“The Young Man Heads Out.”


「青年、留守にする。」 (Seinen, rusu ni suru.)

General Impressions

So Dale continues being an extremely doting father-like figure who cannot bear to be parted from Latina. This guy’s just obsessed. Every waking moment, he can’t stop thinking about her and what kind of presents he could potentially get her. Latina herself greatly misses Dale, and Kenneth encourages her to find a focus to channel her feelings into. In this case, learning how to make Shepherd’s Pie for Dale to enjoy when he finally returns. This made for a relatively light, cute and fluffy episode, and the deep bond is evident between these two, despite the fact they’ve not known each other for long. However, the actual mission itself exposed a dark side to the series I hadn’t even been aware of myself.

Hidden Secrets

While I’ve come from reading the manga, which mostly portrays things from Latina’s perspective, it was really fascinating to finally get an insight into Dale’s perspective through the anime. While Latina feels the need to hide from Dale her ability to use magic and that she was perceived as evil by the demon villagers, it turns out Dale has a few skeletons that he’s keeping in the closet. Namely that he’s often enlisted to kill demons, who are Latina’s fellow brethren. Even though he justifies it through the fact he would equally kill a human too when hired, I do not find myself convinced. And I find the stark contrast between the emotionless killer and doting father extremely jarring. This must have been a side to Dale that Kenneth, Rita and the other pub regulars were aware about. And like Latina, I hadn’t been aware of it myself. I would be quite fascinated to see how it would play out when they inevitably discover each other’s secrets. Maybe it won’t happen within this single cour, but it’s bound to happen sometime down the line, right? As noted by many characters, Latina’s a really smart kid, and she’ll eventually grow older and begin to pick up on these things.

Concluding Thoughts

For now, it seems like Latina will continue working at the pub, while Dale continues his daytime job of adventuring, with a side gig of carrying out political missions for a prominent Duke who happens to be his pal’s father. In fact, Chloe’s visit may even indicate that Latina will start going to school at some point in the near future. So far, Maho Film’s been doing a fantastic job of adapting content, especially considering that this is their debut. While the animation can be basic at times, I get the impression they’ve got pretty solid fundamentals and it looks pretty damn good to my eyes. Anyway, that’s about everything I wanted to discuss. As always, thanks for reading my post, and see you next time around!

Note: I haven’t quite decided whether I want to pick up this show or not, but you’ll find out when the schedule drops.

8 Comments

  1. he’s often enlisted to kill assassinate demons

    I have a hard time digesting that he can switch gears with nary a grinding sound.
    I mean, he takes out the demon girl like he’s cutting down a weed — he clearly
    had the upper hand with her and probably could have easily disarmed her.

    But that’s just me…

    I haven’t looked at any source material, but unless the adaptation gets deeper
    into motive, most character growth is going to be from Latina as I can’t identify
    with Dale’s one dimensional character. Hell, I feel more connected to the Inn’s
    husband/wife team than to Dale at this point.

    mac65
    1. No disarming, no prisoners

      They were doing this anonymously, so as to take them out, without showing clear involvement on the government’s end. Letting her live would leave a witness who could testify to their deeds.

      hjerry2000
    2. They’re fighting the minions of an evil demon lord… killing them without mercy is WAY more believable than in other fantasy series where the hero spares them and they just return as a recurring villain or end up joining the harem.

      qwert
  2. Man, this episode was rough for me. Dale was so irritating in this. I ended up skipping through most of his talking scenes. When he would start shouting about Latina, I just wanted to yell for him to shut up. His character is slowly grating on my nerves.

    Meanwhile, as for the rest of the series, I’m really gonna need something of substance soon to keep me going. The whole “Latina is so cute, watch her carry this plate” thing just isn’t going to carry a full series for me. I need these characters to start having something at least approximating depth.

    Possible hope lies in what seemed like clear cut murder of demons who, as far as I could understand were killed for nothing more than being organized and the POSSIBILITY that something could come of that. It’s hard to see the humans in the right here, but there could also be details that weren’t made known.

    For now, I’ll give it another episode.

    hjerry2000
  3. I heard Uchi’s author apologized over the extreme dissonance between Dale’s 2 sides as doting guardian and ruthless adventurer – they just wanted to get to writing the fluff.

    (I’ve seen some WN authors; esp. the beginner ones; apologizing for not-so-well-thought out plot points etc. but asks their readers to please put up with it since they’re still novices and will hopefully improve over time.)

    In fairness Uchi was their only major WN title that got published. The rest are short stories and some essays talking about attending Uchi no Ko book signings in Korea and Taiwan, and visiting the recording session for the Uchi anime.
    https://mypage.syosetu.com/454599/

    zztop
  4. I’m going to try and avoid mentioning anything not already revealed in the first 3 eps, but Latina was chased away from her home by other demons. And the few humans she’s met so far have treated her nicely.

    So she may not have the sense of racial solidarity that people are worried about.

    Blue

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