English Dub Review: Million Arthur “From the Sanctuary with Love”

Revenge is a radish best served cold.

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

The Arthurs begin the day with an oddly but sufficiently dressed Dancho serving them Takuan, a food from “a land in the far east” that’s basically a pickled radish. And by pure coincidence, the next mission takes place in a city called Great Field that specializes in takuan (and even has a celebration video about it with weirdly fluid animation), which also just so happens to connected to Yamaneko’s past. After being paired up with Ruro and their respective fairies, they head out to find the next Arthur target. When they get there, the city is strangely quiet, but they soon realize why. There’s someone on the mountain who has them in the sights of their sniper rifle. A rifle that fires rounds that turn those it hits into takuan, meaning it’s likely an Excalibur.

The city’s lone defender is a boy named Roy who has nun chucks made of takuan (god, you’d think this episode was sponsored by a takuan farm or something). He explains that his sister, Loretta, is still angry about her father being cheated out of a recent takuan competition and so is seeking vengeance with her rifle, turning folks into takuan to halt this year’s Harvest Festival, which would have also been the first appearance of Utahime, the one who would end up singing the song in that celebration video.

Yamaneko and Ruro plan to retaliate, but they get outsmarted and end up getting more civilians takuan’d, as well as Ruro. Feeling defeated, Yama plans to make up for her failure herself…along with her fairy, Coupy. She faces Loretta head on and seemingly takes a bullet head on, but reveals that she was given a vest made of takuan to protect herself, seeing how the bullets can’t turn takuan into more takuan. With that, they destroy the rifle and turn everyone back to normal. It’s also revealed that the woman who cheated Roy and Loretta’s father was found out not long after, so Loretta’s actions were completely pointless! But no one died or got hurt so I guess it’s all fine. And it seems Yama’s warming up to her teammates a bit more.

OUR TAKE

And just like that, we’re halfway through! This week finally gives the spotlight to the two remaining Arthurs we haven’t gotten quality time with…although really, this is Yamaneko’s episode, so I guess Ruro will have to wait a bit longer. Just like Renkin’s a couple of weeks ago, this is mostly about exploring what exactly Yama values and peeking ever so slightly behind what makes her act the way she does through brief and vague flashbacks to her past. Whereas Renkin constantly feels she has to prove herself because of her short stature and having no one to rely on in her young life, Yama apparently comes from a very ruthless family whose name only gives her bad luck, possibly meaning she wants to redeem herself for being witness to such horrible crimes. Though that’s all speculation until when and if we get some more elaboration on that.

As for the episode’s plot, it was probably the silliest but also most intense of them yet. Having an enemy with such a violent weapon that just turns people into food basically gives you a blank check to be as crazy with the action as you like without any real violence to worry about, and this makes sufficient use of that, as well as forcing some creative thinking about using the food as a shield. The villain motivation was cliché as all get out, but it was definitely the most sympathetic we’ve seen a bad guy in this show so far, so there’s that. It also breaks what I thought was an established rule of having TWO characters of the week with unique designs and one of them WASN’T evil OR an Arthur! I guess I spoke too soon there, but I’m happy to be wrong in this case.

And then there’s what seems to be set up for a future character reveal down the line. The singer of the festival video, Utahime, doesn’t have her face shown, which is often something done when the face has to be a major reveal for whatever reason. She’s also not shown, even when she’s passing by Yama at the end in the carriage. Whatever the case, the two seem to share a connection to at least this village, so I guess we wait to see if that’s touched on in this or the next season. In the meantime, I guess I’ll look into trying takuan sometime!