English Dub Review: The 8th Son? Are You Kidding Me? “A Bullet Tour? Are You Kidding Me?”

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

Well is brought on another quest to kill a dragon, this time joined by both Brantack and a newcomer named Klimt Kristoff von Armstrong, who happens to be Elise’s uncle and the king’s magician. But it turns out that slaying the dragon will make a power vacuum where a bunch of monsters live, so they’re sending in a makeshift army to slay the monsters too, which includes his friends. Elise also joins as part of the medical team, running herself ragged healing everyone. Eventually the dragon is found and vanquished in a cheaply animated fashion. In the end, everyone starts living with Well, so Louise and Iina ask to be his wives too, which Elise is apparently okay with.

OUR TAKE

Well, the man who can sneeze and get more wives instead of a tissue. Suffice to say that I’ve pretty much tuned out from this show as much as I can while still giving it a proper review, which becomes increasingly difficult to do when each new episode passes by and I feel like none of the characters are being developed. Okay, that might be a bit of an exaggeration this week, since I could probably say that Elise was definitely given moments to shine, showing that her bond with Well is pushing her to live up to her reputation and help many people in need on the front lines. All well and good, certainly qualifies as an arc. But it’s a pretty small part of an episode that is pretty packed to the gills with issues that have been following this show since DAY 1. Not to mention we had a pretty well primed opportunity to show the other characters having their own kick ass moments with being in an official campaign in a different place than Well, but instead it’s just a lot of sitting around and talking so we can get to a poorly animated fight with a really awful looking dragon that probably sucked up the studio’s entire budget.

Oh yeah, and now Well has two wives and a retainer and a fiancé, all from people just kind of having these roles be thrown at the other party without much thought. Well knows that he doesn’t HAVE to have three wives if he doesn’t want to, right? And why is this such a big deal for Louise and Iina that it has been a subplot for THREE EPISODES NOW? Yeah, they get more power and money but that’s kinda using Well for their own ends, isn’t it? What does HE get out of it? And what does this change about their relationship? Apparently not a lot because I can hardly say they HAVE a relationship, even as friends. He’s now a powerful baron with his own castle, multiple wives, an accidental retainer (all of whom barely got out of school assuming they even graduated) and…I don’t know why I’m giving this any amount of thought in the first place. The writers clearly didn’t. And it’s probably not fun to read my mad ramblings about what people might find perfectly acceptable anime to watch and waste twenty minutes on, but it’s all I can do when I can’t really find much else to say. Perhaps the second half of episodes will bare better fruit.