Overview (Spoilers Below):
A hard freeze means a high demand for firewood. It’s time for Yuji to use his overpowered skills for a more mundane purpose, especially since delicious food is involved!
Our Take:
If there’s one thing I learned from this episode and the end of last week’s chapter, it’s never too early to celebrate the holidays. Unfortunately, for the villagers of Ricaardo, there’s nothing jolly about having snow during the warmest time of the year, especially regarding the lack of firewood. Luckily for them, the strongest sage and his slimes have arrived just in time to help them. They’ve previously battled monsters, bandits, and dragons in the last four episodes. Now, they’re tackling their biggest task yet: finding more firewood. Yay…?
Most of the episode is basically a side-quest involving Yuji, Proudwolf, and the slimes gathering firewood to fulfill the town’s high demand. But, of course, they’re not doing this mundane task only to help the townsfolk warm themselves from the cold. They’re also doing it to try out Ricaardo’s famous foods since they can’t journey on an empty stomach. The scenes involving Yuji eating the delicious cuisines remind me of Food Wars, with him metaphorically describing their flavor and textures. The only difference is that Yuji’s descriptions are far less explicit than the anime series about cuisines. Those sequences may not have the same impact as the ones in Food Wars, but they still serve as good callbacks to that show.
The episode’s main conflict doesn’t happen until its second half, with Yuji, Proudwolf, and the slimes defending the village’s herbs from a group of boar-type monsters. The team and Dryad eventually found the source of the snow’s mysterious appearance. The source is a crystal orb known as Dragon Grace that’s been absorbing all the magic in the area. They followed the other crystals set in a pattern to its center, and Yuji destroyed the forest around the center to reveal a trapdoor leading to somewhere underground.
“That Cold Looked Troubling” isn’t without a couple of humorous moments, including Yuji being shocked at how the food tastes and the villagers’ surprise reactions to Yuji’s overpowered abilities. However, its side-quest did break the show’s pace a bit until the episode’s second half, where we get something interesting out of the Dragon Grace and an underground lair. What other secrets would Yuji and his allies find beyond the trapdoor? Hopefully, it’s not another pile of firewood.