During that whole planning sequence, everyone seems to have forgotten about Gluttony.

Gluttony eating his own name so they forget he exists… clearly XD

Wow, you REALLY have to turn your brain off for this episode and just enjoy the mayhem.

“We won’t fail” “Oh no, we failed!”

The fact that Jun’s Brother seems to expect Ordela to go out of control makes me a LITTLE bit hopefully for some semblance of plot forming in the next episodes.

Some of the jokes were silly but enjoyable. Hikaru basically asking the bad guy to wait. Doc Glasses being slightly less useless. We even get more of the Chunibyo with a Chaingun! But the fights are the real reason this show exists at all.

How nice of Ordela to stop rampaging for all this other stuff to happen though, right?

I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m still a super young and fresh 90s kid… cries in middle-aged

Oh yeah, Sasaki and Peeps was good. Definitely enjoyed that series.

I love this series! I’ve convinced so many people to watch it. It’s just so good! And when Maomao goes cat mode… just perfection.

Giving me Ossan Newbie Adventurer vibes. Or my Daughter Left the Nest and returned an S rank adventurer. Will have to check it out.

Wow, what an episode. It feels like nothing happens and yet SO MUCH happens at the same time. A lot planning and setup and yet there’s still a lot going on. Subaru seemingly absorbs the dragon blood from Crusch.

Dragon blood is crazy stuff. It’s interesting that Subaru seems to have an affinity for it as it actually seems to benefit him but cripples Crusch. I’m guessing it has something to do with Subaru’s Witch Factor.

Wilhelm reveals the identity of the two sword cultists, one of which is his deceased wife! Otto proving once again why he’s best man. And lets not forget Priscilla joins the team!

Reinhard casually getting a new divine protection on demand was funny. And last but not least, we get confirmation that Liliana has a divine protection.

The final moments of this episode are perfect too. Emilia confronting Greed really shows how much she’s grown. I can’t imagine pre-Sanctuary Emilia doing that. Finally, Subaru and Reinhard bust in with the stereotypical wedding objection. I bet Subaru had always wanted to do that.

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However, if that was the case, wouldn’t it have influenced Duke and the handful of others that don’t seem affected by it by now?

Right? We’ve seen Henry get broken out of it. Maybe Alicia has some kind of cheat skill too since she’s a reincarnation.

The confrontations with Liz are going to be epic. And yes, that push to Ms. Freckles so Alicia could whisper to Liz… amazing.

ALICIA IS BACK! And the first thing she does is give her eye away. Guess she really wants a reason to wear that eyepatch. And boy does it make her look like such a villainess

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Still, I found it weird that she gave it away basically for nothing. That wasn’t very villainessy of her. We get confirmation that her magic is now at least at level 91, since she needed that level of magic to give away her eye. Whether or not her magic is at 100 or not remains to be seen. I still think it’s possible she went straight to 100, but considering she was so excited about giving her eye away she did it immediately after leaving the cottage I have my doubts now.

And the confrontation with Liz. That was so fierce!

This exchange seems a bit more straightforward in answering some lingering questions. It appears that Liz doesn’t have knowledge of the game. Rather, she is aware that no matter what she does things always work out for her. She basically has plot armor as the protagonist. It could be that her brainwashing is just a side-effect of this phenomena and she’s completely unaware she’s even doing it. If that’s the case, it makes me wonder how Alicia is able to counteract it. I do love how Alicia basically reprimands Liz for not trying to min-max her cheat ability.

Prince Duke shows up to be creepy again. Yes Duke, tell the girl you’ve been watching her constantly without her knowledge.

But in a surprise twist, Alicia screws up. She ends up chastising Duke and pushing him away. Wait, isn’t that a perfectly normal thing to do when someone basically admits to stalking you? Well, considering that Alicia internally says she didn’t want to say those things, it makes me wonder if the game phenomenon isn’t trying to force Alicia back towards her intended path. Or maybe she was just caught off-guard and genuinely screwed up since she wasn’t expecting Duke to be angry with her.

At the very end we finally get a good look at Mel

This is the glimpse we got of Mel last week:

Considering that Duke tasks her with finding out the secrets of Liz’s ability to brainwash people, how she seems to talk in an omnipresent voice to Duke, and how Mel calls Alicia a “villainess,” I’m guessing she’s some kind of supernatural entity. She might even have some insight to the workings of the game.

Just wow, what a lot to unpack this episode.

Infantry throughout history has often used horses or mules for transport, then gotten off them for the actual fighting.

I believe the name for those were “dragoons”. I thought about it, but my understanding was they were armed with muskets. Since firing a rifle from horseback usually meant you missed, they would dismount before engaging. I suppose it’s not a stretch to have dragoons that only carried swords, but we also know that they had 5000 troops in that battle and even if they doubled up the riders that’s over 2000 horses. We saw, maybe 2 dozen in the retreat

They knew what route they would be retreating along, so why were there no traps?

Wait… I know! They couldn’t get any wood for pikes or chevaux de frise so they had to retreat all the way back to the forest… the forest that’s entirely made of wood… nevermind. Maybe we just shouldn’t think too hard about it. ;)

There’s that one he buys from the store in an SLF Mini, but we don’t see the inside of that one. But aside from that, I think that about covers all the ones we’ve seen so far.

I’m really enjoying Let This Grieving Soul Retire, if only because it’s exactly the kind of trash I enjoy.

Okay, this episode brings back the awesome. Glad I decided to give it another episode.

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Koga FINALLY becomes interesting. He realizes he’s weak and has always been weak because he never stood up for himself not even once. He’s still a puppy though, but now he’s trying to be a wolf.

Also, turns out that Noel is part of Laughing Coffin! THIS IS ACTUALLY A DEATH GAME AND HE’S A PLAYER KILLER!

Okay, so not really. But damn if the talker “level up” icon isn’t ominous.

Oh, good idea!

Look at you doing all the detective work once again!

made it all the way up to chapter 85 in this episode btw

Neat! How many chapters have been released total?

I think this series does the politics/negotiation side of things a lot better than the actual warfare. The tough thing about writing characters like Rosell and Mireille that are supposed to be geniuses is that they can really only be as smart as the author.

Very true. I was reading the Destiny’s Crucible series (which is not a Japanese LN series… crazy, right?) and the author did a good job with this particular isekai because the MC is basically a smart Earthling placed down on a Medieval Times planet so he’s constantly like, “I THINK this is how stuff like this works, but I’m not sure.” It allows him to get things wrong. Unfortunately things got really boring in the 4th book and I haven’t gone back to it.

But back to Aristocrat, the strength really is in the character development and political intrigue so I can let some tactical buffoonery slide. I mean, one battle basically boiled down to “My mage is better than your mage” so it’s whatever XD

This show was just stupid fun. The insanely OP MC who just does whatever he wants. His maid who is a legendary swordswoman. The ultimate evil demon who gets tamed into something of a pet. Oh, and let’s not forget the adventurer that falls for the MC’s alter-ego, lol.

Has a season 2 been announced?

Oh snaps, I loved the original. And it’s a sequel and not a remake. Joy!

Haha, yeah. It’s a big giveaway that something is adapted from a Japanese Light Novel when the title is a full on description. Oshi No Ko and Blue Lock are also a manga adaptations, so also normal titles. Fun times!

Anyway, I’ll definitely have to check out the manga now!

Oof, what a weird episode. The pacing, battle tactics, animation, etc all felt off.

I did like this exchange though:

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Ars giving him the toy spoke volumes without using words. It makes his appearance later feel very natural and in-character.

But the battle itself felt very un-natural. Telling people to get in a circle formation to counter the cavalry… no, that’s what pikes are for. And it wasn’t like the cavalry was a surprise; they knew the castle had cavalry.

“Hey great strategist, should we get some pikes? You know, the most basic military infantry tactic against horses?”

“Nah, just stand in a circle with swords. They’ll NEVER see that coming!”

Later:

“Retreat!”

“What about our infantry?”

“They have horses now!”

“Uh… where were we keeping all these horses? And if they have horses why are they infantry and not cavalry?”

“Pssh… i dunno.”

Even Later:

“The enemy cavalry has speed hacks and can get in front of us!”

“It’s because your horses have to carry all that heavy armor”

“But… your troops also wear armor.”

“I know what I said…”

I feel this probably made a lot more sense in the light novel but translating that into animation didn’t quite work out. Speaking of animation, some of it was bad enough to be distracting. I know that horses are notoriously difficult to get right in anime but this wide-angle shot felt especially off:

If the foot soldiers had just retreated normally without magically summoning horses from their horse pocket, then the enemy cavalry catching up would not only make more sense, but would be more dramatic when they split the retreating army in two rather than nipping at their heels (as would be expected). Maybe we fix the animation struggles too since people are marching instead of horses bouncing around like they’re on pogo-sticks.

I would also have liked to see more of the hostage rescue. “Oh no, it’s the enemy.” “We’re here to rescue you whether you like it or not. Check out my knife. It’s a Benchmade.” “Oh, okay, we’ll go with you.”

Oh nice. I like this silly and wholesome slice-of-life meets fantasy anime. And it doesn’t even have a stupid name like, “That One Time I Got Sold to a Demon by my Wicked Parents but the Demon is actually now my Loving Grandfather… As Long As I Don’t Let Anyone Know I’m Actually A Human As They’ll Kill Me For Sure!”