English Dub Review: The Faraway Paladin “Valley of Despair”

Overview:

Having been anointed as a Paladin, Will turns his focus to rebuilding the village and exterminating monsters. One day, one of Will’s patrol parties goes missing. When Will, Menel, and “the Penetrator” Reystov return to Beast Woods to search for it, they discover the scattered remains of his comrades. Sensing something is wrong, they proceed deeper into the valley.

Our Take:

Up till now Will has had it pretty easy and honestly it’s been pretty boring. From an action standpoint at least. There have been no stakes that Will couldn’t deal with but this time he finally ran into an issue he couldn’t brute force through. I mean he still did for himself but Menel ended up hurt in the process and I think that created some vulnerability we needed.

While the action scenes in this episode were good there were a few things that stood out to me. The CGI for the monsters, in particular, was pretty bad. So that was a pretty big negative but it was pretty nice to not hear Will shout “Acceleratio!” for once.

This could lead to some potentially good development for Will and the plot. One thing that I thought was cool is that since Will can communicate with the Goddess Gracefeel we get to see her reactions and she seemed a bit worried about Will. Also, I know I am annoyingly looking for romance in everything but I really hope Anna joining Will’s party leads to something later.