English Dub Review: The Water Magician “Eclipses and Akuma”

Should’ve taken that left at Albuquerqu.

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

Ryo and his adventuring class start going into dungeons, and later he encounters an Akuma during a sudden eclipse.

OUR TAKE

It’s a bit surprising how much and how fast Ryo has blended in with this world’s society, but it seems he really learned to be at home with things after taking some classes. Not that he ever really seemed out of his depth from the moment he got here, but still, you’d think there would be some growing pains. Regardless, it seems he’s also making plenty of friends beyond just Abel, who is apparently a rather popular figure in this area, for whatever that’s worth. This episode gives a lot of focus to Amon, who’s in Ryo’s class but is clearly struggling a bit as he strives to become an adventurer. I’m guessing we’ll be following his progress alongside Ryo’s, though I imagine their differing paces will lead to considerably different outcomes. And even though they’re all in a common cause of adventuring and slaying monsters, it seems school bullies are universal, as Ryo has to stop some of them from beating up Amon and his friends. Maybe we’ll see Amon stand up to them at some point, or maybe he’ll learn his own self worth some other ways while they’re adventuring. We’ve got plenty of time, so I guess we’ll see.

But the big thing that happens in this episode is a reference to the title. Namely that an eclipse kinda pops up out of nowhere (hopefully with no one looking straight at the sun while this is happening) and Ryo is attacked by an Akuma, apparently a type of demon person, who identifies herself as Leonore Albuquerque, which is a name so ridiculous that you would expect it to be on a Gundam pilot. Leonore is a pretty strong opponent for Ryo, at least relatively speaking compared to what he’s been dealing with lately like school bullies, but he still manages to survive her attacks mostly unscathed. Though it’s made clear that if he didn’t have his cloak, which is apparently that of the FAIRY KING’S, he might have been mortally wounded near the end there. We’re no doubt going to be seeing Leonore again down the line, which is quite likely since we’re now only a third of the way through the series, but I’m sure she’ll have either become stronger or have more Akuma around her to help out. Seems things have finally started to escalate, so we’ll see if it keeps at it to make this show a little bit more interesting.