English Dub Review: The Faraway Paladin The Lord of the Rust Mountains “The Meaning of Courage”

Overview:

Ru begins his training under Will and Menel. He tells Will that he’s eager to learn from him what courage is and what it means to be a warrior, but Will himself is struggling with the meaning of courage as he recalls the Lord of Holly’s prophecy.

Our Take:

What I thought was interesting about how Will described courage was how much sense it made. Unless you have a phobia of them, would you feel brave when you kill a spider? Probably not, and when Will told Ru that it doesn’t take courage to fight something that you know you’re stronger, it was a brilliant line. It’s a little bit terrifying because the fact that he saw some of the creatures he’s faced as weaker than him is a bit scary. It reminds me of one of my favorite Game of Thrones lines when Eddard Stark tells his son that a man can only be brave when faced with fear.

Ru is one of the better characters to get introduced and I really enjoy a good training arc. It’s a bit different to have the main character be the one doing the training but when you are telling this kind of story it just works. If I’m not mistaken, the threat that Will and Ru meet at the end of the episode actually terrifies Will so you can only imagine what Ru must be feeling. I think the next episode will be a fantastic test of Ru’s training.