Done!
Mercuri@ani.social 4 weeks ago
What a freaking cool episode. We got more insight into the test and it seems that I was correct in that Noel was pulling the strings for the test requirements behind the scenes. That also explains the penalty of having to disband the party if they fail the challenge, which would be overly harsh and seemingly not in line with the guild’s values. I suspect Noel is planning to recruit Leon afterwards to be Blue Beyond’s tank.
I predicted Blue Beyond would hang back at the start of the test, but this was pretty well executed:
We KNOW that Noel is going to be devious and sneaky, so of course he’s not going to race in to fight the boss. But the way Noel handled things was absolutely brilliant. I kept expecting some kind of trick or shady business to be revealed, but nothing of the sort happened. Instead, Noel predicted that the Winged Knights would not be able to beat the monster on their own and that Leon would betray his party by trying to do the “right” thing.
Then Blue Beyond shows up an hour later and basically starts wiping the floor with the monster. Leveled up Alma is ready to slaughter a monkey
rikka@ani.social [bot] 4 weeks ago
zabadoh@ani.social 3 weeks ago
I wasn’t quite as impressed with this episode.
Sowing the seeds of distrust in the opposition party, so that any act that could be interpreted as betrayal would cause the party to fracture, was clever.
But Noel’s plan relied on his own party being able to defeat the Dantalion without his opponent’s help.
And Noel’s Strategist subclass/specialization seemed to come with skills that were tailor made to defeat such a foe, or was it vice versa?
In particular, I don’t recall the Link ability being revealed earlier, so it feels like a deus ex machina.
Or maybe it was revealed and I just don’t remember.
Conversely, Leon’s supposed to be this amazing Talker, same class as Noel, and same B rank I think(?), so what was his subclass/specialization, what abilities came with that and why weren’t they useful?
Heh, I just noticed that Leon and Noel are each other’s name spelled backwards.
Mercuri@ani.social 3 weeks ago
Hmmm… you do have very valid points.
If we take into account that Noel was manipulating things behind the scenes, it makes more sense. But you’re right, it does feel like lazy writing.
Oh yeah, I found that totally odd as well. They definitely didn’t reveal it before. And they had supposedly been practicing a lot with it so it definitely felt like they pulled it out of nowhere. Definitely the worst part of the episode. I guess it didn’t affect my judgement as much because I assumed Noel would pull something out of his butt anyway? He had already foreseen Blue Beyond winning the challenge.
Leon’s a Knight or a Guardian or something, not a Talker. He’s not the same class as Noel, but he is B rank. So all his attacks were telegraphed cuz mind-reading. Although, he does have that angel wings insta-cast thing that should have been useful but he doesn’t use it? I don’t think they gave a good explanation for that.
And they’re like, exact opposites! I hadn’t noticed either! Huh, go figure.
Well, I almost totally gave up on this series a while back so maybe my expectations are low and I’m satisfied with this level of narrative :p