Akashic Records of Bastard Magical Instructor

Episode 10

As it heads into what should be its final arc of the season, Rokuaka (which seems to be catching on as the series' abbreviated name) throws out such a bevy of potential story directions that it's hard to imagine the series wrapping things up neatly in two more episodes. The most pressing question at the moment is which of these story paths the rest of this arc will focus on.

My estimation is that two will dominate. One will be the story concerning Sara Silver, whose name is mentioned in the episode's first scene and comes up again a couple times later. Sistine apparently bears a distinct resemblance to her, and a flashback near the end of the episode reveals her to be the tattooed lady shown briefly in the opener. She also appears to be the woman whose body Glenn was shown burning in a different flashback in episode 7, which combined with a conversation between Albert and Glenn in this episode suggests that she might have fallen victim to the zombifying Angel's Dust while on a mission with Glenn. Conspicuously, we don't ever get a clear shot of her face, though whether that's the standard anime practice of obscuring the faces of those who have died or a meaningful gimmick is unclear at this point, but it helps explain why Glenn seems to go out of his way for Sistine, along with giving a much more loaded meaning to her White Cat nickname (since he used to refer to Sara as White Dog). She should provide an inroad into the whole Angel's Dust angle.

Of course, there's also the matter of what's going on more directly with Sistine. Handsome guest teacher Leos Kleiters arrives and claims to be Sistine's fiancé based on a childhood promise, an amusing role-reversal of all those harem situations where the girl is the one fixated on a promise that the guy would just as soon forget. In a panic, Sistine resorts to the classic romantic comedy dodge for such a situation, claiming that Glenn is her lover and future spouse. However, she forgets that Glenn is just enough of a mischievous ass to run full-bore with the premise once he gets over the initial shock, and his pontificating about how marrying her will set him up for life to be a lazy bum gives us the episode title “Gold Digger?”. That ends up being a lot more fun in execution than I expected it when it started, as the discomfort caused by the teacher/student relationship can be dodged because it's pretty clear that Glenn isn't actually romantically interested in her (at least at this point). Of course, Leos is just as crooked as Celica suspects, plotting something involving Glenn with a mysterious bespectacled figure, which makes me wonder if anything he expressed toward Sistine was genuine.

This all brings up two significant matters for the series. Shock of shocks, kidnapping Rumia may not be involved in this arc, even though there was a curious mention by Elanor during one early scene about plots for “Princess Ermiana's rebirth.” Whatever that means, I suspect it's more a teaser for something we might see develop if a second season gets animated, though it also indicates that there are clear factions within the Researchers of Divine Wisdom; this might explain the differing goals of the group in different arcs. The other matter is finally bringing up Sistine's dedication to researching the floating island again, which was her stated goal at the start but has been mostly swept under the rug for the past eight episodes. Not sure if this is trying for a metaphor over how marriage would force her to give up her dreams, but the scene could certainly have some extra meaning on that level. Bringing that up also makes her growing interest in Glenn more credible, since he's the kind of guy who wouldn't stomp on that dream.

Almost lost in all of this is a pretty good reconciliation scene involving Sistine, Rumia, and Re=L. For managing that while also throwing around so many plot threads, this episode deserves a slightly higher score.

Rating: B+

Akashic Records of Bastard Magical Instructor is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.