English Dub Review: The Water Magician “Nils and the Mysterious Town”

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

Ryo accompanies his friend Nils and some others to Nils’ hometown to help deal with some local monsters.

OUR TAKE

After the chaos of last week, it’s nice to have an episode where things calm down a bit!…is what I WOULD say if last week wasn’t also pretty low key and slow. Also, I guess Crunchyroll decided to glitch out again this week because the episode description and title talk about someone called The Inferno Magician, someone who IS in this episode but only near the very end after the plot for this one has been fully resolved. So, I guess it’s safe to say that whoever the Inferno Magician is, they’ll be a big part of the last three episodes of the season. Thanks for the heads up, Crunchyroll! Now, would you please act right for once in your goddamn existence?! Anyway, this episode gives some focus to Nils, a character who is learning to be an adventurer alongside the rest of Ryo’s peers, and whose design and personality are as interesting as watching paint dry, so it should be very little wonder why I haven’t mentioned him at all prior to this episode. Nils is a hopeful aspiring warrior, hoping to help out his village after his parents died (likely from the monsters he wants to fight off), but he’s too low in rank to help out in a mission near that village, so he enlists Ryo, who is apparently ranked high enough, to put together a party to go do just that.

And this leads to yet more examples of Ryo kicking a whole load of monster ass with little to no effort, which I have…well and truly grown simply tired of over time. Like I GET that he is the Isekai power fantasy protagonist who is stronger than everyone, but if you don’t want your hero to struggle in physical challenges, then you need to make up for that by making them struggle in emotional or abstract challenges, which Ryo is also not really having that much of a problem with. If anything, this episode just shows us how much more super special awesome he is by having his mere presence give Nils and the townsfolk the ability to visit and meet their local forest guardian spirit, who in turn tells Ryo that the Fairy King must really be fond of him. Is that going to be followed up on? I honestly don’t know, but what I do know is that we have three episodes left, and those are going to focus on the Inferno Magician in some capacity.