Forum - View topicEP. REVIEW: Ascendance of a Bookworm [2019-10-26]
|
Goto page Previous Next Note: this is the discussion thread for this article |
| Author | Message | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|
Minos_Kurumada
Posts: 1052 |
|
|||||||
Ammm... no. The devouring can kill her in 2 ways: if she is not motivated (this point has been stressed on the show various times) and the excess of mana will kill her too after a year. She both needs to be motivated and have her mana drained or she will die, and, even if only the draining of mana was necessary, it has also been stressed that Ferdinand is a fair person, he wouldn't do something like chain her in a dungeon, that's nonsensical for his character. The series literally begins with a flashforward showing us Myne and him having a great relationship and the post credit scenes shows us even more of that. You are also forgetting that Myne wants to read the books NOW because she is a little irrational brat and the only way it's by being part of the church, so only surviving won't do for her, we had a literal complete episode of people screaming at her for wanting to join the church. Finally, evil Pope can't do anything about her because the magic contract they signed while he was unconscious. Everything has been perfectly explained quite in our faces to the point of being almost condescending, I frankly am starting to think you are watching a different show were Myne is a perfectly rational individual and Ferdinan kicks puppies for entertaining. |
||||||||
|
||||||||
TarsTarkas
 Posts: 5861 Location: Virginia, United States |
|
|||||||
It comes down to surprise and need. The High Bishop didn’t know that Myne’s parents were going to fight for her, or that she had so much mana to crush him. Another factor is the High Priest, while he was a little late for the party in blocking the High Bishop’s actions, he seems to have a bit more common sense. The High Priest basically runs everything there for the High Bishop. Probably gives the High Bishop more time to abuse the Grey Robed females. Myne’s crushing of the High Bishop, gave the High Bishop time to think, instead of raging, and time for the High Priest to present a fait accompli and logic. Other posters have mentioned other valid reasons too. The High Bishop is not done with Myne, he will attempt his revenge.
Probably ignorance and the shame. The Church is a world unto itself, hardly anyone outside knows what goes on inside or what their needs are. The inherent bias against commoner’s possessing magic. The Guild Master’s daughter would have been a Grey Robe, basically a slave to the Church, doing menial labor and serving the sexual needs of visiting Nobles and most likely too, the Blue Robed Nobles in the Church. That is why the commoners don’t want their children joining the Church. There is no way the Guild Master would want that for his daughter, even if it meant life. As long as they choose their Noble wisely, she wouldn’t be shared around, and would have her own shop to run.
No one is chill. Myne still fears what the High Bishop is planning. High Bishop is just biding his time. |
||||||||
|
||||||||
|
Kami-koto
Posts: 66 |
|
|||||||
Just to correct a tiny thing. The motivation (or rather willpower) is necessary to suppress one's mana, but it doesn't matter anymore since she can get rid of her excess mana now. She would still die from that though, simply because her body is extremly frail. Evil grandpa has of course not forgotten what happened, but there are a lot of issues, probably the biggest one being that Ferdinand is the only person in the temple capable of dealing with Darth Myne. And no, she can't buy books on her own. Books are handwritten and not being sold at shops. That one book we saw is an exception and was probably the only book in the commoner's district. She'd have to buy her books from a noble, but most nobles don't possess many books either and probably don't sell them anyway. The temple's library is her best option to get access to a lot of books. |
||||||||
|
||||||||
|
meiam
Posts: 3442 |
|
|||||||
Frail doesn't mean she'll die if kept in a cell/house arrest. If anything that'll just make things better for her since she won't be running around. Evil grandpa is the head of the church (ie above Ferdinand) and quite obviously above the law. I don't know what stop him from doing w/e want, as was obviously demonstrated when he just ordered Myne parent executed. And Myne isn't that dangerous, sneak up on her with a mana draining artifact and she can't do anything. Even if he has some other evil scheme in mind, what is he waiting for? He has absolute power, an army of dedicated follower and know where Myne lives. What could possibly prevent him from doing anything he'd want? Can't comment much on contract since the show is extremely vague on how they work, but it obviously would be extremely limited. The contract would only limit the action of people within the church, so he could just sub contract the deed (the noble must have their own guard force so he could just use them). And yeah she can buy book, throughout history book were sold and traded even if they had to be hand written. Copy of old text from Grek/Latin source were constantly made and sold (some people job would literally be to just copy the same book over and over again). Sure they were expensive, but Myne is pretty rich at this point, instead of paying the church to read their book once in awhile she could just buy the book to read them whenever she want. Look at it this way, Myne is getting rich by producing paper, therefore some people are buying that paper, what do you think they do with that paper? It's still way to expensive to be used as scrap paper/toilet paper and contract have been specifically forbidden from being done on planet based paper. |
||||||||
|
||||||||
|
Key
Moderator
 Posts: 18224 Location: Indianapolis, IN (formerly Mimiho Valley) |
|
|||||||
|
^
Myne is doing fairly well by commoner standards. She's NOT rich. And the show has already made it clear that buying books is not something that can easily be done in this setting. This is in line with European history, on which this setting is clearly based; while ancient Greece and Rome were known to have bookstores, they didn't exist in medieval Europe until the invention of the printing press. During that time, books were were pretty much made on demand. Also, the business with the shield gives the impression that some degree of will is involved in transferring magic into the artifacts. Hence I don't think your "artifact on a stick" plan would work. Trying to force the issue would be likely to bring out Darth Myne, so they need her cooperation to some degree. I don't disagree that there's at least a bit of contrivance here, at least based on what's been revealed so far. However, I don't see a crippling amount. |
||||||||
|
||||||||
|
lex63
Posts: 14 |
|
|||||||
|
Nice Anime I'm looking forward to the 2nd season with English audio.
|
||||||||
|
||||||||
|
TarsTarkas
Posts: 5861 Location: Virginia, United States |
|
|||||||
|
I haven't seen this episode yet, but have read the light novel. From what you said, it sounds about the same.
I wouldn't grant the Head Priest much leeway. He may be a popular character in Japan, but if Myne hadn't crushed the High Priest, I am quite positive he would have let Myne's father and mother be executed. He's a noble after all. While is isn't all 'evil' noble, he is part of the system. Also, where he is going in the light novels, really makes these early parts of the novel and anime hard to understand his character. |
||||||||
|
||||||||
whiskeyii
 Posts: 2250 |
|
|||||||
|
Soooo...as someone who binge-watched my way up to the latest episode, I gotta ask: does Myne-as-Urano not find concubinage (or even Delia's "seductive" behavior) really weird/disturbing/gross in the novels? Like, I get that people born into this world wouldn't bat an eye at that sort of thing, but if Urano has a modern perspective, I kind of expected her to at least internally comment on how prevalent child-grooming seems to be amongst girls aiming for the nobility, or even how a lot of the female occupations outside of downtown seem to be tied up in sex work--barring the lone female Gray Robe who showed Myne to the library. I guess it just feels weird to me that in a world where kids are mostly self-sufficient and the wives and mothers of downtown don't seem to be tied to the household like they would've been historically, the ambitions/jobs given to women in this world feel awfully limited compared to the men. And I can't tell if that's intentional as a shorthand for "Ye Olden Days" or just a weird oversight.
|
||||||||
|
||||||||
|
thatoneonfire
Posts: 6 |
|
|||||||
In the novels she does express a fair amount of disgust that gradually has become a sort of tempered acceptance (at least from what has come out in English so far). I will say that besides Delia herself, no one else seems to think her pursuit is "normal". I think while the idea of concubines is not abnormal in the church the idea of just being one is not something that people think about except as a last resort (we see several older gray robed shrine maidens and they're both said to be put off by Delia's behavior). I think also from what I've read, the church is much more in noble society, where the idea of concubines is inherently looser morally. Even in the lower class place Myne lives in a short story we see that waitresses often double as prostitutes at bars and whatnot. I do find it very sad that it seems Delia may not be swayed from this path  I'm really hoping that we see her go on a different path even if that feels unlikely.
|
||||||||
|
||||||||
Yuvelir
 Posts: 1587 |
|
|||||||
|
It feels so weird that the best and brightest possible outcomes for the orphans is literally child labour.
But I guess that's how it worked for most of history.
It's not like she has any positive outlook on it in the anime either, she low-key tried to persuade Frederica out of it and the disgust with Delia's plan was visible (although a good part of that comes with the man of choice...). Urano must also be somewhat knowledgeable about such practices and it isn't like the anime has time to fret too long about it either. So Myne's "this is not okay but it isn't the end of the world" reactions will have to do. |
||||||||
|
||||||||
|
Probablytomorrow
Posts: 164 |
|
|||||||
|
@whiskeyii
Was there anyone interested in being a concubine, or aligning with the nobility at all, besides Delia? My impression of Frieda was that she was simply resigned to concubinage as the only way to save her life. Since Myne preferred death to becoming one, I thought her opposition to the practice as a whole was also fair to assume. |
||||||||
|
||||||||
|
AnimeFlyz
Posts: 367 |
|
|||||||
|
So, to answer Theron, the state of the orphanage was kinda fine, but the episode did pull punches for TV sake. In the book, Myne sees most of the orphans as mostly skin and bones. They are either wearing rags or not wearing anything at all. There is urine and feces all over which is cause the place to stink, and after leaving, Myne vomits from the horror that she just witnessed. The rest of the episode is pretty accurate to the book.
|
||||||||
|
||||||||
|
whiskeyii
Posts: 2250 |
|
|||||||
Sure, but I felt like it was hard to tell if Myne objected to it on grounds of it being sex work or if it was because it wasn’t super clear if this was gonna be child grooming/quasi-pedophiliac. And the way she offhandedly referred to it during Benno’s negotiations made me think maybe it didn’t bother her much? More than that, it didn’t really feel to me like there were many examples of women in jobs that weren’t somewhat domestically flavored: downtown had seamstresses and Frieda’s chef, but then Myne’s chef is male with a female assistant chef, so I was curious if this was a case of “all women’s work in this world is limited to domesticity and/or sex work” or if that was just kind of a weird oversight of the source material. But since the latest episode showed a lot more female characters participating in clergy work (albeit only as Gray Robes), I guess that sort of implies that women don’t really get the opportunity to have an education like the soldier boys do, unless you’re involved with business, like Frieda (who is also the only female merchant we see aside from Myne, which maybe emphasizes its a very male-dominated profession) or involved with the Church. Then again, the Head Priest offered to read the scriptures to Myne before allowing her to read them, so maybe literacy isn’t assured for Gray Robes either. I dunno, maybe I expected to see this world’s version of nuns running a Church school or something? Especially since this world’s Church isn’t dominated by a solely male religious figure. It just sort of hit me that we don’t see any girls learning math or how to read—probably to establish how unusual Myne is—and I wondered if that was an intentional part of the worldbuilding that just got left behind in the streamlining of the anime. |
||||||||
|
||||||||
|
YH
Posts: 3 |
|
|||||||
|
The orphanage condition in the book was much more bad than shown. There was excrement everywhere. That was the smell.
|
||||||||
|
||||||||
|
Probablytomorrow
Posts: 164 |
|
|||||||
Yeah, Myne did brush off Head Priest’s question very carelessly. Maybe the pedophiliac angle didn’t occur to her, or she assumed he didn’t mean it like that? And is assuming Delia doesn’t understand what a concubine is? I don’t know how far the show is taking this subject either. I think Myne has had only limited interactions with society, and only with careers related to her family. Since there’s no general-purpose schooling and trades are passed down through families, I’d assumed Otto was only teaching the boys literacy a soldier would need to know. The fact that Myne crossed into merchantry might still be speaking more towards her well-rounded education than towards her breaking a gender barrier. Last edited by Probablytomorrow on Tue Apr 28, 2020 12:45 pm; edited 1 time in total |
||||||||
|
||||||||
 |
All times are GMT - 5 Hours |
|
|
|
Powered by phpBB © 2001, 2005 phpBB Group