English Dub Review: The Demon Sword Master of Excalibur Academy “The Goddess’ Voice”

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

Riselia awakens from the blast to find she is being protected by three living skeletons, familiars that Leonis secretly gave to her along with the dress. Voids continue to swarm the island, directed by Nefakess, who is also guiding the giant singing Goddess who Leonis identifies as one of the six heroes he used to work with. But to his surprise, the goddess speaks in Roselia’s voice, making Leonis hesitate and think that his master may have reincarnated in this new age as this horrible thing. In his hesitation, he gets mortally wounded, forcing Riselia to go on the attack.

OUR TAKE

Hey, there it is! All the clips from the opening have finally happened in the show, with the last being Riselia finally putting on the dress she got last episode. Looks like the pieces are all falling into place for the final episode next week, but it just seems odd that we’re adding in yet another weird magical thing on top of what we were already dealing with. We already had Demon Lords making people into vampires and I was used to that, but last episode we apparently got friggin ghosts that just hang around, and now we have random skeleton warriors with their own Super Sentai gimmick that fight alongside the ghosts somehow. These aren’t necessarily bad things, mind you, but it seems more like stuff being made up on the fly than natural extensions of the mythos. It’s also kinda weird because these skeleton guys could’ve easily been changed out for the other members of the platoon, who don’t get very much to do in an episode that should be all about giving them their moments to shine before the show is over. Maybe they’re saving that for the finale, but it just seems odd they’re getting upstaged for three randos who are only now getting here.

But then there’s the big possible twist: that Roselia may not have reincarnated back into modern times through Riselia, but actually this horrific goddess monster that they can’t seem to defeat. That’s a pretty tragic turn of events if it’s true, but I’m going to go out on a limb and say this is really just a bait and switch. It seems more likely that this is just another one of Leonis’ old comrades from his hero days who has become a horrible monster like that one guy he beat in the sixth episode. In fact, if this show wasn’t about to end, I imagine the next season or two would be about confronting the other remaining three. And I’m still putting five bucks down on the end twist being that Roselia became Riselia. Yeah, it sounds a bit too obvious, but keep in mind that Naruto had a character named Tobi run around that everyone immediately clocked as being a guy named Obito, but still ended up pretending that was a twist when it all come about nearly a decade later. Anyway, one more episode to go, probably easy to figure out how it all ends, but let’s humor it and go on one last ride.