English Dub Review: Plunderer “Birth of Alcia”

Overview (Spoilers Below):

Licht is officially an Ace now, but everything isn’t going so ace. After deciding that his sole purpose now is to protect the rest of Class A from having to kill, Licht throws himself into the killing, going out and slaughtering 337 people by himself in a single day. He rooms with the only other Ace, Nana, and the two of them grow close. But the more he kills, the less himself he becomes.

Eventually, he doesn’t even respond to Ichinose’s invitation to bathe together. Concerned for their pervy classmate, the kids make a petition to Schmerman to give Rihito help. Four of them are transformed into Aces as well, but Rihito still forbids them from killing. The Waste War goes on, and Schmerman and his cohorts manage to capture the original ballots and gain control of unlimited power. They create a new floating continent called Alcia and make a new paradise… but only for a select few.

Our Take:

After a pretty disappointing episode last week, Plunderer makes a pretty strong comeback for the most part. Birth of Alcia is full of plot, over 300 years of it in fact. We get to see everything Licht went through during his time as an Ace, and how the countless killings affected him to make him the person he is in the future. It’s almost too much going on, but it helps that we’ve received plenty of setup for the history lesson during the past 17 episodes.

Licht’s plight is terrible for sure. While he’s probably one of my least favorite characters in the entire show, it’s still sad to see his downfall from happy-go-lucky freeloader to a war torn murderer suffering from severe PTSD. The girls from Class A, led by Ichinose, decide to flash him to try and get a reaction, which is so very dumb and awful (“He’ll be back to normal once we find the perfect lingerie.” ) but also shows just how far removed from himself Licht has become. It’s startlingly scary how quick he changed into a killer due to the injection of Schmerman’s genes.

Nana gets to narrate a lot of this episode to us through her video recordings. It’s interesting to see how much the war has affected her too, despite not really participating in it to the extent that Rihito did. She goes from an innocent little girl with a crush on her ‘big bro’ to a world weary drunkard. She initially hoped to marry Licht after the war, but his soul crushing funk put the kibosh on those plans. Now she just wants him to take off his mask once in awhile.

Birth of Alcia shines a light on terrible actions of Schmerman that helped lead to the downfall of Licht and his fellow Aces. Tokikaze, Doan, Sonohara, and Grogorovich started off wanting to help alleviate their friend’s burden, but by the end of the Waste War, Tokikaze has been slashed by Licht’s blade as a punishment for rebelling against the inequality of Alcia and their actions against the Abyss below. This entire episode was a lot to take in, and it’ll be interesting to see how the rest of the cast handles it going forward. Oh, and Hina, please put your shirt back on.