English Dub Review: Chaika – the Coffin Princess: Avenging Battle

Overview (Spoilers Below):

The season continues Chaika’s journey to collect the remains from one of the Eight Heroes. After collecting another part of the remains, Guy leads the group to a secret island for the Emperor’s inheritance. On the secret island, Chaika finds out more about her identity as Chaika from the man that created the program known as Chaika on the orders of Emperor Gaz. Meanwhile, the Gillett squad is hot on their trail even after the death of their Captain Gillett and one of their own, Vivi transformed partially into a new Chaika. Chaika’s group then stops at the Principality of Hartgen where they enter the tournament for Emperor Gaz’s remains.

During one of the rounds, they encounter Vivi and Nikolai before being set up in a match with Chaika Bohdan and David with a black Chaika and her sisters watching over them. Meanwhile, Frederica and Akari search for the remains and come across Toru and Akari mentor, Shin. Then Chaika is taken hostage which leaves Toru no choice but to hand over the remains. During the negotiations to get Chaika, the black Chaika takes the remains to revive Emperor Gaz. Emperor Gaz uses his inheritance to destroy the sky fortress dispatched to the Principality of Hartgen. Chaika and Toru go to stop him while Akari and the others stop the black Chaika. At the cost of stopping Emperor Gax, Chaika uses her memories and ends his plan.

Our Take:

The season starts off with a flashback to the end of the war five years ago where Emperor Gaz orders for the implementation of the system known as Chaika. Then it transitions to the aftermath of what happened in the first season. This season goes in-depth to the origins of magic and the mystery of Chaika. It explains how wizard incantations are used to withdraw the emotions from the magic fuel to create phenomena which is why Emperor Gaz’s remains and a wizard’s memories can be used for magic fuel.

Chaika’s development in the series was satisfying to watch. For starters, her proficiency as a wizard has grown from long incantations to shorter and quicker ones with each battle. In this season Chaika’s anxiety over her identity reaches a point where she leaves Toru and Akari to find the truth on the secret island. Chaika is hit with truth from both the magical researcher that helped Emperor Gaz create the Chaika system and the revived Emperor Gaz. Both times she broke down and both times she found the strength to keep going with her goal. I liked how her goal and the black Chaika’s goal were the complete opposites of one another. For our Chaika, her goal was mourning her father which in other words confirmed his death. On the other hand, black Chaika’s goal was to revive Emperor Gaz by consuming his remains and the magical creatures. Even though black Chaika did accomplish her goal, in the end, it was our Chaika who won with the death of Emperor Gaz.

The romance between Chaika and Toru is good and I enjoyed the small moments they had in the season. Chaika’s feelings towards him is what helped her in the match with one of the eight heroes, Claudia by casting her most used offensive spell, the Slugger. The remains she obtained were fittingly enough, the heart of Emperor Gaz. Toru’s concern over her is really nice like when they had that argument over going to the secret island to find Emperor Gaz’s inheritance. Even after hearing the truth from the magical researcher he sits with her and waits until she’s found her purpose in life again.

The theme of people being tools comes back again with Toru’s mentality on being a saboteur until the last episode where he becomes Frederica’s cavalier and the whole existence of the Chaika system. People being tools and stepping out of that mentality worked as the series reached the end with Chaika and Toru. There’s also Niva Lada, the Emperor’s inheritance. She’s a living weapon that can eat and can exert her own will. I was disappointed to see at the end of the series that she remains in her weapon form and not as a person living with Chaika and the others.

Two of the eight heroes, Claudia Dodge, and Stephan Hartgen were good for showing the audience the two paths people could take after the war. In the first episode, Claudia Dodge after the war runs a winery and vineyard while employing former soldiers to help her run it. Even though she’s a wizard and could have used the remains to make sure her grapes were at peak quality she didn’t. In addition to that, she gave the remains to Chaika after a friendly match and even offered tips on casting spells. Her story offers a different perspective from the heroes that we’ve seen so far. They were lost after the war while Claudia adapted to the peace. On the other hand, Stephan Hartgen craved war. His story is definitely one where if a hero lives long enough they’ll eventually turn into a villain. He was definitely on the extreme side of the war as a warmonger that was bored of peace and had lost his purpose in life. For five years the man hosted tournaments where anything goes like an actual war. People from the former military to other Chaika’s flocked to it like a moth to a flame. He met a fitting end being killed by the man he beheaded years ago.

Now with only ten episodes, there’s only so much that the anime could fit in. That also includes character development. Sadly, Akari doesn’t get much development outside of her brother complex but does get her moments to shine like when Chaika went without them to the island and in the last battle. Most of the Gillett squad aside from Vivi and Gillett just faded into the background. There were a lot of Chaika’s in the last few episodes which did show that the Chaika system was a huge system but those Chaika’s were used in the end but the black Chaika. The series concluded Chaika’s journey and it was a decent journey, but I did wish it had more episodes to develop the characters and the aftermath of the events of Hartgen.