English Dub Review: Ascendance of a Bookworm “The Path Ahead of Lutz”

Overview:

Lutz and his family have a massive fight.

Our Take:

For once, this episode is focused on Lutz instead of Main. 

Lutz has been working hard at the guild behind the scenes, along with supporting Main when she’s not at the church. However, he has been for the most part, physically apart from her with the exception of the evenings, which means that she is left out of the loop regarding his affairs.

The issue this time comes to Lutz’s family, who have always taken some small issue with him wanting to become a merchant. In previous episodes, they’ve said that it isn’t a very noble profession, but have mostly assented due to the fact that Lutz has achieved results with Main and Benno. However, following a trip that Lutz was supposed to take with Benno, his parents, especially his father, seem to not give his support. Once he realizes this, Lutz flees the house and takes up residence at the guild. Feeling hurt and rejected by his parents, Main tries to help in her own way, specifically leveraging the church’s position as overseers to see if

Lutz’s father, after all this, finally concedes that he was actually giving Lutz his support– albeit in a roundabout way. Once Lutz realizes this, he has no problem going home. The issue is resolved fairly quickly, once everyone says how they actually feel. To be fair, this is complicated. Lutz’s father very clearly has communication issues, and all of this could have been avoided if he was up front. It’s hard for Lutz to intuit how his father is feeling, even if he knows his father well enough. Also, people aren’t always logical, and get the better of them emotionally. What hurt Lutz’s family wasn’t the fact that he wanted to take his job endeavors elsewhere, but that he was so quick to want to leave them altogether– and that is pretty understandable.

This is also something very important to Main, that there are multiple sides to the story, and it’s easy to take one side without knowing all the facts. She wanted to help out, but only hearing Lutz’s side of the story meant that she could have potentially caused irreparable damage had she not had the high priest to slow her down. Main’s new role is one of managing people, and this is an important lesson to learn: don’t jump to conclusions without all the facts. Hopefully, this will allow her to be a better boss, a better member of the church, and someone her friends can rely on.