English Dub Review: Smile of the Arsnotoria “Wa——”

Overview

Little Alberta follows glowing rings of blue light into a cave, but soon after she realizes that she is trapped…

Our Take

This time around we now have an Al/Alberta-focused episode who is probably the most underdeveloped character so far. But it’s nice to see her get a mini-arc. Of course, this consequently freaks out her peers who are worried about her sudden disappearance, thinking that she’s stuck in crevices that need help rescuing, but also keeping it a low profile to not cause more concern.

Right, when they get searching for Alberta we get back to the “warning” segments and it looks like a real bloodbath. All I can gather is that the “knights” are church inquisitors. If they find the school for witches, they’d likely attempt to kill everyone there just for existing. So it wouldn’t just be the teachers fighting them, it’d be the students too.

Overall, from the development of the dark “warning” segments, the plot is coming closer, though still nowhere in its desired direction. This episode sure felt like an excuse to present as many new characters as possible, yet doesn’t give us the breathing room to make us properly care about them. I just hope we get to the meat of the story sooner than later which was teased in the show’s opening of an impending battle because the more it keeps cutting to these “Warning” segments, the more disconnected and abrupt these scenes progressively feel…