English Dub Review: Didn’t I Say to Make My Abilities Average in the Next Life?; “Didn’t I Say The Crimson Vow Would Never Be Destroyed?!”

 

 

 

Overview (Spoilers Below)

Incapacitated by the elder dragon, Mile reflects on her life up until now and wonders whether or not to make her last stand.

Our Take

Grievously wounded by the elder dragon, both of Mile’s lives flash before her eyes. 

Before she was reincarnated, she was a studious but aloof high school girl, constantly making anime references. Her parents seem like your standard couple, but both of them are also old hands at inane referential jokes. I guess if you want to have that specifically annoying sense of humor you have to be raised that way. 

During her days at the academy after being reincarnated, she had a group of three other girlfriends, not unlike the one she has now. Together, they would get involved in all sorts of trouble and it is here that we see the genesis of Mile concocting her harebrained schemes. 

All of this explains Mile’s current mischievous and rambunctious personality; however, these flashbacks are utilized to a more serious end. Within her mindscape, she lays on the ground before these two past versions of herself, where they converse and play off each others’ jokes. But whereas her past selves are blunt and jaded, the current Mile is morbid. She goes over all the decisions that led her and her friends to this dire outcome, regretful and ruminating. 

It is only after Reina, Mavis, and Pauline are eventually bested by the elder dragon that Mile finds the resolve to stand back up again, reinvigorated. She makes a famous but pertinent reference to JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure and unleashes her full power. The dragon gets knocked down, but just when it seems like Mile’s victory is at hand, the dragon’s dragon buddies show up to give him shit for losing to a human. To nobody’s surprise at this point, Mile is very much overpowered and wins the battle. 

This final, epic, magic battle against three dragons is a bit of a mixed bag. All of the animations on the magic attacks are competently done. A lot of them share the same glittery texture but vary in color and shape. It’s all very inspired, with visual references to a few other animes, but in a much more reverent way compared to what Mile usually does. But while these effects are neat, the entire battle is just Mile and the dragons standing stationary on opposite ends of the room throwing magic blasts at each other. It’s less like a fantastical battle and more like an odd game of volleyball or darts. 

After the battle concludes and the dragons relent, they reveal why they were here in the first place. They were using the beastmen to excavate these ruins to see if they could find answers about the lost civilization depicted on the walls, this “lost civilization” actually being modern-day Earth. Evidently, though, the ruins were a complete bust. With no further questions for these ancient dragons and no qualms about them keeping beastmen as slaves, everyone casually leaves the premises on peaceful terms. 

Just when everything seemed to have wrapped up nicely, Mile plunges into deep thought again, this time about what she learned from the dragons. She asks Nano how the nanomachines that power the magic in this world actually came to be, but Nano states that that information is classified and does not offer any further elucidation. I had never mentioned Nano up until now because he was just a pointless mascot that only appeared when Mile needed a wall to bounce ideas off of. There were notions of him having some import to the world-building, but only now at the very end does he offer any hint of how anything works. 

Regardless, Mile continues to question the mysterious cosmogony of this world. These thoughts plague her so deeply that she begins to daydream and have nightmares about them. What Mile seems to be experiencing is something of an existential quandary. She thinks back to when she was first reincarnated, the god who sent here to this world stating that what happens to it was no longer his concern. Now she has learned that this world is, in fact, Earth and that it has undergone several dramatic planetary upheavals since she was last on it. She posits that Earth had at one point been under the protection of some sort of god, but now that protection was lost. 

But contrary to many tales featuring a re-civilized Earth, Mile is not concerned with returning to the times of old. In fact, she believes that unearthing artifacts from that world, such as powerful bombs, could spell untold disaster. Having now made so many memories and friends, she is determined to save this forsaken world with what she knows.

All of this is very shocking in that this is the most nuanced and conscientious line of thought that Mile has ever had by an incredibly large margin. It’s almost hard to believe a character, who spent 90% of her screentime being belligerently obnoxious to everyone, could be capable of such complex thinking. Once again, it seems all of the hard-hitting, intriguing, world-building questions have been shoehorned into the last ten minutes. 

After several days of deliberation, Mile makes up her mind to seek out the elder dragons and get the answers she wants. Not wanting to involve her friends in such potentially dangerous affairs, she leaves alone in the dead of night. However, the other three girls don’t fail to notice Mile’s intentions and follow after her. And that is where we leave the adventures of the Crimson Vow, ending in a “go buy the source material to find out what happens next” way. 

A lot of time and effort was spent embellishing the setting and developing Mile’s character and motivations in this final episode. And I’d say all of that was well worth it, as we leave our intrepid party with a small sense of wonder. It’s too bad because we definitely could’ve reached this point in the narrative much earlier if there weren’t so many glorified filler episodes. 

This episode is the ever-so-sweet cherry on top of a half-melted sundae. Whether you shoveled down the lukewarm ice cream soup or tossed it down the drain, it was still a messy affair.