ham-handed, and then she stumbles over her own words. Even before it’s fully revealed, it becomes increasingly very obvious that Azalie is the one pulling the strings here. 

We’ve seen that Azalie is a perennial mischief-maker plenty of times before, but even for her, this is a prank in needlessly poor taste. She tries to justify this by claiming this was a test for Orphen, but doesn’t give the exact details of her “test.” I guess it’s to see how he performs in highly stressful/emotional circumstances? It stills seems like a few steps too far for just that. Even when Orphen scornfully chides her afterward, she offers no answers and stubbornly feigns ignorance. 

We don’t receive any concrete answers ourselves after this. They show the ending of the previous episode once again, most likely to juxtapose. I’m not entirely sure what we’re supposed to have learned, apart from the fact that even after being reunited with her, Orphen rightfully still has no patience for Azalie’s brazenly selfish schemes. 

This episode doesn’t accomplish very much. Getting even more backstory on Azalie and Orphen is somewhat nice, but what we see here doesn’t truly explain how it all ended up where it did. The crux at the end of Azalie’s reasoning for what she did to Orphen and Childman centers around her feelings for them. We certainly know how she feels about Orphen by now, but we have no information about her relationship with Childman. They didn’t even share a scene by themselves in any of the episodes before this. If they were going to go out of their way to insert a flashback, and completely after the fact at that, in an attempt to elucidate Azalie’s motivations regarding Childman, said flashback should at least feature him. Instead, all we got was Azalie elaborately hazing Orphen for no good reason. 

At least we (probably) won’t have to worry about any more clumsy flashbacks. At the end of the episode, Orphen is actually seen leaving Totokanta this time, and with some intrepid stowaways to boot. Hopefully, this is the beginning of the actual adventure.