English Dub Review: Sorcerous Stabber Orphen; “HEED MY CALL, BEAST”

 

 

Overview (Spoilers Below)

Now with Childman and his retinue of sorcerers in tow, Orphen heads out to finally face Azalie with the intent of saving her. 

Our Take

En route to the confrontation with Azalie, Orphen soon surmises that this will most likely end up being a suicide mission for most of the sorcerers here. Childman tacitly confirms this to be true with no further comment from the sorcerers in question. As we’ll see later, the severity of this mission is far greater than it appears. In spite of the danger, Orphen is still fully determined to be one step ahead of everyone else so that he can confront Azalie the way he wants to. He starts the battle ahead of schedule, but even that doesn’t escape Childman’s predictions as the rest of the sorcerers soon join after.  

One of the big features of this episode is definitely all of the magic battles, of which there are quite a few distinct ones. For the most part, the large scale battles against the draconic Azalie are just the standard magic circles emitting beams of energy we’ve seen before. But here, there feels like there’s a bit more weight in the execution. As the sorcerers spit out their incantations, there’s always a twinge of palpable desperation in their voices, as though they’re staring down the face of death. These cries end up being fully realized sadly as almost every sorcerer does perish; including Comicron, someone who had effort put into his introduction in the previous episode and who we saw for a brief moment in this one. Suddenly killing off characters that were just introduced is another element we’ll be readdressing again soon. 

Orphen decides to take advantage of the chaos of battle and steal the Sword of Baltanders so that he can figure it out. Childman sends Heartia after him, which results in an awesome, but way too short sorcerer battle. Heartia casts some sort of shadow spell which engulfs Orphen in a bubble of darkness. The visuals of this spell are the most robust and inspired magic effects seen in the show by far. Orphen is cast in an inverted light, becoming a white outline in a black void. As he navigates and dispels it, all of his actions cast reversed shadows in a display of visual splendor. This entire sequence is only about ~15 seconds long, but it leaves a strong impression. 

Orphen and Heartia suddenly decide to make up and conclude their brief but epic duel. Heading back to the larger battle, Orphen helps Childman subdue Azalie. However, whenever Childman sets to deal a killing blow, Orphen casts his own spell to deflect it to save the dragon. Childman doesn’t put up with this for very long and stabs Orphen to stop him from interfering. Then he casts the final spell against Azalie, shredding her body, almost obliterating her entirely. 

It all happened so fast that I almost couldn’t believe it was that easy. Twenty high-class sorcerers got flattened by this dragon in three minutes, and then this guy just gibs her in ten seconds. It honestly almost feels preposterous, like all of the tension surrounding the magic that had been built up until now was for naught.

As one would imagine, Orphen becomes incredibly upset over this. But as he cries over her desecrated corpse, he gets a response from it: a voice in the form of on-screen text. The voice speaks of wanting to “save her.” The dragon’s final words are not left as a mystery for long. Childman takes the Sword back to town, and the next day Orphen confronts him and demands the truth. 

The truth is far, far messier than anybody could have ever anticipated; accordingly, the plot thickens to a near solid state. 

The voice that Orphen heard from the dragon’s corpse was not Azalie’s, but Childman’s. From this, Orphen deduces that at some point Azalie swapped her consciousness with Childman’s, placing her mind in Childman’s body and his mind in the dragon’s body. Azalie had regained her sense of self when Childman awoke from his coma and used Childman’s plans against him to perform this body swap. Thus, now Azalie is alive and Childman is dead.

One would think Orphen would be somewhat joyful that Azalie is alive, but that is not the case. As soon as he confirms who she is, he quickly turns on her to demand recompense for Childman’s death. Azalie doesn’t relent and strikes Orphen with the Sword of Baltanders, but the sword passes through his body, to which Orphen counters and knocks her down. Orphen was able to survive Azalie’s attack by swallowing the magic ring she gave him long ago, which imparts upon him the ability to survive one mortal blow. Having gotten back her life by her own magic prowess only to then be undone by it; the irony is so dense it’s actually a little obnoxious. 

Having sufficiently one-upped her, Orphen takes pity on Azalie and offers to use the Sword to transform her body into whatever she wants. But only now, after being bested, does Azalie feel some remorse. She killed Childman because she thought that he would want to kill her for stealing his body. But, as Orphen reveals, Childman consigned himself to his fate and resolved to end his own life to save Azalie’s. And then, perhaps with a cleaner conscience, does Azalie confess to having some feelings for Childman. She leaves Orphen and vows to regain all the time with him she had lost. 

This is an especially large amount of factual and emotional exposition to have laid out for us. The content in the previous three paragraphs could populate the majority of one episode, a length of time that could appropriately encapsulate the complexity of these tragic motivations. But instead, we receive all of this in less than five minutes. In one respect, it’s kind of impressive that they were able to condense that much information into that little time and have it be even somewhat comprehensible. In another respect, it feels like we skipped over a handful of scenes that could’ve given depth to the twisted shape of these relationships. Orphen and Azalie both receive next to no time to fully justify their actions, leading to a conclusion that has so much brevity and little else. 

And with that strangely too-clean-for-its-own-good ending, that’s it for this arc, I guess. Orphen’s entire motivation up until now has just neatly shown itself out the door. We’ve got other characters in this show too, though, like Claiomh and those dwarves. I suppose we’ll be seeing what they’re up to next. Maybe if they’re feeling especially industrious, they can also die and/or have their backstories wrapped up in less than five minutes as well. I have a feeling we’re going to be getting a lot done in this season.