English Dub Review: The Demon Sword Master of Excalibur Academy “The Demon Lord’s Resolve”

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

Degradios continues his assault on the city, with Riselia tied up and the rest of the platoon fighting off increasing Void forces. Leonis confronts his former ally and commits to protecting his new home, regaining access to a magical sword from the previous era. This is enough to destroy Degradios, but not before he gives Leonis a warning about the “Empty Star”.

OUR TAKE

We’re at the halfway point for the season, but we seem to have finally finished the first arc, completing Leonis’ journey from being a fish out of water in a depowered body and Phillip J Fry’d into the future, to making friends and allies that he now wants to protect with the power he’s able to regain. He’s only been there a few days at most, which may make his sudden warming up to these people seem a little quick, but that’s why we have the flashbacks to provide some further context. He started as someone who worked his way up as a promising hero, was betrayed as an adult for not falling to temptation and materialism, found a second chance through a witch who helped him take vengeance, was eventually defeated by his former allies, and now suddenly finds himself with a second chance to make the family he wanted. Likewise, Riselia has been shown to be someone seeking the power to defend herself and those she cares about for many years, something she ironically only managed to obtain by dying, but was then brought back because of her selfless act to protect someone she thought was a defenseless child.

Essentially, the end of this episode helps cement the main dynamic between Leonis and Riselia, as two people trying to become stronger together in order to protect those they love. But we also get a bit more of an idea regarding what threats they may be facing in the future. We’ve actually seen Degradios in this form in the first episode, during the first scene showing Leonis’ downfall, so he didn’t get this way during the thousand years timeskip. The Voids, which apparently are only a few decades old, do seem to have some sort of connection to his magic (unless I’m misreading something from them both having glowy green energy), and then there’s this “Empty Star” he mentions being connected to. That seems like an endgame sort of enemy, which I’m sure the light novels this is based on are making steady progress towards. Unfortunately, I don’t see us learning much more about that in the only half a dozen episodes that are left in this season, but perhaps we’ll get to see a little bit towards uncovering that mystery. In the meantime, the next couple episodes are going to take some focus off the main leads and give the spotlight to another platoon member. And considering I’m never going to read those light novels, this is probably a better use of time since I doubt we’ll be seeing another season out of this show.