English Dub Review: The 8th Son? Are You Kidding Me? “Obligations? Are You Kidding Me?”

https://youtu.be/3kYc1RUJ4zk

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

On the way to attend his brother Erich’s wedding, Well’s group is attacked by a giant undead dragon, a beast that even Alfred’s old master Brantack can’t take on. Luckily, it turns out Well is uniquely equipped to beat it with his Holy Magic, basically one-shotting the thing and collecting its bones to sell later. This save ends up making Well a huge celebrity in the capital, meeting the king, earning him the nickname “Dragon Slayer”, and getting an award not given for at least 200 years, on top of gaining the rank of baronet, which now makes a family line separate from his existing family. He also starts getting sucked up to by other nobles to help their agendas, as well as getting requests for retainers. Yes, life is going to be a lot more complicated for Well, now that he’s of nobility, but that doesn’t keep him from attending the wedding and lending a hand with a wedding gift. And at least he’s able to pick up some cooking materials to create miso soup with his friends. Plus, it looks like he’s got a fiancé on the way as well.

OUR TAKE

Oddly enough, I would say this is the first episode of the show that I’d consider an improvement over the previous one, mainly due to Well actually being an active participant in events this time. Granted, this is a rather small requirement, but is apparently one they just forgot to put in last time. Then again, now we have the issue of Well’s friends now suddenly left with nothing to do but sit around and talk about him when fighting that dragon would’ve been a great opportunity to see them handle working as a team, but I guess we needed more reason to see how Well is just so mega awesome super cool that he can fight off a giant zombie dragon with one blast. And then how he totally leap frogs over the rest of his family in noble status and it’s barely an afterthought.

Do you see what I mean when I say that being the 8th son never really mattered? It’s treated as this huge deal in the first couple episodes, but it wasn’t ever in Well’s goals to take over the family (and why would it, considering he already grew up to be his own man in his previous life) so it never seemed like an actual obstacle for him to overcome. And now his super amazing magical power has just gotten him a higher rank than the rest of his family, basically making him his own man once again. Which is all well and good, since I don’t think anyone really wanted to go into the succession stuff anyway, but then why is it in the story at all? What is this story leading to if not more people and things to pile on Well’s growing list of things that make him awesome?

I guess that’s what my problems all come down to: there’s just no conflict in this story to really speak of. There’s no main antagonist or rival for Well to fight against, no goal he’s striving to achieve at great risk to himself (since I guess going back to his old world seems to have just not crossed his mind), and just no clear trajectory for where this story is going. Each episode seems to just be adding more reasons to make us think that Well is just the greatest guy ever, but if he’s never really struggling to achieve these things, how are we supposed to connect with him? And on one more tangent, the OP feels like it’s constantly about to get to the chorus and just stops. It’s weird and probably a good metaphor for the whole show.