English Dub Review: Knight’s & Magic “Scrap & Rebuild”

So, when are we getting the flying mecha with rocket launchers and laser swords?

Spoilers Below

Ernesti’s exploits in hijacking a Silhouette Knight and defeating a Division-class Behemoth has not gone unnoticed. The King summons him to the throne room to personally thank him, granting him any wish that he desires. Ernesti asks to learn how to build an Ether Drive, getting shocked looks from the court. The King is intrigued. What does Ernesti want it for? He reveals his intent to build an all new breed of Silhouette Knight, and the King is game! If Ernesti can create a new chassis that impresses him, the King will give him the schematics for the Ether Drive. With this mission in hand, Ernesti goes to the Silhouette Knight pit boss… and fess up for damaging Dietrich’s knight Guiar. When he explains how he hacked into Guiar’s controls, overriding the limiters along the way. That caused him to burn out all the crystal tissue that had just been installed the day before. As repayment for the damage, Ernesti shows the pit boss a whole new way to work with crystal tissue as muscles for the silhouette knight. By twisting the strands of crystal tissue together into chords, it raises their power output and tensile strength considerably. In fact, as they test this out on a damaged Knight, they find that the chorded crystal tissue was stronger than the support structure could handle! But, Ernesti isn’t done there!

Along with all those power upgrades, the young lad has some functional equipment that nobody’s ever thought of before. First, the problem of having to switch between a melee weapon and magic rod. Out of mecha, he solved this with his wand blade concept, which has worked brilliantly. In this new concept, however, he decides to change the mecha to allow it more options. By adding a pair of light arms to the back, he’s given the mecha the ability to hold its magic rods on its back and deploy them at will. Now, it can use double the magic, without abandoning its melee capabilities. Also, as he noticed that Knight Runners were burning through mana at a high rate. He designs smaller suits, more like power armors, he calls Silhouette Gears. These can not only be used to ease physical labor but can be used to train runners to use their mana more efficiently, as it drains its mana from them directly. From there, all that is left is to test out these new systems. The test bed was Helvi’s Trandorkis, now renamed Telestale, and she decides to take it into a mock battle with Edgar’s tried and true Earlcumber. Though she comes out on top, she runs out of mana. All of this increased output and ability makes it a gas-guzzler. They decide to go into solving this problem, but one of those present at the after-party runs off to meet some seedy people. He reveals all that happened that day… We have a spy!

Okay, to be honest, not much happened in this episode, plotwise. It is kind of a set-up for what’s coming next. I really didn’t care that much, though, because I was just nerding out on the upgrades they were planning. I thought they were rather smart, though I was expecting his solution to the melee/magic swapping to be one that was integral to the mech, such as making the rods an actual part of the back arms. This way around is a bit more versatile, allowing them to hold different things. The Silhouette Gears are also interesting, but I’m still not sure what he intends them for. They are slower than a normal person’s movement, even if they are vastly stronger. They burn through the user’s mana directly, so it isn’t wise to use magic with them. They aren’t viable for combat, so are they purely for training? I do like that we’re starting to get a bit of intrigue into the plot. Are the spies working for another nation or a splinter group within the country? And what does the siblings’ father have to do with them? Is he a loyalist or a traitor?

The art and animation are good here. They mix the CG and traditional arts well. Although the Silhouette Knights are all CG, I rarely had any issues with how the two blended against each other. It still felt like a whole. The action in the mock battle was fun. As far as the art, I liked the amount of detail on the mechanical elements. As should be expected in a mecha anime that focuses on a nerdy dude, the mecha is well thought out, and make sense. You can see that in the design. The voice acting is… respectable. It isn’t anything spectacular, and I didn’t really notice any stand-out performances, but it isn’t bad. The actors weren’t working with particularly deep or emotional material, so they don’t have much to do. I give this episode seven extra arms out of ten.