English Dub Review: Akashic Records of Bastard Magical Instructor “The Queen and the Princess”

Conspiracy is afoot! Again!

Spoilers Below

Our mysterious characters from the last episode watch on. They seem to have a history with Radars but aren’t here for that. No, they are here because of suspicious activity among the queen’s guard. Despite the hotheaded girl with the sword’s bravado, they wait to confront him. In the meantime, Radars has been confronted with his hunger! He hasn’t had much money lately and hasn’t had anything to eat in a while. After using an illusion to appear as Rumia to help teach another student how Sistine approaches him with a bunch of sandwiches. When he is about to give in to his desire for sammich, the real Rumia arrives, and he is discovered. Later, Rumia arrives to give him the sandwiches anyways, since Sistine was going to throw them out rather than feed Rumia food he touched. That’s when the Queen arrives. She exchanges some apologies with Glenn for… something in the past… and then turns to the real reason behind her visit. She addresses her daughter, the princess Ermiana. She expresses how proud she is of her daughter, and begins asking questions. Rumia tells her she must be confused. She isn’t Ermiana, she’s Rumia Tingel. With that, she cuts off her relationship with her mother and leaves.

Glenn later approaches Rumia about the incident and hears her out. She’s conflicted between her resentment for her mother throwing her away, and wanting to be held by her mother again. On the other hand, she feels like running back to her mother is a betrayal of the Fibels, who took her in as a family. Glenn gives her one bit of advice: be honest about your feelings. Before she can go and confront the Queen with those feelings, however, the guards arrive. They accuse Rumia of conspiring to kill the Queen, and are going to execute her on the spot! After a bit of fighting, Radars rescues her, and they flee to safety. He tries to get in contact with Celica, but she’s tight-lipped. Apparently, the guard is holding the Queen in her observation box as a prisoner, and Celica is being held with her! As if things couldn’t get any worse, the mystery pair from before chooses this moment as the one to strike!

Though it didn’t feel like much happened in this episode, it was packed with little tidbits of information and hooks for later exposition. We don’t know who the mystery pair are, but we know they aren’t bad people. They just have a bone to pick with Glenn. Radars, meanwhile, quit the Queen’s employ under bad circumstances, and the two may have been linked. Also, while it seems that Rumia was thrown aside by the Queen because she is a “Gifted”, I doubt that’s the whole story. More than likely, the Queen was trying to protect her, not abandon her. We still don’t know if this conspiracy is the same as the one from a couple episodes ago, but it seems likely. All this while lazily circling Rumia’s feelings about her mother. So, slow, but it has a lot to unpack.

Visually, it’s fine. The art continues to be mainstream traditional animation, so it isn’t spectacular, but it’s done competently, so I have no problem. The attack at the very end of the episode was well animated and promises good stuff to come at the beginning of the next episode. As an episode all about Rumia, Monica Rial did a good job bringing forward the character’s emotions. It isn’t a dramatic tear-jerker or anything, but it is believable as the character expressing their truth, and that’s all I ask. Therefore, I give this episode eight tiny sammiches out of ten.