English Dub Review: Sorcerous Stabber Orphen “We of Holy Death”

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

Magick finds Orphen after the battle, only to find him mentally unravelling as the effects of the fight have given him temporary amnesia. He eventually recovers but the group need to escape and figure out what’s going on in Kimluck.

OUR TAKE

Well, it’s been awhile, but after…how many weeks has it been? One…two…three…FOUR?! Four weeks?! Four weeks since the last dubbed episode came out?! I don’t think I’ve seen this long a wait between simuldub episodes since the early days of the lockdown, and that was for stuff like My Hero Academia, which was easily the most in demand show out of Funimation’s catalogue. But now? Sorcerous Stabber Orphen must have been Sorcerous Kicked so far down the road that someone had to pick it up again. I cannot imagine it had anything to do with high demand for the show. I don’t doubt the show has its fans, but after nearly a MONTH between episodes, I sure as hell barely remember what the hell is going on here. They’re in a magic city? I think? They fought a guy who looked like a bad guy but then told them he wasn’t but then turned out to definitely be one? I guess Orphen isn’t the only one who has amnesia here because if you put a gun to my head, I could not possibly name most of you people. And given that the original version of this at least seems neater because of 90’s nostalgia, I’m honestly more inclined to check that out now.

But okay, okay, this weird release schedule is not the show’s fault. The Japanese airings went weekly without a hitch so whoever was interested enough to watch those week to week got the story as it was intended, so I should judge it based on that out of respect. So obviously the main detail about this episode is Orphen dealing with a sudden case of lost memories, which he takes out on Magick because Magick is kind of his punching bag. But seeing Orphen without any of his post-show memories is actually pretty revealing about things in his character, one of which is his fear of losing control of his powers and killing people, which seems to be the case in killing this most recent opponent. Whether or not that is connected to his sister and finding her is a bit unclear at the moment. But with six more episodes to go (which hopefully will not take six months to release in some form), I’m sure we’ll get some fleshing out on that issue somewhere down the road. And hey, maybe in the wait between this and episode 7, I can finally finish the first season! When hell freezes over, I mean.