English Dub Review: Ulysses-Jeanne d’Arc and the Alchemist Knight “Proof of Purity”

We’re reaching levels of NOPE that shouldn’t be possible!

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

Charlotte is doing a bang up job as the ruler of France, having no troops to help them take back Orleans in order to properly coronate her as Queen. Richemont goes to her playboy brother Jean d’Alençon, the Duke of Brittany, for aid gaining troops but he won’t help until the war with Britain has decided a victor. On her way home from that waste of time, Richemont is drugged, kidnapped, and assaulted in a scene straight out of a hentai (because why wouldn’t you want to be aroused while watching someone is molested?) until one of Jean’s consorts arrives with help to save her. She also tells Richemont that despite his cowardice, he is fiercely loyal to protecting his sister.

La Trémoille returns to Charlotte’s castle to inform them that rumors are spreading about Jeanne being a witch, which is only slightly worse than lying about her being a saint, but whatever. Worse than that is his suggestion on how to dispel the rumors: a Virginity Test, which is about as creepy and disturbing as it sounds. Obviously, this whole test and the rumors are bullshit stirred up by La Trémoille to get his position back, but it’s presented a major roadblock in their hopes of getting more troops. In her frustration, Charlotte blames Brittany’s past failings for their current problems and insults Richemont’s family, forcing Richemont to resign from helping her. Well, that, and seeing Montmorency holding Jeanne from a distance. He also swore to forsake marriage for Jeanne’s sake, but I can’t imagine she could hear that from where she was.

With morale rapidly draining, La Hire also resigns and takes her men with her. Their last hope lies in Montmorency having Astaroth talk to the people in her guise as an archangel, but La Trémoille calls her out as the fairy she is. The people gang up on Montmorency, beating him within an inch of his life, but Jeanne activates Ulysses to defend him. She roughs up some of them but relents to take the test, though Montmorency’s words seem to get everyone to back off. Now they have a whole army of CGI soldiers to command in their quest to end all war. Astaroth takes the occasion to call Montmorency by his other name, Gilles de Rais. Let’s just hope none of the viewers google that.

Meanwhile, Philip puts on a magic horned helmet.

OUR TAKE

Well, seems things are going from bad to worse here. Last week, I figured it would just be Philip who’d be resisting the call of friendship, but it seems Richemont’s failed goal of giving her virginity to Montmorency has also driven her away, so now those troops in Brittany are definitely lost to France now. I mean, Charlotte also gets a part of the blame for insulting her and just being a terrible ruler in general, but the soap opera drama meter is close to overloading here. With her intended recipient of her “purity” being supposedly taken and thoughts of her first molestation, while working for the English, my first guess on where Richemont is headed would probably be back there to truly “defile” herself, mainly because that is a very popular genre of porn over in Japan. And if this show hasn’t made itself clear by now, it’s really only a hair’s breadth away from being porn itself.

Which is to say nothing of this whole virginity test business which is equal amounts of ick and yuck, not the least of which being that it is for the purpose of the story sexualizing Jeanne (who, weekly reminder, is TWELVE. YEARS. OLD.) as if her weirdly revealing outfit wasn’t indication enough of that. And we’ve got Montmorency swearing off marriage to protect her, which seems innocent enough…for now, but the history behind his real-life counterpart just makes me cringe all the more at that. Not to mention we’re not even halfway through this series, so I can’t rule out this turning all kinds of Catholic priest over here.

But hey, let’s try to talk about something to potentially look forward to here. We finally learn who that lady with the horns in the Opening is, and it’s Philip! Turns out she’s using that elixir she snagged from her kiss with Montmorency as a way of using the helmet to become “Ulysses Noire”, according to the preview. I guess that means the helmet is also some sort of Philosopher’s Stone like the one Montmorency has and the ancient sword Charlotte has (which is apparently a power-up for Jeanne that I neglected to mention because, frankly, who cares?). How she intends to recharge is a mystery for now, since I’m pretty sure she can’t just use the same elixir she got, but I guess we’ll have to keep watching to find out.

So yeah, now we have our evil counterpart to Jeanne and its someone we kinda like (or at least are meant to have sympathy for) and all while our heroes thought they were catching their second wind. Stay tuned for more creepy!