English Dub Review: The Demon Sword Master of Excalibur Academy “A Fate Borne”

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

Leonis enters the floating city with Riselia and Regina and gets to know how the world has changed since he went dormant. He learns that everyone in the city is attending a school to learn or gain a Holy Sword, a sacred power they train to use on the Void monsters. Riselia, for some reason, hasn’t gained hers yet, but is eager to get it as soon as possible and get more active on the battlefield. She has also been feeling odd fatigue throughout the day. Leonis ends up rooming with her, where he reveals that the “healing” spell that she thought was his Holy Sword was actually a revival spell that turned her into a vampire, making her reliant on Leonis’ blood.

OUR TAKE

This episode is yet more establishing of the background and the main premise of the show. We’ve seen Leonis re-enter society in a child’s body and set his goals to regain control in hopes of revenge against those who betrayed him, as well as bring the girl who saved him back to life at a cost. Now we see the immediate effects of that choice, with Riselia now understanding that she actually died back in that battle, as well as us getting a better sense of her backstory. In a flashback cold open, we see her and Regina in a bunker waiting for a major battle with the Void happening outside, and all of her family gone by the end of it. Since then, she has been all too ready to join the fight, but she hasn’t gained her Holy Sword just yet. She likely will soon, especially with this rather unholy change in her abilities thanks to Leonis’ intervention in her death, but now she also will get her energy by sucking blood from a guy in a child’s body. And that is…already a very concerning image and dynamic, but sadly is very consistent with how anime handles this sort of thing.

In getting to know the school setting, we also meet the obligatory school bully, this one having his own harem, which many characters already assume (probably rightly so) that he’s using his own Holy Sword to keep them around, if not through manipulation of social status. I don’t expect him to be a major threat in any way, but more likely to be a recurring annoyance as Leonis grows his chadness and gets more people (specifically the all female main cast) on his side. He also gets access back to his goth maid (who has definitely taken a liking to his new kid form) and talking dog, who will more than likely become more prominent in things as the story goes on. As for where this story is going, it’s actually a little hard to say. One would think that the Voids would be the main focus, but there’s also Leonis trying to get his empire back and find out more about how he was betrayed, and we only have ten more episodes to work with in order to balance all of that. At the very least, we’ll be meeting more characters, and that’ll give us something to talk about I guess.