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「揺れ動く王都と乙女の誓い」 (Yureugoku Outo to Otome no Chikai)
“The Capital in Chaos and a Maiden’s Oath”
Things turned out more or less as expected with Skeleton Knight’s latest arc, though that doesn’t mean it was all the worse for it. Indulging in the fun of cracking skulls and saving the innocent does the trick when paired with humorous intermissions and now typical Arc-isms, especially when you have pint-sized cutie pie helping to keep up the wholesome. Going to be neat seeing what happens next.
Given how much my concern over Skeleton Knight’s treatment of slavery has permeated the weeks, I got to say I was pleasantly surprised at how tame this episode wrapped up matters. Otherwise explicit imagery was kept on the down low, focus was more on the beatdowns and post-battle denouements, and things effectively became the ubiquitous fantasy view of the concept writ large. Although this can be seen as a negative in general – new coat of paint on the same concept can only do so much – I like that Skeleton Knight continues to swing towards the lighthearted side of things and let its more serious aspects become covert more than overt. It’s the lighthearted this series excels at after all, so getting more of that is definitely a good thing.
As for the events helping give reason for all those cute and fluffy moments, pictures once again speak a thousand words. To be honest it’s hard really caring about the political machinations going on behind the scenes right now: the game between Yuriarna’s brothers and herself hasn’t really been the best introduced of plotlines and the lack of immediate connection to Arc and Ariane (outside of chance rescues) makes it difficult to become invested in what’s occurring. Dakares and Sekt might be central to the enslavement going on, but outside of giving Arc a reason to flex his literally nonexistent muscles they quickly fade into the background for me. Again, a potential negative, but one at least for me still balanced out by the bony boy and his latest weekly shenanigans.
And speaking of shenanigans, it appears we’re up for some tasty ones in the near future. After all, anytime Ariane puts on the serious face outside of battle you can rest assured there’s some fun times ahead for this motley crew.
Preview
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Politic is what give this series a sense of story progression and world building. Without it, all this show is about is Arc following other people around to free the slave – and it starting to get repetitive.
Yuriarna and her brothers, while not being a direct connect to Arc and Ariane, their actions are very related to the goal of them (free the slave). If the negotiation went well, the entire problem might be gone before Arc even realize.
Oh fully agreed, my issue is that it’s not really tied in well with Arc and company at the moment. A lot of this is down to screen time; Yuriarna and her brothers haven’t really been front and centre enough to stick around in the mind the way Chiyome has for example, so they wind up fading into the woodwork. I expect that will improve once Yuriarna finally meets with the elves as that will help bridge the gap.
I’m with random mob here, the politics is what is creating the overarching narrative and it puts contrast between our potential main villains and our group of happy friends as one side will do anything to gain influence and power and the other only wants to live in peace, raising their blade only to save their people.
I’m just sad this anime is only 1 cur cause as someone who followed the manga until later chapters, I know the politics need a lot more than 12 episodes to cook. I thought the anime would conclude at the war arc but a part of me is happy it didn’t because that would mean they would have to rush everything. Now if the show is popular enough, they can do another 12 episodes later on to cover that arc properly and finally start bringing the politics to the forefront properly.
Pretty much it, there’s just not enough time to help flesh out the political side. It works and makes sense for giving reason for Arc and Ariane, but it lacks the depth to help fix it in the wider story. As mentioned to random mob above this will likely improve over time, just a tad disappointing we may not see major improvement before the season is out.
Spoiler: The “political” characters eventually will meet our heroes. For better or worse.
It’s a minor quibble, but why does every arc end with Arc, Ariane, and Ponta leisurely walking to their next destination while commenting how they have to hurry? Besides short range teleportation he has plenty of money to purchase horses or some other form of transportation.
Well how do you short teleportation horses and pack animals without spooking them? And it will be a pain to feed and guard them and in a fight abandon them,? Tough choices.
I imagine it’s down to Arc simply never considering it. When you’re already capable of teleporting around there’s little reason to consider alternate modes of transportation 😛
The crazy thing about this episode is that we are still in VOLUME TWO of the light novels. Volume NINE is out in English!
> Given how much my concern over Skeleton
> Knight’s treatment of slavery has permeated the
> weeks, I got to say I was pleasantly surprised at
> how tame this episode wrapped up matters.
> Otherwise explicit imagery was kept on the down
> low,
I remembered this segment in the manga was really serious. The criminals involved had caused ARC to burn down the entire building by himself. It is unfortunate the Anime didn’t reflect this same scene with the same seriousness to it.
Anime has definitely been more towards the slapstick direction I think compared to the manga.
Hasn’t been bad just different.
For me personally I prefer this direction given how Arc has been defined as a character in the anime. A more serious approach would work, but it would need the slapstick to be toned down IMO.