English Dub Review: Akashic Records of Bastard Magical Instructor “The Sea of Falling Stars”

Yandere with military grade magic. Oh, this won’t end well.

Spoilers Below

After discovering the truth behind Rumia’s past, Sistene has made it her goal to be able to protect her sister-friend no matter what. To that end, Glenn has been giving her tutoring. Tonight, basic combat training. Tomorrow night, military grade magic! Speaking of the military, the brass has assigned someone from the court mages to protect Rumia as an undercover bodyguard, disguised as a student. Who is it but our very own Full Loli Alchemist, Re=L! But, there seems to be some confusion, she’s here to protect Glenn, not Rumia. Strange. In fact, when introducing herself to the class, she lists Glenn as “the light of her life and reason for being”. While the girls think this is romantic, and the boys lament a new girl’s heart already being hot for teacher, Glenn doesn’t return her affections. Things go from bad to worse in offensive magic lessons. She’s terrible at ranged magic but can whip out military grade alchemy spells at will to generate giant, nasty swords. Though most of the class think she’s scary, Sistene and Rumia approach her, revealing her softer side. She quickly becomes one of the gang.

Just in time, too! It’s time for a field trip! Now, under most circumstances, a good field trip for this school is to the laboratories for military magic. Glenn, on the other hand, has a different idea. There’s an island with an observatory. More importantly, it has a beach and an eternally temperate climate. That means the girls are going to bring bikinis! Radars scores bu coup points with the boys for this choice. The girls don’t mind a chance to play at the beach either. Along the way, however, Glenn receives a dire warning from his buddy Albert. Be careful of Re=L. She is a dangerous mage. Having known her since she was young(er), he feels pretty confident that she won’t be a problem. But oh, he is wrong. After a night of fun with the class, she corners him alone, demanding to know why he left the court mages. She quickly goes off the deep end, screaming in his face how much she hates him, Rumia, and Sistene. After all, in her mind, those two stole him away from her. And without him, her life is meaningless. In the shadows, to other figures converse about plots and schemes and yakkity yak. I think they were gonna do a bake sale. Oh, that was wrong, they’re probably gonna kidnap Rumia again. Le sigh.

Ah, the obligatory summer fun, get-all-the-girls-in-bikini’s episode. Why am I surprised this would be here? With school uniforms like that, why are these boys so obsessed with seeing the girls in bikinis? The uniform is pretty abbreviated already. Anyways, we are getting a skooch closer to knowing about Radars’ past, and the key to it is this Re=L character. Her own complicated past is obfuscating the issue, but all will likely be understood soon. The episode snapped by fast, and I think that was because we’ve returned to the writing format of the “beginning of arc” episodes, where the plot of the first part is not necessarily connected to the plot of the second part. Technically, they are connected here, but they were separate enough thoughts that it feels like two episodes, so it goes by fast.

Animation had a few issues. Several points (especially with all the girls in the class running in their bikinis) had odd or awkward positioning of the body as they moved. No, I’m not talking about giggle physics. They did that just fine. On the other hand, the animation in the scene where Re=L unloads on Radars is well done, focusing heavily on her eyes moving and crying. They even do this on far out shots, which amped up the feelings. Leah Clark did a great job taking this normally deadpan girl and pulling out the emotion with the speakers at eleven. It was actually quite shocking to see (and hear) her like that, which makes her all the more frightening if she truly flips out. I give this episode seven magical bikinis out of ten.