Forum - View topicEP. REVIEW: The Saint's Magic Power is Omnipotent
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Animegomaniac
Posts: 4074 |
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My own feeling is that Aira's a little on the "dense" side. Her great epiphany of the episode was that the prince was self centered. That's right up there with Great leaders having the quality of leadership. If Kyle doesn't become king then her can't help her, in fact Aira may well be "removed" as he is if things go poorly for the kingdom. Which leads to the main point, loyalty to the end which would be Kyle's death first and foremost, not theirs. I get the overall feeling people aren't reading Kyle's situation properly; If he doesn't become king, he doesn't just retire to the countryside while his retinue- including Aira- take the brunt of everything. Kyle dies first. Sei had it easy, Aira had it easy, the only one in a precarious position is Kyle but the royal family's thinking isn't surprising; If there can be only one king then there should only be one saint. But if there's two saints... then what does it say about the king? Yeah, I don't know if this is one of those monarchies that's empowered and chosen by God though having a Prime Minister and well thought of Saints should be a clue... Well, there's one solution; Have two saints and two kings. Ehhh.... Two courts, two kingdoms, at some point it has to stop. |
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Matcha.8
Posts: 130 |
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It feels like this episode is trying to salvage the character of Kyle by implying that he cares more about Aira than initially let on. But his decision to keep up his charade says otherwise. If he truly cares about Aira, he would've tried to alleviate the situation by negotiating with the king etc. Seems to me that what matters at the end of his day is his pride more so than Aira. Kyle fits the mold of the type of autocratic ruler that would bring ruin to his nation because of his hubris. Wished Aira would've been more proactive in taking matters into her own hands instead of simply following Kyle's orders.
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Ashabel
 Posts: 350 |
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I must say, as someone who has been reading the novel and both manga versions, I couldn't stand this episode. It tries desperately to make Kyle a more sympathetic character, but it completely rewrites his character in the process, and it also rewrites a whole bunch of Salutania's geopolitics and other characters' behavior and motivations in order to justify him.
Basically it's an anime-original episode that tries to make a character who is canonically established as kind of a piece of shit by blaming his faults on everyone else, and it completely rewrites huge chunks of lore and world-building in a very obnoxious way in the process. No, Salutania isn't on the verge of the civil war. No, Kyle isn't going to die if he loses his position to the throne. Kyle is just a pompous teenager who thinks he is owed the throne by the right of order of succession, and his political party is backed by similarly crusty nobles who hope his incompetence is going to give them a bigger foothold in politics. His first thought in the novels upon hearing about the healing incident isn't that he may have been mistaken about Sei, and there is no lengthy excuses about him assuming her status based on her clothes. No, his first thought is that his father staged the entire incident and is using Cei as a decoy to keep people from questioning why the Saint isn't doing anything about the miasma yet. He just isn't capable of acknowledging that he makes mistakes. We're also shown how he handled Aira's growth in her own spin-off manga, and it's basically just him and his close friends playing around at monster hunters with beasts far below their level while treating Aira as a healing battery and denying her EXP. He's a dick. He doesn't need to be woobified. |
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DuskyPredator
 Posts: 15457 Location: Brisbane, Australia |
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It still looked like Kyle mostly came across as a dick in the episode. He might have convinced himself that he is acting in the best, but his worries seem kind of misplaced in one thinking that his brother is trying to take the position of the crown prince, and feeding his ego in feeling like he is helping the girl that he had been placed in front of him that cried. But he cannot let other people, read as other girls, be able to help her. And his speech about why he did not like Sei and how he thinks that he should not even have to address such people, show that any claims of nobility (not the royal kind) are the stroking of his ego.
He might not be cartoonish evil, outside of where it is clear that he thinks that he is better than people of a certain class. But he is assuredly misguided despite him thinking that he is playing up his pompousness, to just see how practically accused Liz of doing something bad to Aira, and refused to see how perhaps she and Aira could be good together. I don't know where people are getting the idea he would be killed if he lost his crown prince position, as just as pointed out he is self centred and thinks that himself and the to be prime minster are the only ones who can bring fortune. |
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Yttrbio
 Posts: 3652 |
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Anime Kyle sounds way more interesting than Manga Kyle, so I'm definitely in favor of this change.
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everydaygamer
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Yeah, it sounds like the Anime has improved on the source material in every way.
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Ashabel
Posts: 350 |
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His worries aren't misplaced per se. The anime skips over a ton of exposition regarding the setting and its politics, but the basic gist is that while Salutania is a monarchy, it doesn't respect the idea of succession by order of birth. Kyle does have a very good reason to worry about his position as a future monarch because most of his political clout revolves around conservative nobles. He doesn't actually have to worry about his livelihood because even if he fails to inherit the throne, he still gets to live off his family's riches. What anime also fails to mention is that Kyle was specifically appointed to being in charge of the Saint's situation because his father hoped that it would help him build up experience and reputation. Instead Kyle hecked everything up ten seconds in, leaving the rest of the palace to clean up after him. Arguing that the anime somehow makes him a better or more complex character doesn't really work. The fact is, Kyle is officially in charge of both Sei and Aira. He doesn't get to act shocked and fret over choosing the wrong person when there was never a choice to make and his job is to take care of both of them in the first place. The anime tries to make him more sympathetic, but the way it goes around it contradicts both the overarching story and sequence of events of how he dug himself into this hole in the first place. |
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Yttrbio
Posts: 3652 |
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People who screw up because they are flawed people rather caricatures of badness are just more interesting to watch.
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Cryten
 Posts: 987 |
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Im all for a more nuanced character for Kyle. It sounds like he was just an arse in the original (or maybe manga?) but now has been made into an arse which is much more likely to occur if the setting was real. For me it doesnt sounds like the politics have changed, he just got a bit more interesting. But I get to enjoy the anime for what it is having not read the source yet.
Knowing the source is often a burden to enjoyment I find. |
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Ashabel
Posts: 350 |
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Flaws are meant to be organic parts of a character, not hastily and awkwardly invented on the spot because the anime needs to drag things out in order to meet its plans of ending the series on the end of the second volume. It's an even more bizarre decision when you consider the sheer amount of actually canonical content they've removed on the road to this episode. Maybe if they actually handled the show properly, they wouldn't need to invent a random filler episode that justifies why an incompetent character is incompetent while contradicting the story that came up until now. Initially ignoring Sei and then justifying her existence as one of his father's ploys because he's too arrogant to realize that he ever made a mistake makes Kyle a flawed character because the motive behind his actions is misplaced arrogance. Ignoring Sei because he thought she's too plain for him to hedge his bets on and then fretting whether he made a mistake over choosing Aira means he's willfully and intentionally ignoring his official duties concerning Sei in hopes that raising a powerful Saint in Aira will still win him a political succession, does make him more complex but also turns him into a manipulative power-obsessed scumbag. Arguing that a flawed character is better than a caricature doesn't work when the anime's changes have turned what was an entitled teenager into a scheming powermonger. |
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Princess_Irene
ANN Reviewer
 Posts: 2606 Location: The castle beyond the Goblin City |
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It can be. I personally liked the attempt to make Kyle more nuanced than in the source novels and to expand the one Aira chapter in volume two into a full episode's worth of material. It didn't do a great job explaining why the girls were trying to warn Aira away from Kyle, as Gina pointed out (the book makes it clearer that it's a social customs thing, which I feel was a bit lost here), but mostly it seems based on a throwaway line in the novels about how Kyle was a popular prince before the whole Saint fiasco, even being viewed as compassionate. Since the line (in volume two) struck me as weird in the novel, it was nice to see an attempt to make it fit the story here. |
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MKVarana
 Posts: 71 |
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Liz and Sei had a conversation about Aira in the previous episode, with Sei explaining that that their social customs are different in that regard, so they did at least bring the subject up. |
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Covnam
 Posts: 3644 |
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Well I can't speak for the source, but I thought the anime did a good job this week showing that Kyle isn't quite so terrible, at least for a prince.
It might not have been bullying per se, but the way those two girls were coming at Aira certainly seemed aggressive and could be taken that way. Instead of warning her (which can be taken different ways), maybe those girls should have tried to find ways to include her so she spends less time with the guys (though she doesn't seem to be the kind of person who could tell Kyle that she wants to do that yet. Hopefully Liz can help there)? If she could have dried herself off that way, why did she wait so long to do so??? I think her fine magic control is another sign that she's more saintly then we might think. Also, does everyone glow when they use magic? I skimmed quickly, but couldn't find any other examples. Maybe she does that instead of sparkle? |
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Gina Szanboti
Posts: 11335 |
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It seems to depend on the amount of magic being expended. When Sei was transferring magic to the stones or to Yuri, she'd just concentrate and voila! but outwardly nothing seemed to happen. But when she and Yuri were demonstrating their "Heal" to each other after her non-Appraisal, both of them glowed, along with the white light, plus Sei's sparkles. And there have been other instances of Sei using spells where she glowed, so apparently it's only the sparkles that are unique. I'm kind of wondering if the difference in power or Saintness has to do with how the two feel about this world. Sei is content and has adopted the place in her heart, with no apparent attachments to her old world, but Aira is unhappy and quite homesick, and does not think of this world as hers, i.e., a place and people she wants to protect. Maybe the true Saint needs to feel that way before she can become a Saint. If so, then Aira's not entirely out of the running yet. 
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Cryten
Posts: 987 |
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Ba da da Dah dah da Dah da Daaaa. Sei has unlocked emotional casting.
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