English Dub Review: The Demon Sword Master of Excalibur Academy “An Awakening Soul”

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

Riselia wakes up after passing out in the bathroom and Leonis further explains how he revived her as a vampire, but leaves out that he was once an infamous demon lord. Later, they meet Riselia’s housemates, Sakuya and Elfine. Then Riselia and Leonis take down the school bully and his harem in a duel, in which Riselia finally gains her Holy Sword, which turns out to be…a sword! Also, an ancient being that knows Leonis is unearthed by some scuba divers.

OUR TAKE

This episode is mainly just getting more familiar with the setting and how the Holy Swords work. We’ve seen a few at work so far that have become guns and swords, but we also see the bully character (whose name sounds like Mucinex) has one that can mind control people, including making them fight for him…until it’s destroyed, which is also apparently something that can happen. Elfine also mentions that hers was good for attacking until a traumatic loss in battle changed its function, so that’s something that may come into play later. Leonis’ staff seems to pass well enough for one, which may be just an easy deception, but it could also be that Holy Swords and Leonis’ own powers share a connection. Also worth noting is that Leonis’ first human opponent in this era is a guy who puts women under his thrall as slaves, which I’d like to think is an intentional parallel to Leonis also making Riselia his minion, on top of the other minions he already has, the goth maid Shary and talking dog Blackus. The key difference being that it seems like Shary and Blackus genuinely respect Leonis, as does Riselia and likely the rest of the girls eventually will. He likes to call himself a “Demon Lord” but it also seems like he sees that title as kind of a burden and wants to be a good person, so maybe being reborn in this era will provide that opportunity.

We meet some more principal characters as well, but I’m sure we’ll get focus episodes about them so I can talk about them properly. The other big hint towards the plot is that the areas where Voids appear seem to overlap with places Leonis had some of his major battles during his reign, likely meaning the Voids are a product of some sort of magical remnants left behind during those battles…or it could be something else entirely. We haven’t really dealt with a Void in the wild since the first episode, so we’re probably due for one showing up soon, especially now that Riselia has her new aptly named Holy Sword to try out on them. There are a lot of balls in the air for the third episode, but I oddly enough don’t feel too overwhelmed by it on its own. The problem is this is twelve episode series that is more than likely not going to get future seasons, so I don’t expect a whole lot of this getting adapted to let enough of this pay off. But we’ll see!