English Dub Review: Black Summoner: “Rank S Promotion Exam”

Overview: Kelvin (Van Barr Jr.) and the rest of his party defend an Elvin village against invaders kidnapping their citizens. 

Our Take: One avenue I never expected them to explore was Efil’s origin as there was never the hint the focus would shift much away from Kelvin after establishing all his party members. But, thankfully, that was not the case, giving a crumb of her true lineage with much intrigue remaining in how her elven blood relative passed away, the identity of her parents and how she is connected to the fire dragon king. 

Unfortunately, Efil’s past is as far as the interest goes. Kelvin’s Rank S promotion exam is, thus far, nothing more than a plotting exercise in how quickly he is able to dispatch most of the beasts and armed forces. His strategizing is reliant on his teammates who, similar to him, are so beastly strong with advanced weaponry that it makes every challenge they face an elementary task. This goes doubly so for Rion in this being yet another test for her, if you can even call it that. 

The problem lies with the giant she must face not being particularly engaging  due to how ridiculously overpowered she has become not only offscreen and in no time at all. Mind you, Kelvin’s journey to becoming S-rank was half-baked as he had few training scenes, but not nearly to the same unyielding pace of her younger sister, which is non-existent and given nothing but a throwaway line to conveniently explain her monstrously powerful evolution. Not only does it make for a boring match, it’s not even supplemented with good animation and instead awkward looking CG clashing with her and Alex’s 2D character models. 

However, with a strong new enemy presenting himself, one can only hope that the battle will liven up in a genuine intensity rather than supply Kelvin and the others with more throwaway cannon fodder to plow through.