English Dub Review: The 8th Son? Are You Kidding Me? “The 8th Son? I Guess That’s Not So Bad!”

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)
A lackey of High Auditor Ruckner offer’s Kurt an artifact called a Dragon’s Flute for seemingly nothing in return. He confronts Well the next day, though this seems to play into Brantack’s plan to make Kurt blow his top anyway. Despite the warnings, Kurt blows the flute, which should summon a siege of dragons that would wipe out everyone in the land except Kurt, but it turns out it’s actually a different type of flute called a Flute of Malicec, which gathers all the malice in the land and turns Kurt into a giant zombie (the one from the OP, in fact!). Though he hesitates at first, Well and Elise purify the monster, leaving only a small shred of Kurt’s corrupted soul, which travels to the capital and kills Ruckner and several of his associates.

In the aftermath, Well is granted lordship of his family’s land as their old line of nobility is dissolved, so he’s put in charge of developing it for the kingdom and is made into a Count. He also requests the ability to grant two noble titles, among the twelve that are currently vacant, in order to give nobility to Kurt’s sons when they come of age. With that, he and his friends get to work on developing the land, just like they were back at the start of the first episode.

OUR TAKE

I’m not kidding, the show is finally over. And I’m pretty sure it’s the whole show, since I’ve yet to hear anything about a second season, nor is there any lingering plot threads that would be worth making another twelve episodes to explore. Well is now a Count, which I guess means he’s a vampire now too (kidding), is in control of his family’s land, and has finally done away with the only thing that was really causing him any trouble for BEING the 8th son. Given how minor it was to his development early on, I didn’t really expect that kinda sorta not really handicap to come back into play, but I guess it did to go up against the official first born, Kurt, who ended up just about as close to a bad Disney villain as he could have gotten. He goes completely insane, turns into a giant monster to show he’s gone too far, and Well one shots him to death, though not without wiping out everyone else who also dislikes Well. I guess we’ve taught all the kids at home the valuable lesson of not being judged just because you’re the youngest in your family! Which is about as dated a lesson as saying girls shouldn’t marry men they just met.

And then the other half of this finale is the nobles faffing about titles, only it was actually an act to get Well the ability to give those two titles, which apparently the king was already on board with but needed to be manipulated in this way to reach that decision? Yeah, it’s this kind of crap that I’m not going to miss about seeing this show week to week. Also, unsurprisingly, it never really goes into actually becoming an isekai show, since Well never really gets put in a situation where him being a dead (or possibly sleeping?) salaryman really plays into the situation in any meaningful way. I think the only way that really impacts the story at all is that he is constantly craving Japanese food and teaching his friends how to make it, but that’s not really anything character based, they could just also have Japanese food in that world. But now I get the honor of going over this series one more time for the Season Review, so I’m sure I’ll find something even greater to complain about here. And I guess that’s not so bad.