English Dub Review: The Great Cleric “The Holy City of Shurule”

Overview (Spoilers Below):
Luciel makes his intrepid, if reluctant, trip to the Holy City of Shurule, where he learns more about the Church and what he’ll be doing there. Is this a setup? Or just another stepping stone on the path to survival?

Our Take:
The second half of the season kicks off with Luciel taking the next step in his isekai journey. After spending months training in the adventurers’ guild, the healer leaves his nest to sprout his wings and take his skills to the next level. As the title suggested, his new journey takes Luciel to the Holy City of Shurule, where he’ll work for the town’s healers’ guild headquarters. But, of course, as we’re all aware, it’s part of the greedy Bottaculli’s plan to remove the healer from the equation, but that’s the least of Luciel’s problems in this week’s episode.
I mentioned last week that I hoped the show’s second half would improve due to its change in scenery. Well, except for the adventurer’s guild in Shurule, which looks the same as the guild in Maritone. There’s also the additional challenges that lie ahead for the healer. However, instead of battling monsters, Luciel is tasked with confronting the undead. Yes, you read that right. The healer is fighting the army of the undead, and I’m not talking about the ones that came from Zack Snyder’s mind. The reason is that Luciel has been promoted to deacon and exorcist and is assigned to defeat the ghosts and zombies in a labyrinth that smells like rotten corpses. However, its stench wasn’t close to being worse than Substance X.
While the beginning of the season’s second half didn’t impress me much, “The Holy City of Shurule” is a step in the right direction for this so-so isekai series. It offers some decent introductions to its new characters, the guild’s priest, Granhart, and Luciel’s predecessor, Jord. It also has Luciel reuniting with Lady Lumina, who unfortunately forgot his name, much to Luciel’s disappointment. Afterward, the rest of the episode delivers a mildly entertaining series of events involving Luciel purifying zombies and ghosts in a panicked state, abruptly ending with him being low on magic. But, of course, I can’t forget Luciel’s reaction to the mob of skeletons, which is one of the episode’s amusing parts. For his sake, let’s hope his next challenge isn’t as terrifying as his undead enemies.