English Dub Review: Wise Man’s Grandchild “Outbreak of War and a Joint Training Exercise”

Such comedy. Much funny.

Overview (Spoilers Below)

A demonoid outbreak led by Schtrom has caused chaos throughout the Empire. Schtrom has perfected his ability to turn regular humans into demonoids, and is using his newfound allies to spread destruction wherever he goes. This is a big problem for the Empire, which is at war and hasn’t been keeping good track of its internal affairs. Though their military forces are able to put down the outbreaks of demonoids in the capital, the damage is still done and there’s nothing that can be done to take that back.

Back at home, Shin’s class is told that because of the increased demonoid threat, the school is going to be doing joint preparation exercises, where the mages of Shin’s class have to train with the knights in the school. Shin doesn’t seem to mind, since he was taught swordsmanship by the strongest swordsman in the land, but the rest of his classmates are upset that they’ll have to work with the knights, who regularly bully them because of their lack of physical ability.

The day comes for their exercises, and Shin tries to make peace with the knight students. Shin implores to them the dire need for their cooperation, but things don’t go very well. Their training has them head out to hunt a low-level demonoid. The knights, in their arrogance, step forth to take on the demonoid, but stand little chance against it. Shin dispatches it with ease, but the knights get a scolding from their teacher for being weak. Sizilien then heals them up and the mages and knights become great friends. Just then, an entire horde of demons arrives, but Shin kills them as well without any difficulty whatsoever. Then Miranda, one of the knights, admits that she was just jealous of Shin’s power and calls Shin Sizilien’s boyfriend. Much laughter ensues.

Our Take:

You really can’t expect a whole lot from Wise Man’s Grandchild. This is a show that hasn’t been able to exist above a 5th-grade reading level since it’s inception. You’ll find better writing in a soap opera and better worlds made on fanfiction.net. Yet, in a comparative sense, there is more going on in this episode than we’ve found in the entirety of the series up to this point. This is a good thing, but not a quality that brings the rank of this show up by much. Having Schtrom actually do something of value to the plot and generate a conflict that actually matters is pretty fundamental. Since this show has absolutely nothing going for in terms of character, it must rely on a plot with some degree of violence and dire stakes to preserve interest.

However, that doesn’t last long, because just as soon as we get into something that’s a little bit interesting, we go back to the “Romantic high school life” of Shin and his perfectly boring group of friends. Their issue this week is that they have something of a rivalry going on with the knights at the school, who occupy the “Jock” position in their school hierarchy. This might be interesting in a Disney channel “After school special” sort of way, but it’s mostly used to just explain how cool Shin is to everyone. It would seem that Shin isn’t just a magical genius, but a physical genius as well. How convenient, not like it would be nice for Shin and his friends to have a conflict to overcome or anything.

The rest of the episode finishes out basically how you would expect. There’s nothing much that happens to draw your eye beyond the plainest and vanilla of interpersonal conflicts. Since this world is basically a mirror of the modern Japanese high school life, it never ventures too far from anything you might see in a slice-of-life high school show. We’re only six episodes in and the well is already dry. Yet, for some reason, this show seems to be getting some kind of following. It would seem the cliches are cliche for a reason: they work well enough that lazy writers are okay with using them over and over again. But as for me, I’m still yawning, and hope that some act of god keeps this show from being made. Maybe an ink shortage?