BillyClark

I admit, I don’t remember with minute detail how the scene went with Angelica and her parents, but….

So, this response includes explanations from the LNs. I don’t expect that this stuff will be explained in the anime, so I guess I don’t consider it a spoiler.

The schnesturm was supposed to be much more injured than that, and maybe even sort of pinned in place. Meanwhile, although they didn’t explain why specifically, my guess is either it’s a property of the spear or that Ferdinand is aiming her hand, but Ferdinand acted like Liedenshaft’s spear couldn’t miss in that situation. The fight in the anime was indeed unimpressive.

And as for Angelica, the situation is even worse for her. If she failed, she wouldn’t just lose her job, she’d be stripped of her nobility and be forced to work as a servant for the rest of her life. If you’ll remember, nobles are people who graduated from the academy. With Angelica’s personality, she’d probably end up the same as a devouring commoner under a submission contract.

It’s late and so maybe I missed it, but I didn’t see the part of the article that compares the abandon rate of slopcode with the overall abandon rate. Not saying that the premise is wrong or anything, but you can’t tell how bad something is unless you can compare it with the norm.

Perhaps if you challenged Bybon son of Phola to prove his claim, he could claim that “this” refers to the chisel he used to carve the message.

If you were given Superman’s powers, would you do the same thing as he does in the comics?

I try to imagine myself doing that, and I can’t imagine it would be anything but depressing. Oh, now that bad person over there wants to kill that other bad person. Probably if you went and completely stopped the fighting in the Middle East, people would just call you antisemitic. And then the moment you left, they’d all start killing each other again.

I suspect that, rather than trying to save or rule people, I’d just become an apathetic egomaniac. There’s no point to ruling humans. Just like humans aren’t obsessed with ruling ants. I’d probably just see them as the best available source of entertainment, and I’d only intervene if something interferes with the entertainment industry.

Although I complain, I don’t hate this season. Most of my irritation is limited to a few scenes per episode. If I had a trillion dollars, I’d pay to have the entire series re-animated, though.

I had previously tried to figure out how many episodes were in this season, and all it said was that it hadn’t been announced. This episode made it obvious that there are more than 12 because it seems like an episode where they just shoved various plot-related leftovers, and it would be weird if they did that in episode 11 of 12. AniDB has release dates for episodes up to 16 for this season, but I don’t know whether that means there are only 16 episodes.

It seemed like they really wanted to exposition dump in this episode, and they made a lot of strange changes from the source material, many of which don’t make sense, and where doing them the right way would have been no harder. I’ll mention a couple of things that are not, in any way, spoilers.

Like, we’re supposed to believe that there was a huge locked cabinet in the book room, and Rozemyne wasn’t interested in it until she found a key that she didn’t know what it did? No, she obviously knew from the beginning that there were locked shelves, and that the High Bishop had the key. Well, technically, her attendants have the key. When she needs a key, she asks her attendants to bring it to her. I don’t remember exactly when in the story she read them, but any delay before she got to the locked shelves was simply because she hadn’t gotten to that part of the book room yet.

And we’re supposed to believe that Ingo got in the High Bishop’s face like that? I think in that same scene, Ingo said he paid for etiquette lessons just to be able to meet the High Bishop. Rozemyne had a guard knight in the room. There was some leeway given because they were in her hidden room, but Ingo now believes her to be a noble. After his lessons, he should at least know that if he physically approached her like that, he’d probably be executed on the spot. The lessons weren’t an excuse for Benno to make money like they said in that scene. They were to keep Ingo from making mistakes that would lead to severe punishment or execution.

And although it looked less offensive than what Ingo did, Zack would never run up to Rozemyne after the meeting like that. Zack running up to her was far worse than what Ingo did. That wasn’t in her hidden room. Zack is a commoner. He’s not her attendant. He’s not even an orphan. That was outside the temple where there is no leeway to treat Rozemyne as anything but a noble and the High Bishop. All commoners know that any mistakes dealing with the nobility will likely lead to their execution, and maybe the execution of their family. In this same episode, they made sure to tell Ingo that he could speak without as much fear because he was in her hidden room. And now a couple of scenes later, they have Zack do this outside the temple.

How was this animated like this? If the animators just read the script for this very episode, they shouldn’t have made these mistakes. Why did they spend all of that time in the earlier seasons showing how much commoners cower before nobles?

I heard somewhere that one excellent way to get enemies to surrender is to turn the flamethrower pilot light off and just douse the enemy in the fuel, instead.

I am of the unpopular opinion that the spelling of English character names should always be as close to the Japanese pronunciation as English can get, even when they are English loanwords or foreign names. I still remember people insulting me and telling me how stupid I was when, right after she was first introduced, I claimed that Sasuke’s daughter in the Boruto manga should be called “Sarada” and not “Salad”.

I don’t even think Eustachius is a great way to spell the name, despite definitely being the spelling that the Japanese came from. We just don’t pronounce that name like the Japanese pronounce it. Kazuki-sensei has admitted that Damuel was originally a typo of Samuel. Why not just call him “Eustocks”, “Yustocks”, or something similar? The only important thing in a translated name is the pronunciation.

Well, watching the old episodes of this anime on crunchy roll, some of the subtitles from earlier seasons are almost unforgivable.

IIRC, Myne’s name was originally subtitled as “Mine”, which made it unnecessarily confusing. But my biggest beef is that, instead of the “high priest” and the “high bishop”, the subtitles, I think all the way until the previous season, used “high priest” and “head priest”. I got those confused so easily, but “shinkanchou” and “shindenchou” sound very different from each other, to me at least.

Last week, I felt disappointment that the subject matter of Wilfried possibly becoming disinherited wasn’t portrayed with the gravity and urgency that it required. I wanted it to have as much impact as the episode about the harspiel concert.

This week, however, I think they managed to put out a pretty good episode again. The only hitches I felt were the awkwardly shoehorned-in flashbacks to Rozemyne’s medical examination.

Also, maybe it is more obvious in Japanese, but I wonder if the English audience reading the captions really understood that time when Rozemyne was talking to Fran in the Pandabus that she was doing an imitation of Ferdinand. I had been really looking forward to that scene, but it was less funny than I hoped for.

I’ve been reading the manga in Japanese, and that scene almost made me regret using captions for the anime, even though my listening isn’t that great yet. Maybe the next time I watch the anime from the beginning, I’ll try it without captions.

That’s a great point. When Myne was attacked by the trombe as a blue shrine maiden, Damuel was almost executed simply because he didn’t signal for help when a higher ranked noble attacked Myne. So Damuel’s inaction due to his incompetence just with regard to following Ferdinand’s order was enough to be executed. Of course, he was a laynoble, so far less important.

I expect that even though Wilfried’s attendants are archnobles, this is a far more serious crime. But maybe on the balance, because they’re archnobles, they think they might not be executed because their mana is needed?

This next paragraph may have spoilers. It’s all stuff that’s already happened in the anime, but maybe wasn’t explained fully in the anime, I can’t remember, so I’ll mark it as spoilers. For example, did Florencia specifically say in this episode who was raising Wilfried before? I can’t remember. I do think most of it is stuff that you could assume from the anime, even if it wasn’t explained.

This episode lacked the punch I was expecting. I think partially because they’re forced to rush through the story, and partially just some bad storytelling choices.

We’re told a couple of things about Veronica, but not in a way that sinks in. If they don’t show us clearly how Veronica is different from other nobles, and specifically in how she treats different people differently, the story is going to lose a lot of its emotional bite. She was cruel to Ferdinand, and we only get like one sentence about that so far.

We don’t really understand what it means if Wilfried fails at his winter debut, as we’ve never seen a winter debut, and I don’t think we’re even specifically told how much time he has. We don’t understand the extent of Wilfried’s running away at a basic level. It must be extreme if he’s not even learned his letters, but if you tell the audience that he’s been receiving private tutoring for a long time and he’s still at exactly zero, it’s just so absurd that there’s no way for us to comprehend.

We’re told that Wilfried’s attendants aren’t raising him properly, but we’re not really shown it. The only time we’ve been shown Wilfried running away was a long time ago in the episode about Rozemyne’s baptism, and it’s not clear that this is what Wilfried does all day, every day.

Instead, we’re given a sort of heartwarming scene at the end where Wilfried and his attendant… was that Oswald?… nod at each other like everything is better. No, everything has not been fixed. Wilfried’s attendants are utter failures at their primary job.

By the end of the episode, you know that this is a critical event for the future of the duchy, an event where the fate of the next archduke is in the balance. I mean, what happens if a complete failure becomes archduke? What happens if Wilfried is disinherited? Would he be sent to the temple as a blue priest? I had hoped this episode would have a similar amount of impact as the harspiel concert episode.

One reason this anime is interesting is that it doesn’t have a completely precise genre.

Like, obviously it’s the isekai otome game genre, but beyond that, it’s closest to a mystery. The mystery being that the MC, Cecil is trying to figure out what Bertia knows. But at the same time, Bertia is a main character herself, and we in the audience sort of know what sort of things she must know, generally, if not specifically. So, is it more of a how-done-it like Columbo?

But either way, it still seems unusual for a mystery, and we saw that in this episode. They completely explained the mystery, and unless they have an unusual season of 11 episodes, there are two more episodes left. That’s quite a lot of time to spend after the mystery has been explained.

Realistically, a platform where you can delete your own questions so that they disappear for everyone isn’t the best platform for technical support communities. But a platform where you can’t delete your own posts is not the best platform for for a lot of other things, like privacy.

Two use cases without overlap seems like a good argument that there should be two different platforms.

For me, this isn’t a small thing. It’s a fundamental mistake that betrays a nearly complete lack of understanding about the character being animated. It’d be like if you were making a cartoon about The Flash, and the animators had him flying somewhere like Superman.

What is the point of this part of Rozemyne’s life? What is she doing? She is learning to be not just a noble, but the Arch Bishop and the daughter of the Archduke. She is doing this seriously because if she fails, it’s quite likely that her family and all of her commoner friends in the lower city will be executed along with her.

If you just have a two sentence summary of Rozemyne’s motivation like that, then this would never have been animated like that. It goes against her core character at this point in the story.

There are allowances that need to be made for animation. Like, in their society, nobles basically always either smile or have an otherwise calm expression, and never show other emotions on their faces, but that would probably not look good as an animation.

This is purely a complaint about something that was animated in this episode, but I just found it shocking, being familiar with the story.

Right after Rozemyne has her sleepless night about Hasse, (at 14:10 on Crunchyroll), she gets into her highbeast by crawling onto the seat, then kneeling on the seat, and then turning and putting her feet down into the pedal area.

One of the first things she learned about noble etiquette as a blue priestess was to never to climb onto a seat, and I’m pretty sure that was shown in the anime, too. So, Rozemyne would never do this at this point in the story, especially not in front of Ferdinand.

Fine, but even weirder, I don’t think anybody would do this. I’ve never seen anybody get into a car like this… maybe a small child, but that’s because they’re getting into an adult-sized car. This highbeast was made specifically for Rozemyne.

What a weird animation choice. If the seat was in the way, they could just make the seat move similarly to the door, which would be an easier animation, anyways.

Pretty much my biggest complaint about the entire story is the idea that the king wouldn’t use the royal reserves of medicine to heal the wife of his vassal and close friend just because people might object.

Everyone acts like this makes logical sense, but I don’t think anyone either in-universe or in the audience would actually agree.

Of course he would use the royal reserve medicine. And maybe some people would be upset, but their dissatisfaction would be nothing compared to the mess that a dissatisfied vassal would create. If there was just enough for the royal family, that might be one thing, but from their language, it doesn’t seem like that is the reason.

Of course, you can easily forgive the anime because it didn’t actually happen… but it was “supposed” to happen. So the game that Bertia and Heronia played had some astonishingly shitty writing.

I wish they’d spend a bit more time on orphans and the orphanages, because the way that they’re treated in Yurgenschmidt is quite different from what we understand from our modern worldview.

One of the best things about the Bookworm series is the world building, and the way orphans are treated is quite different from anything I know about. But I wouldn’t be surprised if there was some historical precedent on Earth.

I think the implication is that Pii-chan’s light magic has read Heronia’s mind, and is messing with Cecil’s mind to match what Heronia wants, so at the very least, we can say that the imagery is coming from Heronia, regardless of whether it came from the game or not. And it’s pretty clear that Heronia is also an isekai person who played the game, so there’s that.

I wish I could speculate with you, since I also love this story, but unfortunately, I already read the manga. All I can say is that the anime seems to be living up to the manga. I think I actually like the anime better, since the manga more frequently made Bertia make a certain stupid happy face that I detest.

This episode had some great payoff. I was surprised to see Rozemyne’s highbeast was so agile, running along walls and stuff when it was out of control.

And the harspiel concert… Well, let’s get real, I’d have liked the whole episode to be the concert. For me, it’s just that memorable of an event, and I’d have liked to hear all of the songs. I supposed that would be too much to ask. Probably wouldn’t make as good of an episode.

But you know, the harspiel concert is like a classic tragedy. It goes to great heights only for everything to crash down when Ferdinand discovers Rozemyne’s revenge.

Also, the first song Ferdinand sings is supposed to be based on the opening theme to Anpanman, an anime for small children. I think the correct song is the Anpanman March. I am not familiar enough with the song to hear any similarities listening to them side-by-side. Maybe they are similar and I missed it. Maybe it’s a different Anpanman song. Maybe they couldn’t get the rights or something.

But the concert was fun. And I loved the transition at the end from Rozemyne planning the second concert to her getting immediately found out.

This episode had so much that I was waiting for. Best episode of the season.

The only thing that I felt was a mistake in cutting material is that:

Okay, so I am weird about spoilers. I sometimes call things spoilers that others insist are not spoilers. For example, I think it is possible for the opening or closing animations to spoil the later half of the season. I typically skip the credits until the later half of the season because of that.

In this case, though, I have already read all of the available LNs and manga, so there’s no spoiler for me.

But I do have to say that in this episode, I think the after credits scene about the ordonnanz has a very weird spoiler.

Specifically,

Also, and I can’t imagine how the rest of this could be a spoiler, Ferdinand’s description that you can’t use an ordonnanz without a schtappe is completely correct with the lore, but I’ve always thought it was weird. They’re just saying it activates with a minuscule amount of mana, so you’d think that a noble who has very little mana, or a noble with very good control, could activate it without a schtappe. But it seems that they can’t. It requires a schtappe.

I was thinking about your comment, and I think they did similar things in earlier episodes.

One thing is that in the book, Myne in her commoner days was much more disabled than she appears to be in the anime. I remember reading the first LN in the series and wondering how it ever got a second novel, since the first one was essentially about fate repeatedly torturing a severely disabled child to death. Most of that and her efforts were glossed over.

But for me, I liked it. I could sort of watch it like I knew all the stuff that went on behind the scenes.

My criteria is (1) whether I think people watching only the anime will enjoy it enough to keep making the rest, and (2) that the parts they animate don’t actively destroy the important parts of the story.

I understand there will always be people who read the book first, and then will find many things to be disappointed with in the adaptations, but I’ve always been the person who reads the books first and then still enjoys the movie or show, as long as the adaptation is good on its own.

I loved the Harry Potter movies. I loved the Lord of the Ring movies. I loved the first few seasons of Game of Thrones, until the last few seasons where everybody agreed it went to shit.

For Bookworm, I actually watched the earlier anime first, and wasn’t too impressed, just thinking it was above average. Then, I read the LNs, and the next time I watched it, it seemed so much better.

My biggest complaint about this season is how they didn’t even address after Wilfried was dragging around Rozemyne’s unconscious body except that he apologized later. I think that’s jarring for anybody.

I don’t know what other people think, but despite a few hiccups, I’ve been pretty happy with this season so far.