English Dub Review: Sorcerous Stabber Orphen “The Only Thing That Can Kill Her”

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

Orphen and Azalie discuss their history and baggage but are confronted by the leaders of Kimluck who reveal the origin of magic in the world, with the pope of Kimluck stating he can only be killed by Childman, who is already dead. They then attack Azalie, but Orphen cannot use his magic to defend her, so he reaches within himself to finally regain it.

OUR TAKE

The penultimate episode of the season and possibly the series focuses a good chunk on the part of the series that I am actually a bit knowledgeable about: Orphen’s past with Azalie. Two former students and friends who were divided by tragedy and find themselves as on and off allies and adversaries throughout the series. Now, at his lowest point, Orphen gets help from her, showing that she does still care about him regardless of whatever mistakes may have happened in the past between them. However, that doesn’t change the fact that he still holds a grudge for her killing their teacher, Childman, to which she agrees she should die, just not right now. It’s all very charged and layered emotional drama between two people with a complicated history that has been at least a hundred times more compelling than a whole lot of what’s been going on this past season, most of which involving the story disappearing up its own asshole with nonsensical magic jargon and babble. Sometimes the thing that a scene needs to work is to get two people in a room and talk like ordinary people. That sounds simple enough but it is more rare than you would think.

Anyway, the second half of this episode completely disappears up its own asshole with nonsensical magic jargon and babble. Surprise! You get the best and worst of the show all in one episode! Orphen and Azalie confront who will probably be the last two bosses of the season, and their dialogue is mainly made up of exposition dumps about how the pope saw a green haired lady and a magic nun fight out of a portal and it turned his eyes green and also into a puppet and the nun was held out of the portal by the green haired lady’s hand choking her and so the puppet pope made a building out of it and then made the city of Kimluck and thinks he’s the source of all magic or some shit. Holy fuck, I just don’t care. We’ve got one more episode to go. Thankfully this one spared us a lot of the supporting characters and ended with Orphen getting his groove back at the last moment, so it will at least be good to see him at his best during this last battle. And then we can finally be done with this remake of a probably better animated in the 90’s sort of anime. Maybe I’ll check out that original series once this is done, though I doubt it.