First Impressions / Zero no Tsukaima

Summary:
When Saito was still on Earth, he was walking down the street one day when he came upon a round green object in the middle of the road. He put his finger in it, and it had sucked him in, transporting him to Halkeginia. That started everything and that’s why he now finds himself chained up like a dog in Louise’s room. She doesn’t care that he says he’s from a different world; he can’t go back because contracts are absolute. And Louise has no qualms stripping in front of him because she doesn’t consider him a man, just a familiar. She throws her clothes and panties at him, expecting him to do the cleaning, the laundry, and other odds jobs because he’s her familiar. Saito can’t protest because Louise quickly falls asleep, leaving Saito to sleep on the straw mat on the floor. The next morning, he wakes up Louise and gives her clean clothes. Since he didn’t include her underwear, she makes him go get that too, and then makes him dress her. Saito has no choice but to do all this because she threatens to starve him. Louise eventually does free him of his chains so that the two of them can go to the dining hall.
Saito becomes wide-eyed at all the good food, but Louise tells him that it’s all for the nobles and not the commoners like him. Instead, he gets a single piece of rubbery bread and has to eat it while sitting on the floor. Once breakfast is over, Louise explains that there’s no class today, and so everyone is bonding with their familiars. After Kirche makes fun of her again, Louise gets pissed off and angrily orders Saito to bring her some tea. Saito is in the process of doing so when one of the other familiars comes by and scares him. He loses his footing and backs into a girl dressed as a maid who was carrying a piece of pie. The two get acquainted and the girl explains to him that nobles are the ones who can use magic; everyone else is a commoner. She introduces herself as Siesta, another commoner. As the two are chatting, Guiche interrupts them from nearby by calling for the pie. Remembering how Guiche was the one who threw him up in the air when he tried to escape, Saito decides to bring him the piece that fell on the ground.
Guiche is working his charm on Montmorency, even though she’s wary because she heard rumor that he was going out with a first-year. Guiche denies it, and proceeds to use the same line that he used on the girl from the previous night about not going against his feelings for her. But Guiche never gets to finish the sentence because Saito does it for him (Saito had overheard Guiche the previous night). Saito goes on to imply that Guiche is two-timing, making Montmorency very suspicious. To make things worse, Saito points the girl Guiche was with last night towards him and Montmorency. Confronted by both girls and accused of two-timing by Saito, Guiche earns himself a slap on the face and becomes the laughingstock of the other students. Guiche turns his anger on Saito and challenges him to a duel. Louise finally comes back and wants Saito to apologize, but he refuses. Saito doesn’t care that Louise thinks he can’t win against a noble and goes to the duel anyway. During all this, Louise’s instructor Colbell brings his research to Osmand. The headmaster recognizes that these are the legendary runes, but makes Colbell promise not to disclose this to anyone.
Back below, Guiche opens the fight by summoning a metal Valkyrie soldier to fight for him. The Valkyrie immediately punches Saito in the gut and knocks him down. Despite Louise’s concern for and appeals to Saito, he keeps getting back up and getting knocked down again. When Guiche decides to give Saito a sword, Saito takes it over Louise’s protests. As Saito picks up the sword, the rune on his hand starts to glow. Magically, his wounds heal and he’s able to easily slice through the Valkyrie. Guiche brings forth six more, but Saito cuts through them all and heads straight for Guiche. With Saito right in front of him, Guiche falls backwards in defeat. However, as soon as Saito lets go of the sword, he falls asleep. He wakes up three days later in Louise’s bed. Siesta is bringing him food and tells him that Louise, who is now asleep at her desk, has been looking after him the entire time without sleeping.

Yay! Yuuji Saito gets to show off his sword skills. Yes, I’m going to be making Yuuji and Shana references for as long as the comparisons hold up…which should be forever. And as with last week, there were plenty of urusai, muri, and other classic Shana phrases to be heard here. Anyway, I’m glad that Saito has powers that he can access when he touches a weapon – or that’s what it seemed like. In Shana terms, we basically skipped over the entire part where Yuuji was a wuss and went to the good parts. Louise does already seem to be developing feelings for Saito, so all we need now is for her to power up a bit.
I REALLY REALLY like this series. I continued to smile through this episode, so the novelty (if you could call it that) still hasn’t worn off. The chances of me continuing to watch/blog this are pretty much 100% now.

40 Comments

  14. YES! They beat the cliche-hole where the main characters start off weak and have to train hard! (well, they half-beat it, since Louisde still can’t use magic without blowing stuff up lol )

    Shinji103
    Reply

  15. Did they say what the runes mean? I saw the raw and the old guys were talking about it, but I didn’t understand what they said. If you can help translate, thanks!

    NightlightNPC
    Reply

  20. Maybe Louise doesn’t need to power up much, after all everything she casts explodes already, she just needs to learn to aim better so it doesn’t backfire on her. 😉

    I loved the first episode, can’t wait to see this one. 🙂

    Maestro4k
    Reply

  22. To quote someone from the first episode’s comments:

    The runes read “Gundolf”, which is an actual name meaning “battle wolf”. (Anyone who confuses this with “Gandalf” will be hunted down and shot.)

    Gandolf was off by 1 letter. hehe

    kiryuu
    Reply

  23. I love how Kirche now has her eyes set on Saito, she got that cute blush and smile after Saito won.
    The previews for next episode have kirche trying to seduce Saito, way to go my man!

    golthin
    Reply

  29. I cant agree with Kirche because it doesnt sound like Kyuruke at all to me. Maybe “Kirke”… nah its still too far away.
    And “Tabitha” is weird as well. “Tabasa” is not supposed to be a human name, so translating it to a proper name is wrong in my opinion as well.

    bananabanana
    Reply

  37. Just wonderful!

    As Jason said before “how could I miss a series that ended just three months ago?”
    I’ll go to give him an answer: “It doesn’t matter, if you like a series, you’re going to miss it since the minute it ended”.

    J.C. Staff show us how good can be to repeat the cast for main characters in a series (coff take note Sunrise coff). Rie Kugimiya (Louise & Shana) & Satoshi Hino (Saito & Yuuji) make a great team together, much better than Ayako Kawasumi & Tomokazu Seki (gomen nasai both of you, you’re my favorite seryuu’s but this time I’ll go with these two). Louise is more carefree about Saito than Shana with Yuuji. You could view him as a torch, since is existence is mere irrelevant to Louise. The funny thing here is to see them in the role master-servant (Fate/Stay Night anyone), and how Saito doesn’t complain after relishing his destiny. One more awesome thing here is Saito’s attitude towards everything else around him, never allowing to be abused by Louise’s classmates; if he wants to survive in this world, he can’t permit himself any weakness.

    And for Louis, treats Saito the same way Shana did with Yuuji at the beginning. And guess what? Ayako Kawasumi is with them, but unfortunately she isn’t our new Yoshida Kasumi, but the harem path is guarantied.

    I’m go with you Onmi, and with Zero no Tsukaima

    Syaoran Li
    Reply

  38. “I cant agree with Kirche because it doesnt sound like Kyuruke at all to me. Maybe “Kirke”… nah its still too far away.
    And “Tabitha” is weird as well. “Tabasa” is not supposed to be a human name, so translating it to a proper name is wrong in my opinion as well.”

    You probably don’t know much about “Engrish.” They did not translate Kyuruke into Kirche, or Tabasa into Tabitha. Kirche and Tabitha are probably their names to begin with. It’s just that the Japanese people do not pronounce the names correctly.

    There are many examples of this. For example, in Gankutsuou, Albert’s name is pronounced Aruberu….

    secclrse
    Reply

  39. hello i am new to this webpage and i must agree this is a great series, i can’t wait for ep 3 XD

    btw hahaman the hairstyle of the maid in screenshot #1 is diff from the maid that saito meets so i doubt that they are the same

    ps: sorry for my bad english >_

    kessler
    Reply

  40. w0000000000t!!! I’ve been meaning to get around with this series, and now I’m satisfied. The last 50 minutes were GREAT!!!

    This series rocks! Can’t wait for the next one (subs in… 4 days?)!

    Pakxenon
    Reply

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