English Dub Review: Radiant “The City That Roars Like Thunder -Rumble Town-“

LLLLLLLLLET’S GET READY TO TOOOOOOOOOOWWWWWWNNNNN

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

While looking for ways to make up the group’s collective debt before they die, Doc comes across a job request to capture an unidentified Nemesis in another city, Rumble Town, and the local Inquisition officers aren’t doing anything to stop it. He hesitates to take the gig…until Seth and Melie find it and pressure him into accepting it to impress Melba. On the way, they’ve been found and followed by Dragunov. Rumble Town proves to be a stark difference to Artemis’ pristine, sorcerer-friendly streets. Originally called “Prosperity”, it’s a remnant of the Industrial Age of over 300 years ago, being home to more working factories than any other city. Because the growing industry, it gained it’s new name, Rumble Town, to more accurately reflect its noisy and shaky nature. It’s also heavily controlled by the Inquisition, so Seth and Melie have to be extra careful not to let slip they’re sorcerers.

The three enter the town’s dark and smoggy pathways as they go to meet their client, though the poor air quality seems to be getting Doc (I can relate after spending five minutes outside during the Camp Fire smoke cloud last year). They also come across the Nemesis in question: A giant rat. Well, two giant rats. Seth uses this as an opportunity to put Yaga’s newest teachings to the test. He was asked to bind the Fantasia he can gather to a symbol in his head in order to form an attack. Yaga suggests thinking of the strongest thing he can imagine, so Seth uses the strongest person he knows…Alma (cue “AWWWWWW”). With this new skill, Skull Attack, he wounds one of the rats, but both are soon lured off by the sound of a flute.

Seth and Melie give chase, but then notice more and more rats following the two, but just as Seth starts to catch up, he’s tackled and sent crashing into a building, which also destroys Alma’s broom. The tackler is Grimm, the in-third-person speaker we’ve seen hinted at the last couple of episodes. He asks what Seth has to do with the Nemesis and Seth, being kind of an idiot, doesn’t answer anything and starts picking a fight. He’s only barely saved by Melie, but word travels fast about them and is reported to Captain Konrad de Marbourg of the Inquisition, who’s happy to start an uproar if it means killing more sorcerers.

OUR TAKE

WOW, looks like SOMEONE started cracking the whip in Radiant’s Writer’s Room, because it looks like we’re finally back on track with the promise this show started with. It doesn’t quite make up for the month-long stream of pointless filler, but it’s most definitely welcome. In one episode, it establishes and re-establishes several crucial details, such as the prevalence of sorcerer discrimination, the vast difference between pro-sorcerer areas like Artemis and others like Rumble Town, builds on the lore of the world by talking about a previous Industrial Age, AND the necessary but difficult task of hunting Nemesis, as well as introducing the idea that they can be controlled. That’s all pretty standard and obligatory stuff for a shonen genre series, but it’s explained and displayed very efficiently over the course of the episode in ways that other shows with similar content have taken six years to only get to sucking at less than they used to (*COUGH-RWBY-COUGH*).

Basically, what this all means is that I’m more excited for the next episode of this show than I have been for awhile. Rumble Town really looks like a good place to have a second arc, being similar to places we’ve seen, but with a more apparent sense of corruption that our heroes will have to use both their hearts and minds in addition to their fists in order stop. It’s basically all the stuff I complained about that second appearance of the Bravery Quartet NOT having compared to their first, only this time being across a whole town, which likely includes the citizens as well. Captain Konrad may lack an interesting or creative character design, but he’s the type of actively malicious villain I’ve been waiting for this story to have. He’s probably not going to go far outside of this arc, but I really look forward to how bad he can get.

There’s also Grimm, a wild card in all this, and his pursuit of the rat Nemeses that’s going to make things difficult for Seth and gang, but hopefully in an intriguing way and not in a “pointless plot cul-de-sac” kind of way. He’s voiced by Eric Vale, after all, and you don’t give that guy a non-important role in your arc. So, already we have a burst of new characters and mysteries to chew on for next week, which feels like rain after a long drought of nothing. Fingers crossed we can keep that rain pouring.