#zoltan

It’s nice to see Sei all nice and fancy for a banquet for once. I bet Aresh is doing his best to suppress himself from wanting to cover Sei from all staring eyes. Anyways, this banquet has its good and bad because best boy Ist shows up alongside Zoltan who is funny and is tired of his sh*t. As someone who did read the original source material, Ist is my favorite because he’s weird, spacey, but is also surprisingly competent at his job (when he needs to be). By the way, Ist and Zoltan are part of the royal sorcery department, meaning that they’re a factor to how Yua and Seiichiro got pulled into this realm.

And yes, the prince Julius is very unlikeable in this part, given that he’s willing to put Seiichiro in danger despite knowing his non-resistance to magicules. Don’t worry, he does get better, but he is very insufferable in this portion of the story. Regardless, I’m still not that fond of him knowing all this. It’s still crazy how Norbert is related to him, despite only sharing the same father.

Speaking of Yua, she does seem annoying too, but it’s out of naiveté and ignorance rather than malice like Julius. I don’t find her as annoying as other people do because of that. She’s still young and it’s not her fault for being coddled by the people around her. She doesn’t know the harsh realities of the world around her, hence why she had to get a reality check. I’m glad that Seiichiro was the one giving her that lecture. He did almost die twice, after all. She has a crush on Aresh, which was why she requested that they switch places. However, she doesn’t know that Julius hates Seiichiro and would leave him for dead if he was in the carriage. So yeah, it was a big-brained move on his part: give Yua a reality check to set her up for some character development and avoid death 2 more times.

I did say that the animation quality was the weakest part of the anime by far and it shows here. Man, the fight scene with the giant beasts was hard to watch. The part where Aresh was protecting Seiichiro was animated like a slideshow. Studio DEEN, you can do better than this!

Ist is voiced by Takaaki Torashima who voiced Son Kihoon from Solo Leveling and Bill from BEASTARS. Zoltan is voiced by Kenta Sasa who voiced the janitor in Hana-Kimi, Lee from Kowloon Generic Romance and Graf Dach’s grandfather in Frieren. Julius is voiced by Tomohiro Yamaguchi who voiced Shirone from Medalist.

Other than that, this was definitely an episode for the ones who wanted to see the leads be affectionate. Say what you want about the anime, but I’m glad they don’t skimp out on showing the affectionate scenes, which is mostly on Aresh’s part. I actually liked the scene where Aresh and Seiichiro were talking about their family and knowing that Sei is all alone in an unknown world, Aresh embraces him, as if he detected his loneliness. What are your thoughts on this episode?