English Dub Review: Radiant “To Stop the Sound of the Wind -Serenade-“

The trouble with the rat race is, even if you win, you’re still a rat.

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

Seth and Hameline begin their battle of blows and words. While Seth protests that defenseless people need to be protected and only people like Conrad are bad, Hameline can only rebuke that those people are why people like Conrad come to power. Seth says causing destruction like this only makes her as bad as the people who hurt her, Hameline says no that no matter how many he saves, she, Seth, and sorcerers like them will always be feared, hated, abused, and manipulated. These are all things Seth has been put through by people who persecuted him and Alma. Atrocities he’s been forced to endure much as Hameline did. He even admits he’s had times he wanted to kill and destroy them, which he could have done easily with the power he possessed. But Alma taught him better than that, so he strove to be a protector over the monster some thought he might be.

Seth disarms Hameline, ending her attack. While she fears he’ll give her up to prove he’s loyal to the people, he swears he won’t; not to the mob and not the Inquisition. He has his own plan: destroy Radiant and end the Nemesis, cutting the ties between them and the sorcerers forever, giving them a chance to find peace amongst humans. It’s the longest of longshots, but it got him this far!

However, before he can fully win Hameline over, the Inquisitor Santori of the Thaumaturges arrives using a “miracle”, creating a giant glowing form of himself. He states he is there to take Seth and lists off a series of crimes, including murder, destruction, theft, kidnapping, arson, tax evasion, littering, and parking his broom in a handicap spot without a placard! Okay, those last few I made up, but while he doesn’t remember doing any of those crimes, the locations listed do sound strangely familiar. Though when negotiations break down, Hameline tells him, Melie, and Grimm to leave while she sacrifices herself to buy time. She hands Seth the scroll holding her remaining Nemesis “brothers”, telling him they aren’t all bad but is killed by General Torque.

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

Wow, can’t say I predicted covering two shows, both with episodes about two characters with similar pasts fighting it out while the word “Nemesis” is also involved in some way or another. However, while the other show failed to live up to its aspirations of parallels while having a bombastic, though ultimately hollow, action set piece, Radiant does everything the other show couldn’t and then some. And it all comes down to the two sides of the debate, Seth and Hameline.

We’ve been following Seth since the start of the series, of course, which means we’ve seen just about everything he’s been through (or at least everything he’s currently aware of that he went through). He’s been our first example of how crappy life is for a sorcerer, being shunned by society due to prejudice and irrational fear, then expected to fight for the people who hate him against giant monsters because he’s the only one who can. And he chooses to fight for them because he was taught better. He’s heard the speeches about how much these people suck and how he shouldn’t bother and how it’s hopeless to try and be nice because they’ll only betray him in the end. It could be that, if not for Alma and his seeming pipe dream to destroy Radiant, he may have ended up like the Bravery Quartet or Hameline, but he chooses to be better.

But, at the same time, this does not invalidate or negate the horrors that Hameline has faced as she described. Her friends were all conscripted into slave labor as children simply for being infected, then killed to protect people who didn’t give a damn about them. The only possible equivalent she had to Alma was Oxumare, who was killed by the same monstrous hatred that killed her friends, and the only ones who stayed with her were the Nemeses she’d been forced to fight while also being associated with. It’s no wonder then that she grew to see everyone, not only those who took direct action but those who stood by and let it happen, as the true monsters who she needed to kill. She’s certainly responsible for her own actions, but her experiences could and probably have happened to many sorcerers like her and Seth because of the way the Inquisition and the people’s fear controls their fate. She isn’t the disease, she’s a symptom.

And so their battle, filled with spells and cries fueled by their respective sorrows, is appropriately filled with a lot of gravitas. This isn’t just diet magic Naruto fighting rat lady Gaara, these are two people who have lived lives of unfathomable pain and sadness just for being born who are fighting with both of their souls on the line. The hope that Hameline wishes she could feel but knows she can’t is just as real as the step away from the edge that Seth has faced throughout his life but knows he can’t take. Both are right, but both are wrong, and only one can survive to see the result. And as much as it would have been nice to see Hameline join the cast as the show’s Vegeta, her death teaches Seth an important lesson.

This episode was a prime example of fights and philosophy in them that I see so often fail to hold together, but know that some can get right. I have to wait a long time to see them and I get close to giving up hope myself, but then I see something like this and I know it was all worth it. And next time, the conclusion to the Rumble Town Arc.