English Dub Review: Arte “Inescapable Bond / Trade Guild”

Overview (Spoilers Below):

In the fifth episode, a client of Leo, Ubertino visits for a commission and the price isn’t enough for them to make a profit. Leo doesn’t want to negotiate with such a stubborn goat and Arte volunteers to try and change the client’s mind. After failing to negotiate, Arte goes to Veronica to learn the art of negotiating. After a week she went to Uertino once again and successfully negotiated the commission price. Arte learns a bit more about her master’s days as an apprentice and about his relationship with Ubertino. She also noticed a few similarities between the two men.

In the sixth episode, Arte and Leo attend the funeral of a fellow artist. Leo discusses things with the other masters while Arte is being lashed out by another apprentice because of her gender. The next day Leo asks Arte if she knows how to do a fresco and tells her that the results of her next assignment will be the determining factor on whether or not she can keep training as an apprentice. During the fresco job, Arte proves herself under Leo’s strict instructions and earns the approval of Aroldo, the master who is overseeing the project after observing her work ethic. Arte later gains the approval of the other apprentices and joins in on their game of Calcio. Meanwhile, Yuri Falier, a nobleman from Venice sees Arte’s practice drawings on the wall, and he’s fascinated by her style.

Our Take:

Making connections with other people is important whether it’s a potential client or other people in the same business. Arte does a great job of showing it with these two episodes along with Florence’s society and economy during the beginning of the 16th century. The episode also included a bit of social inequality from Leo’s past and Arte’s gender discrimination respectively which adds to the consistent theme of the series and having characters confront those issues. It was a nice experience to learn about Florence’s art with the pigments and fresco. These little tidbits helped move the plot and helped me understand the art techniques and how laborious it was back in the day.

Arte doesn’t hold back on the reality of artists for Arte. For example, Arte and Leo fast on Fridays in order to save money and buy the best supplies for the workshop. Then there are the clients who like Ubertino aren’t always commissioning art because they like it. Some clients might instead use it as a tool for their business either to impress or intimidate the people they connect with for work. There are the tips that Veronica gave to Arte in order to deal with stubborn clients like Ubertino who refused to pay more for their commission. All of that disheartening information accepted by Arte, who remains unyielding in her determination to become a better artist, and that makes me want to continue to root for her.

Then there’s the trade guild where artists pitch and help out each other along with the recurring gatherings of the guild members during funerals. Episode six was a nice exploration of Florence artist’s workflow and how they struggled to make ends meet now. Furthermore, the minor conflict starts because one of the apprentices is discriminating against Arte, but that is settled by Arte’s actions in the fresco job. Hopefully, that will ease up the prejudice of her fellow apprentices and other master artists who complained about her. It was good to include the Calcio game as a comparison to how they treated her from the beginning of the episode to the end of it.

Despite my dread on the romance subplot, I do enjoy Arte and Leo’s dynamic as the cheerful and determined apprentice and the cold and strict teacher. They play off each other well since they come from different backgrounds and have to go through their respective prejudice from other artists. They both help each other out like when Arte offers to negotiate because Leo dreads dealing with Ubertino and Leo’s hard orders during the fresco job to show her work ethic and determination to the other apprentices. I look forward to seeing how Arte’s journey will lead her to become equal to Leo.

Overall both episodes were solid steps into Arte’s journey as Leo’s apprentice while broadening the scope of the world of Florence for the audience. The art is lovely to look at and the camera work does nicely in showing the space of the locations. It also looks like in the next episode we’ll get to see a nobleman who could appreciate Arte’s work and he could potentially open another door for Arte’s journey as an apprentice.