English Dub Review: The Fruit of Evolution: Before I Knew It, My Life Had It Made “Black Cat Oliga”

Overview:

Seiichi finds the assassin who attacked the king. He also heals the king and is reunited with the rest of his party.

Our Take:

Despite the episode being named after the assassin, we don’t see much of her here. Seiichi locates her and defeats her. Then she’s taken in for interrogation and that’s pretty much it.

The rest of the episode shows various other events. Seiichi reverses a curse that was placed on king by creating his own spell because of course he can do that now. He talks to the king and finds out the king wants everyone to live in peace. Another king reveals the other students are more like his slaves than heroes. There is also an attack on that king by some mystery assailant. There’s a very forced confrontation between some of those those students. The girls in Seiichi’s harem talk about how he might be. Artoria doesn’t like the idea of sharing him with more girls, but Saria doesn’t seem to mind for whatever reason. Finally, they reunite with Seiichi at the end of the episode.

It’s hard to have an episode where there are a lot of moving parts and still make it feel like nothing is happening. None of these scenes feel like they carry any weight to them. Seiichi healing the king feels so inconsequential because it’s obvious he’ll be able to do it with ease. The confrontation between the students, like I mentioned, feels extremely forced. We still don’t know anything about these characters or why they’re arguing with each other. I just can’t buy into this. Saria being so absent-minded that she doesn’t understand jealousy doesn’t seem believable to me either. Also, I know I’ve been saying that Artoria is the most likable character in this show, but her charm is starting to wear off. She’s just becoming the petty jealous stereotype now and I can’t say I’m a fan.

The story doesn’t feel like it’s progressing. They’re trying to move it forward, but the interest just isn’t there. No time has been spent on the other students. You know, the ones who were summoned to this new world for a reason. The reason is supposedly for this upcoming war, but the build has been so inconsistent. All of the focus has been placed on Seiichi, which is obvious since he’s the main character. However, more focus needs to be placed on the actual war preparations and it feels too late at this point.