English Dub Review: The Fruit of Evolution: Before I Knew It, My Life Had It Made “The Calamity Bride”

Overview:

Seiichi defeats the Black Dragon God and the party leaves the dungeon. Afterwards, Artoria is upset about her curse, but she’s happy everyone cares about her. Seiichi tries to lift her spirits by giving her a gift.

Our Take:

I called it. I said Seiichi’s fight with the Black Dragon God wouldn’t even take up five minutes in this episode I was right. He wins the fight handily and afterwards, we get the Black Dragon God’s backstory. The show has done this before and like last time, it feels shoehorned in. I don’t care for it and I don’t feel any sort of attachment to the character.

I also never noticed before this episode, but I find Saria to be pretty annoying. The way she talks and acts just irritates me. For whatever reason, it sticks out more in this episode than any other.

Artoria’s still the strongest character in the show. Understandably, she’s not happy that she has such bad luck and makes things difficult for everyone else. That being said, the guild goes out of their way to look for her when the group is missing. She’s overcome with emotion and runs off.

Seiichi goes after her and he’s told to watch over Artoria. He finds her and does his best to comfort her. He embarasses her, but does make her feel better. Seiichi also gives Artoria the ring of happiness, which is supposed to double her luck. Of course, the way he words it and the fact he places a ring on her finger makes Artoria think he’s proposing to her.

We also see some more planning from the demons, but still no more mention of Seiichi’s classmates. The anime tries to progress the story in some ways, but stalls out in others. I want to see the humans’ progression in preparation for the war.

The bad aspects of this show continue to stick out to me and overshadow the good ones. I don’t like that they just shove backstories in after enemies are defeated like they’re supposed to automatically make viewers care about those characters. That can work if we spend a little more time with the characters prior, but it’s always rushed here.

Not only that, but the main characters continue to be uninteresting. Saria doesn’t offer anything really and Seiichi keeps just conveniently gaining new abilities. All I can say is thank goodness for Artoria.