English Dub Review: Radiant “Toward a New Adventure -Overture-“

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

Following the events of last season, Seth and Alma head off to Caislean Merlin, the city of the Knight-Sorcerers, in order to find more information about the mysterious Radiant. It’s also plagued by a Spectral Nemesis, which unlike the store brand type of Nemeses, don’t fall from the sky in eggs but instead appear from nowhere.

But no time for that! We need some recap of previous episodes and wacky comedic antics with the Bravery Quartet! Or rather, Bravery DU-et, since the less important members have jumped ship since the group’s last appearance. Only Don Bossman and Jiji remain and now work for Alma as assistants since she’s house-trained them. Seth also takes this opportunity to tell Alma about his encounter with Piodon, who claimed to be his brother, but Alma tells him to be cautious of that guy as he might be responsible for Seth’s odd curse and powers.

Meanwhile, Dragunov is requested to a remote location in a snowy mountain, for which he’s certain he’s being punished for damaging the Inquisition’s reputation in Rumble Town, but feels more guilty that he let things go on there for so long. He flashes back to how he met Captain Conrad fifteen years ago, remembering how devious his former friend was even back then. He then meets with General Torque of the Thaumaturges, eager to accept his death, but instead he learns he is being promoted to being a Thaumaturge himself, being seen as an asset for conflicts to come. His first mission is his old mission: find Seth, who has just set off for Caislean Merlin on his own

OUR TAKE

Radiant, the anime based on a breakout Manfra (french manga) returns for another season of 21 episodes. That’s still a weird number for these sorts of shows, but I’m just glad to see it back. Radiant isn’t one of the most original stories out there and even I wasn’t crazy about it when it first started, though it really grew on me over last season to the point that I think it was probably one of the most underrated shows of last year. So I’m glad that this didn’t turn out to be a simple one-and-done, especially since the next arc in the series looks to be one of the story’s most interesting.

This episode is split pretty evenly into tow plots, with one catching up with protagonist Seth and the other doing the same with cool baddie Dragunov. Seth’s half is mostly recap and comedy bits, but they’re functional enough that I’m not too annoyed by them. I’m kinda disappointed that the Bravery Quartet, now duet, has been pretty much reduced to comedic sidekicks when they were so much more interesting as dark reflections and cautionary tales, but their reformation also ends up playing into another theme I enjoy about this show: people aren’t born human, meaning that one has to work to become a good person. Who knows if we’ll see that play out in the rest of the season, so it’s nice to touch on that here while we can.

The half with Dragunov is by far the more interesting one, as it expands on the Inquisition’s background and fleshes out more of why Dragunov is such an important character for their side. One of last season’s antagonists was Captain Conrad, who abused his position as an Inquistor to carry out a secret extermination of Rumble Town immigrants and sorcerers. Both Seth and Dragunov managed to uncover this and have him removed, allowing Rumble Town to begin making steps to becoming better. As much as I enjoyed the stuff between Conrad and Hameline, this also helped to set the Inquisition’s priorities as an organization apart from if they were just some group of racist zealots who hated sorcerers like Conrad. The legend of a “Patrem Inquisitor” that Torque explains here expands on that, showing that the group supposedly started as simply one farmer’s son standing up to the oppressive power of a mad sorcerer. One thing I’ve enjoyed about this show the most is how it doesn’t automatically assign “good” and “bad” to groups like Inquisitors and sorcerers just because they might happen to have characters with like or hate on either side, so I look forward to seeing more of that this season.

There’s also minor things to note, like how we haven’t checked in with Doc and Melie yet (but they’re in the new OP and ED so I can’t imagine they’ll be gone for long), as well as the fact that we HAVE a new OP and ED (which I’m not crazy about, but they’re alright), but what’s more important is the new setting for this arc, Caislean Merlin. I’ve only skimmed the comic for details but it’s looking like this will be a great next installment in this series, even if this first episode wasn’t amazing.