English Dub Review: Sorcerous Stabber Orphen “Say My Will, Demon King; His Own Angel and Devil”


OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

Orphen, Claiomh, and Majic continue their journey from Season 1 by entering a temple full of traps and end up helping the last bandit of a group that tried to enter it.

OUR TAKE

If you are not familiar with this series in the slightest and you jump in at this season, YOU WILL BE ABSOLUTELY LOST. There’s barely even much indication of whatever story has come before, and even that is pretty much impenetrable without some google fu. But the rundown of it is essentially this: Orphen, real name Krylancelo Finrandi, is a former mage who used to go to a magic school until his foster sister Azailie turned into a giant dragon called the Bloody August, which he committed to hunting down and hopefully turning back to normal. At least, that’s until things get a whole lot more complicated from there, when he’s joined by two other kids named Claiomh and Majic who intend to learn magic from him. Also this is essentially a reboot of a cult classic anime from the 90’s, apparently a contemporary of the more popular Slayers franchise.

So that brings us to these first two episodes and…they’re not great. I mean, I’m not going to knock it for not being immediately accessible for newcomers since obviously you’ll need to watch the first season before this one, as I have been trying to, but even without that, the show just doesn’t look very good. It’s legitimately difficult to tell whether this revival was done out of long held passion for a neglected franchise, a studio half-heartedly trying to do something with a dormant property, or a mix of both, but what we got was something that kinda meets in the middle. I haven’t seen the original series, not that I should need to, but what I have seen so far does seem like a story that would have maybe seemed interesting in the 90’s…or maybe this particular version just isn’t portraying this in a very interesting way like they should. I guess they’re doing something if they got two seasons, unless they worked on those simultaneously. Anyway, join me next time where I’ll actually have to go into the plot and characters!