English Dub Review: Sorcerous Stabber Orphen; “Forest Maiden”

Overview (Spoilers Below)

Orphen and Majic are captured by the village of the Dragon Faith. Left with little recourse in the face of this abrupt intrusion, the key figures within the village show their hands to advance their own ends. 

Our Take

Watching this episode, the flow of the scenes felt somewhat iffy. Upon reflection, the structure of the plot is needlessly fragmented. Multiple perspectives are established, only for them to eventually converge into one. Secrets are being hinted at, only for them to be revealed five minutes later. It isn’t hard to follow, but there is some effort that is put into adding complexity to the plot, only for it to then be shortly thereafter stripped away. For the sake of brevity, I’ll be consolidating most of the information here. 

Orphen is unable to withstand the Deep Dragon’s mental attack and faints. Instead of being outright killed though, he is thrown in prison. MacDougal had no personal scruples with killing Orphen but didn’t want to risk provoking the Tower of Fangs by killing one of their sorcerers. However, MacDougal has no reservations about torturing him if he doesn’t cooperate. 

For someone who seemed like just a bit character, MacDougal surprisingly has a little bit of depth. What was at first blush a strict and faithful leader of a small village is revealed to be an ambitious scoundrel. He uses his experience working within a church to manipulate the faith of others and start a religion, at the feet of a powerful deity no less. But despite his incredible cunning, he’s aware he has no real power to back it up, and thus resorts to a smuggled revolver. He regularly brandishes it at the first signs of impudence, pointing it at everyone who defies him, with a dash of arrogance on top of it all. His motivations are simple and cliche as they come however; a simple man seeking simple power grab. Ultimately, he’s just a slightly bigger than average fish in an average-sized pond. 

The other key player in all of this is Fiena, the forest shrine maiden. Amidst all of this conflict, she’s more or less playing for both sides, which indicates she’s truly on nobody’s side. She tolerates MacDougal just so she can stick close and observe. When he makes threats, she bares her fangs and shows she’s not afraid to use magic, but does ultimately back down when she sees his ruthlessness. She’s very devoted to attaining the peaceful ending through her persistent neutrality in trying to keep everybody happy and convincing them to leave the forest before it’s seemingly inevitable demise. 

Although she shows a lot of benevolence, her motives are still unclear. Amidst all of the information given to us here, the particulars of her background are still kept in the dark.. She’s connected to the Deep Dragon somehow, with what appears to be something of a father-daughter relationship hinted at. So she’s presumably doing all of this for the Dragon’s sake, but her methodology still has some holes in it. 

Salua is also a man of many faces. In the previous episode, he appeared a dogged devotee and a highly competent villager. Right at the beginning of this episode though, he shows some slightly unexpected signs of doubt in the faith, which quickly manifests in yet another reveal. He skirts past most of MacDougal’s orders and goes straight for Orphen. He turns out to be an assassin sent to kill MacDougal for deserting the church and decides to throw Orphen on the hit list for good measure. What promises to be an engaging magical battle, however, is quickly thwarted by a wild Claiomh. Slightly disappointing as this is, it does result in a net positive elsewhere. Hopefully, Salua will show up in the future to give us a show. 

The last bit of notable development is that Claiomh isn’t entirely comic relief. She was ordered by Orphen to go alert the forest rangers of this situation and wait there for him. Not only does she come back with them, but she also charges in ahead of them herself in response to their reticence. Her bullheaded fearlessness was all just for show up until now, but here it finally comes in handy. It’s nice to see that Claiomh can be relied upon in a pinch, even if only a little. And to top it all off, she knocks out Salua in the middle of his “dramatic” opening monologue, still proving she can provide some humor even when the going gets rough. 

As layered as this episode is though, it’s isn’t entirely compelling. We got a lot of unexpected but welcome character development, but that was really it. This all could have lead to the beginning of a series of cool magic battles, but those were traded in for a heap of exposition. This was definitely enlightening in some ways, but I believe there was a more skillful way to deliver this information. Instead of wasting time doing quick bait and switches with teases and reveals, the information in this episode could’ve been told in a more straightforward manner. The pace would be faster and we could’ve already lit the match on some of the battles that are going to break out.