Tensei Shitara Ken Deshita – 05

「ダンジョンデビューは無双でした」 (Danjon Debyū wa Musō Deshita)
“The Feeble First Dungeon”

What a cliffhanger! And certainly, this episode was action-packed! I’m starting to see Fran and our great Goblin Cleaver develop a more father-daughter relationship, which is starting to grow on me. One thing I do want to quickly mention is that I was taken aback at the fact Fran lost both hands during the fight with the Greater Demon, it really shocked me, and took aback, mainly because I consider this to be some type of body horror. And I sat there thinking how the hell is she going to get her hands back? Then thankfully our Glam sensei used greater healing to stitch them back together and Fran could have hands again. Good, save! Plus you could hear the tone of his voice change to protect mode. Exactly what a dad would do.

Going backward here a little bit, a funny moment was when Glam used parallel thought and then the fireballs came out so he could distract the goblins, and Fran could fight the Queen and King and ended up killing them accidentally. I do wonder if, for the fight with the Greater Demon, Shishou is going to pull some type of Deux Ex Machina so that Fran doesn’t die. I mean it’s kind of silly how she motivated herself to kill this demon because she wanted to eat curry, and Shishou wanted to use the feather to go back to the entrance of the dungeon, which they should have used. But Fran just jumped into danger, all in the name of curry, I mean I guess it’s okay. Shishou didn’t stop her.

Fran certainly is likable, she has all the right traits and plunges headfirst into danger not knowing if she’ll make it out alive or not, not really considering anything really, she just jumps in. I really like this about her, and it keeps the story moving along nicely. They did introduce some sort of doubt, in the form of foreshadowing, with the guild gal, I forget her name, Nell (Ookubo, Rumi) with a queasy voice and a little suspicion in her eyes, she asks if everyone will be able to get out of the dungeon alive. She must have had some type of bad feeling or something to be asking those ominous questions. But then again it could all just be red hearing and Fran and Shishou will be fine, there’s nothing to worry about I believe in them, also the series is about them, so they have to come out alive since the LN is all but a meager 13 volumes (that I know off; it’s a lot of kitty!)

Apart from that – I think the episode was pretty great, I had a lot of fun, and diving into the dungeons is always my favorite part of any JRPG, which this series is just infused with, Parallel thought is also a skill in Tensura for example, but there’s a little bit of Dragon Quest in there thrown as well. I don’t get Japan’s obsession with DQ, Final Fantasy has much more vibes and aesthetics. Even if the cutscenes are Metal Gear levels of long. But that’s why I play JRPGs because I want to experience the story.

Now that were asking questions, I do wonder what this demon copy skill entails exactly, does it mean he just gets to copy Frans’s sword skills, or does it mean he stole them in some capacity, I would very much like to find out but that’s a question for next week.

What can I say, I’m having fun with this show, and for the first time in a while, I get to actually talk about it and enjoy it with ya’ll. I loved that the Dungeon had sort of extra special rooms it sort of reminded me of that mini-game in TLoZ where you had to go through doors and collect open chests and if you got it wrong it sent you back – and for the love of me, I can’t find what that mini-game was called. I’m just gonna have to give up and hope you understood what I’m referring to here. Or maybe it’s a staple in DQ and maybe I just don’t know, since I’ve never actually played one; Extra rooms where you get to earn more EXP, even though you’ve already defeated the boss of the dungeon, is a noble concept to me, and something I would like to see more games implement. Even having a secret boss you can only unlock after being a certain level or doing something special in a dungeon that requires a special action that can only be activated at later levels is also interesting to think about.

So yeah – that’s pretty much it, I’m liking it very much so far and both the storytelling and pacing seem good to me and worthy of praise. Let’s hope Kitty makes it out alive of this and nothing bad happens, I do hope the body horror with Kitty is kept at a minimum since it was pretty heart-wrenching, other than that I’m happy with this show!

Full-length images: 36.

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