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EP. REVIEW: Lord Marksman and Vanadis [2014-10-20]

Episode 11


Speaking of eye-rolling, I missed the explanation of WHY princess and bow guy were in the bath together.

If you plan on reading I recommend the light novel as the manga does add quite alot of fan service and quite a few major plot points are skipped.

best guess here is that being a princess, she had servants do everything for her, so she doesn't know how to properly bathe herself. So Tigre seemed like the right man for the job

However, after the comment 'what were you planning on doing if you ended up with gigantic breasts like hers?' was immediately followed by a side shot of the princess naked showing her gigantic breasts, I did do a mental face palm.

The madan's anime is more a badly told summary

Though honestly I can't blame them for rushing this because of how much they need to cover. The first 5 volumes are only the first arc so they more or less needed to rush through this in order to have an actual good ending point. Even if I understand why they needed to rush so much its still disappointing though.

maxwell3094 wrote:

Though honestly I can't blame them for rushing this because of how much they need to cover. The first 5 volumes are only the first arc so they more or less needed to rush through this in order to have an actual good ending point. Even if I understand why they needed to rush so much its still disappointing though.

I can. IS 2 did this as well. There is no reason to rush and do an entire LN in 2 episodes just to try to get a certain amount of LNs animated. While it obviously wasn't an ideal, perfect stopping point, I would have been fine with the anime ending before the southern invasion arc and having everything expanded upon.

I mean if we were talking having to end in the middle of a LN, ok sure rush it to finish that volume. Even though all the arcs so far are leading up to this, each arc was pretty well self contained. Its not like there wasn't 4-6 months between LN volumes...

I mean if we were talking having to end in the middle of a LN, ok sure rush it to finish that volume. Even though all the arcs so far are leading up to this, each arc was pretty well self contained. Its not like there wasn't 4-6 months between LN volumes...

Stopping before the southern invasion arc would mean only Ellen, Mila, and Sophie get any screen time. This obviously wasn't acceptable to the developers.

True each volume has been relatively self contained (except for some more recent volumes that is. Damn those cliffhanger endings.) but stopping in the middle of the overall narrative of the civil war when (im assuming) no 2nd season is planned would be pretty unsatisfying to me. Not that watching them blaze through 5 volumes in only 12 episodes is especially satisfying either but at least this way we will be getting a more or less complete story. To me that's the lesser of 2 evils here though I can see why others would prefer a normal pace at the cost of a worse stopping point.

kinghumanity wrote:

Stopping before the southern invasion arc would mean only Ellen, Mila, and Sophie get any screen time. This obviously wasn't acceptable to the developers.

Yeah... it does seem like they really felt the need to include more. Maybe they're planning on selling a lot of merchandise or something?

maxwell3094 wrote:

True each volume has been relatively self contained (except for some more recent volumes that is. Damn those cliffhanger endings.) but stopping in the middle of the overall narrative of the civil war when (im assuming) no 2nd season is planned would be pretty unsatisfying to me. Not that watching them blaze through 5 volumes in only 12 episodes is especially satisfying either but at least this way we will be getting a more or less complete story. To me that's the lesser of 2 evils here though I can see why others would prefer a normal pace at the cost of a worse stopping point.

It would certainly be unsatisfying. I'd say this is worse. What narrative have we really actually managed to get? Yes, the anime explained the civil war and its great that I guess they're going to finish that up. However, the "overall narrative" was cut to ribbons and we were presented with a skeleton of it. You are saying finishing the civil war is more important because it completes the story, but what good is that when the finished product doesn't have a story strong enough to stand on its own?

I would still say I'm enjoying it, and the intention was clearly to promote the books which worked on me at least. But it doesn't really stand on its own because it doesn't tell a fluid story. It is basically a series of summarized plot points that is missing everything that connects them.

And that leads to things like this episode's death receiving apathy instead of empathy. I have to agree with the review. It was obviously suppose to be a big deal, but it just fell flat. Sounds like you've read them so, tell me, is the writing just that awful in the books? I'm hoping not. And if it isn't, I don't see how you can be fine with how the anime is making it look.

Still I enjoyed it and I think it did a very good job with the resources it had. Anyone know how well the BD/dvd is selling for a possible season 2?

It would certainly be unsatisfying. I'd say this is worse. What narrative have we really actually managed to get? Yes, the anime explained the civil war and its great that I guess they're going to finish that up. However, the "overall narrative" was cut to ribbons and we were presented with a skeleton of it. You are saying finishing the civil war is more important because it completes the story, but what good is that when the finished product doesn't have a story strong enough to stand on its own?

I would still say I'm enjoying it, and the intention was clearly to promote the books which worked on me at least. But it doesn't really stand on its own because it doesn't tell a fluid story. It is basically a series of summarized plot points that is missing everything that connects them.

And that leads to things like this episode's death receiving apathy instead of empathy. I have to agree with the review. It was obviously suppose to be a big deal, but it just fell flat. Sounds like you've read them so, tell me, is the writing just that awful in the books? I'm hoping not. And if it isn't, I don't see how you can be fine with how the anime is making it look.

I wouldn't say the narrative was cut to ribbons. The overall story progression is largely intact. What was missing was heaps and chunks of worldbuilding and character interaction and development.

The developers had to make a choice between deleting all of this, or stopping the series at an unsatisfactory point. They chose the former. I think either way there's going to be a lot of disappointed fans of the LN.

kinghumanity wrote:

I wouldn't say the narrative was cut to ribbons. The overall story progression is largely intact. What was missing was heaps and chunks of worldbuilding and character interaction and development. The developers had to make a choice between deleting all of this, or stopping the series at an unsatisfactory point. They chose the former. I think either way there's going to be a lot of disappointed fans of the LN.

Except all of those things you listed are what make it a narrative in the first place. If you take all of the world building, character interaction, and character development out, then you don't really have a narrative. You have an outline; you have a bunch of animated bullet points.

I really don't see how that isn't worse than a less optimal stopping point. They could have easily stopped after the invasion and just left it as 'Tigre has finally gathered all his allies and prepares to confront the duke'. That isn't a bad stopping point at all. It is just a less optimal one.

Really there isn't that much difference in ending the season implying Tigre will go crush Thernadier and actually showing it. It was pretty standard and predictable with the possible exception of some one supposedly important dying but that doesn't mean much because I'm guessing he had a lot of scenes skipped. They did show why it was important to Tigre, but even with the extra bit in the final episode, as a viewer, I still don't care. I could have told you without any knowledge of the novels or seeing anything past the reveal that the prince(ss) was alive at the end of the invasion arc that the end of the rest of the arc would be him taking his army (including his new allies) to beat Thernadier and put the princess in charge. Them actually animating that didn't do nearly as much as them fleshing everything else out could have.

Doing it that way would have left the possibility that if sales were good enough, they could come back with another season and finish things up. Now they can still potentially have a second season, but a second season now isn't going to be able to flesh out the first arc.