English Dub Review: Possibly the Greatest Alchemist of All Time “Shadow of Sidonia”

Overview (Spoilers Below):
Takumi wants to upgrade their gear for their journey, so he seeks out mythril and adamantite ores.  After consulting with the Adventurer’s Guild, he accepts quests to defeat monsters, gather Treant Wood, and escort a miner to excavate the ores.  He plans to set out in three days time with the blacksmith, Dgambo.

Our Take:
Takumi, Sofia, and Maria are now officially guild adventurers, thanks to their efforts in exterminating the goblin clan.  However, there’s still more work to get done in the guild if Takumi wants to be capable enough to explore again.  This is where this week’s episode comes into play, with Takumi and the others going on even more quests for the guild to collect ores to upgrade their equipment.  The most crucial quest is collecting the mythril and adamantite ores from the mines of Horas for Takumi to synthesize into new armor, although they have to become members of the Blacksmith’s Guild to mine them.  This led to them escorting Dgambo the Blacksmith to Horas while battling Treant creatures to collect more Treant wood for Bolton.
Of course, that’s not all that this episode had to offer, as Reill arrives to stay at Takumi’s house after accomplishing a challenging quest.  This doesn’t exactly serve much of a purpose to the episode’s plot other than to provide a comical moment involving Reill’s jealousy towards Takumi’s harem.  Additionally, the episode reveals that the kingdom of Sidonia has already chosen its two heroes, Akira and Sakato, although suspicions about the kingdom’s purpose are still high due to Akane’s Blessing of Revelation.  However, Nolyn’s vision of what these “heroes” are capable of indicates that they don’t seem to be the heroic types, which could interfere with Takumi’s own journey.  These moments alone were enough to keep my dwindling interest in the show’s formulaically subpar narrative at bay, although it’s unclear how long that interest would last.  Regarding my experience with it so far, I’m already guessing that it would be shorter than expected.