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EP. REVIEW: The Genius Prince's Guide to Raising a Nation Out of Debt


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MFrontier



Joined: 13 Apr 2014
Posts: 11191
PostPosted: Wed Jan 19, 2022 3:50 pm Reply with quote
I'm in it to watch Wein's antics and to see more of his and Ninym's relationship.

I guess it comes from condensing one volume into two episodes but they make it pretty clear they have feelings for each other (especially Ninym) and I half wonder if Wein is trying to sell the kingdom and retire so that he can peacefully marry Ninym without anyone complaining.
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b-dragon



Joined: 21 Apr 2021
Posts: 451
PostPosted: Wed Jan 19, 2022 3:58 pm Reply with quote
MFrontier wrote:
I'm in it to watch Wein's antics and to see more of his and Ninym's relationship.

I guess it comes from condensing one volume into two episodes but they make it pretty clear they have feelings for each other (especially Ninym) and I half wonder if Wein is trying to sell the kingdom and retire so that he can peacefully marry Ninym without anyone complaining.


I've got a few different ideas for why he is trying to sell out- and none of them have general laziness as the primary motivation. All theory, of course, so I'm quite intrigued about future revelations.
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Wasureta



Joined: 21 Dec 2015
Posts: 51
PostPosted: Wed Jan 19, 2022 4:07 pm Reply with quote
All characters voiced by Rie Takahashi deserves to be protected.
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meiam



Joined: 23 Jun 2013
Posts: 3442
PostPosted: Wed Jan 19, 2022 4:22 pm Reply with quote
Episode 1 was fine, but episode 2 felt sloppy. The basic idea was that Wein could use the terrain advantages to nullify the enemy numerical advantages. That's all fine, but why did the enemy general apparently do almost nothing for weeks? When he's eventually defeated he says his army is doing a full assault, why did he wait 3 weeks for this? And if the entire idea is that he can't use his full 30 000 troops to assault the mountain, where were most of his troops on the day of the assault? They can't have been assaulting the fortress since the passage are too narrow for all of them, but at the same time they weren't back in camp, did he just send them to collect flowers? Especially since, just a few days before, his camp was attacked by a small cavalry force, shouldn't he know that his camp was vulnerable to raid (how did that small force even attack his camp in the first place?).

The secret tunnel part was also pointlessly roundabout, Wein had a secret tunnel almost fully digged out but not quite finish. He then purposefully collapse another tunnel to take the enemy general mind away from the secret tunnel that general doesn't know exist? How is clearly informing your enemy that you can dig tunnel to the base of the mountain help you keep secret the fact that you can dig tunnel to the base of the mountain? Or are we suppose to think that the general is somehow so incredibly stupid that he doesn't understand that tunnel are man made and new one can therefore be made?
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Covnam



Joined: 31 May 2005
Posts: 3650
PostPosted: Wed Jan 19, 2022 5:26 pm Reply with quote
So far these have been ok. The pace feels a bit fast though. Ninym and Wein's relationship definitely is the most interesting part, so hopefully now that we've established Wein's skills we can get some focus on that.

Quote:
This may be something lost in adaptation but isn't Ninym actually rather busty for a woman her size? I'm not sure why she reacts so negatively to Wein's random sleep talking


She seemed rather modest based on the preceding scene imo. I think the outfit enhances her bust. At best, to me, she presented as average for her size.

meiam wrote:
Episode 1 was fine, but episode 2 felt sloppy. The basic idea was that Wein could use the terrain advantages to nullify the enemy numerical advantages. That's all fine, but why did the enemy general apparently do almost nothing for weeks? When he's eventually defeated he says his army is doing a full assault, why did he wait 3 weeks for this? And if the entire idea is that he can't use his full 30 000 troops to assault the mountain, where were most of his troops on the day of the assault?


Agreed. It seemed like an odd line. He had no reason to hold back after the first few attempts failed. One would also presume he had already been trying to throw everything at them from early on as that seemed to be the height of his "tactics".

Quote:

The secret tunnel part was also pointlessly roundabout, Wein had a secret tunnel almost fully digged out but not quite finish. He then purposefully collapse another tunnel to take the enemy general mind away from the secret tunnel that general doesn't know exist? How is clearly informing your enemy that you can dig tunnel to the base of the mountain help you keep secret the fact that you can dig tunnel to the base of the mountain? Or are we suppose to think that the general is somehow so incredibly stupid that he doesn't understand that tunnel are man made and new one can therefore be made?


From what I understood the first tunnel already existed and was on the map, so the collapsed tunnel was to make them think it was closed off. He just didn't think they'd have dug a second parallel tunnel in advance. Though that begs the question of how much time they had to do that if clearing the collapsed tunnel would have taken months.
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MFrontier



Joined: 13 Apr 2014
Posts: 11191
PostPosted: Wed Jan 19, 2022 5:48 pm Reply with quote
Covnam wrote:
She seemed rather modest based on the preceding scene imo. I think the outfit enhances her bust. At best, to me, she presented as average for her size.

Apparently the anime's reduced her chest size compared to the Light Novel illustrations (although apparently they got bigger as the series went on).
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Melicans



Joined: 01 Feb 2012
Posts: 620
Location: Canada
PostPosted: Wed Jan 19, 2022 8:16 pm Reply with quote
In one of the early LN volumes, if I remember this correctly, in response to the princess who is cheering for Ninym and her brother to be together, Ninym tells her something to the effect that if he married her she would have to kill herself for seducing him/weakening the country without really going into further detail why. My guess is that it is because of her heritage as a Flahm.

Looking at the map (shown in one of the episodes), it's shown Natra is at the top; to the east is the massive Empire and to the south is a mountain range that goes most of the way to the southern coast (making Natra one of the few crossing points for goods to go into and out of the Empire - sorry folks, there is some statecraft/economics in the series, albeit lesser than Realist Hero). Whereas Flahm are not seen badly in Natra or the Empire the way they are seen in the Western countries is beyond racist. In one event likely to be covered in the series, spoiler[Wein is invited by a King to go hunting; and when he finds out that said King was planning on hunting some Flahm and hoped that Wein would allow him to hunt Ninym, he promptly executes him.]

Given the prevailing attitude to the Flahm and Natra's position as essentially a buffer state for the Empire in case of war, Ninym probably considers that her marrying Wein would cause Natra's standing to weaken to a point where the western countries collectively declare war on the kingdom. Hence why, despite her own clear feelings through just two episodes, she rejects Falanya's attempted matchmaking so vehemently.

As for her breasts, I remember her being self-conscious of them in volume 1. It seems to be a running joke that they get larger in the illustrations of each progressive volume?
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Animegomaniac



Joined: 16 Feb 2012
Posts: 4082
PostPosted: Wed Jan 19, 2022 8:32 pm Reply with quote
Episode 2 My own tactical thoughts: Being holed up in a mine at the top of a mountain- complete with miners- for a whole month would equal to a backdoor tunnel however I thought it would so Wein would take his small force and take the undefended capital- which was taken by an enemy nation instead all because Ninym was insulted, not by the enemy general but his adjunct. Best laid plans of mice and men and all that.

But in their attempt to build the tunnel, the miners found a new vein of gold...
Vein, vain? why do I feel Wein should be pronounced as if it was "Vein"?... so Wein got his money in the end and a new country for "not" conquering.

I'm loving this series and its very RTS video game approach to war. "The Anime Protagonist who was too lazy to fail"; If he spent all his effort into trying to succeed he'd fail but as he's trying to fail then he'll surely succeed? I can accept it.

I was worried that the show would break the fine line between out and out success and outright failure but episode 2 illuminates the path forward: Greater successes yields greater rewards but also greater costs.

An empire built out of "it seemed like a necessary step at the time". Like Utawarerumono but with no Godzilla knockoffs.
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Gina Szanboti



Joined: 03 Aug 2008
Posts: 11352
PostPosted: Wed Jan 19, 2022 9:56 pm Reply with quote
I know I'm gonna regret this...

meiam wrote:
...why did the enemy general apparently do almost nothing for weeks? When he's eventually defeated he says his army is doing a full assault, why did he wait 3 weeks for this? And if the entire idea is that he can't use his full 30 000 troops to assault the mountain, where were most of his troops on the day of the assault? They can't have been assaulting the fortress since the passage are too narrow for all of them, but at the same time they weren't back in camp, did he just send them to collect flowers? Especially since, just a few days before, his camp was attacked by a small cavalry force, shouldn't he know that his camp was vulnerable to raid (how did that small force even attack his camp in the first place?).

We don't know that he did nothing for weeks. Presumably he just kept attacking with varying tactics, but we weren't shown two weeks of his failures, since the episode is only 20 min. You have to remember that Drawood is 1) full of pride and delusions of superiority, and 2) an idiot who lets that pride rule his actions. It was a blow to his ego that he was being stymied by such a small force, and that prevented him from using his troops' numbers more to his advantage at least as much as the terrain did (his "all-out assault" added ladders and probably other ways for more of his troops to attack at once). So we also don't know how many of his troops were actively engaged in the all-out assault and how many were left in camp as reinforcements. But that doesn't matter, since Wein & Co. infiltrated in enemy uniforms and were perceived as part of those troops. In fact if no troops were left in camp, it would've been more suspicious for them to show up.

As to how the camp was attacked previously, well, it was night, they weren't expecting a force of any size to attack so their security was lax, and once it began they were fooled into believing a much larger force was upon them, creating even more panic and chaos. Plus Drawood seemed to be frozen into inaction by fear and by simply not being used to losing.

None of this is unrealistic. Wars are lost all the time because of people not behaving with Vulcan logic as you always expect all characters to behave. Generals can get fooled. Egos can trump best tactics and thus lead to failure. Show me a war where woulda, shoulda, coulda didn't come into play at one point or another for at least one side of the conflict. You're always going to find one moron who wants to attack Russia in winter Smile (yeah, yeah, I know. It's a meme, don't @ me).

Covnam wrote:
From what I understood the first tunnel already existed and was on the map, so the collapsed tunnel was to make them think it was closed off. He just didn't think they'd have dug a second parallel tunnel in advance. Though that begs the question of how much time they had to do that if clearing the collapsed tunnel would have taken months.

I don't think Drawood thought they could either dig a new tunnel or excavate the collapsed one. He's a military man, and likely doesn't know from mining or how efficient or not miners could be with that particular geology. Hell, it's not unreasonable to think he forgot they had actual miners on site, being so focused on the troops aspect of the siege. So his "months" to clear could be way off, or clearing a collapsed tunnel may present more difficult problems than digging a new one, or both.
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meiam



Joined: 23 Jun 2013
Posts: 3442
PostPosted: Wed Jan 19, 2022 10:03 pm Reply with quote
Gina Szanboti wrote:
I know I'm gonna regret this...

We don't know that he did nothing for weeks. Presumably he just kept attacking with varying tactics, but we weren't shown two weeks of his failures, since the episode is only 20 min. You have to remember that Drawood is 1) full of pride and delusions of superiority, and 2) an idiot who lets that pride rule his actions. It was a blow to his ego that he was being stymied by such a small force, and that prevented him from using his troops' numbers more to his advantage at least as much as the terrain did (his "all-out assault" added ladders and probably other ways for more of his troops to attack at once). So we also don't know how many of his troops were actively engaged in the all-out assault and how many were left in camp as reinforcements. But that doesn't matter, since Wein & Co. infiltrated in enemy uniforms and were perceived as part of those troops. In fact if no troops were left in camp, it would've been more suspicious for them to show up.

As to how the camp was attacked previously, well, it was night, they weren't expecting a force of any size to attack so their security was lax, and once it began they were fooled into believing a much larger force was upon them, creating even more panic and chaos. Plus Drawood seemed to be frozen into inaction by fear and by simply not being used to losing.

None of this is unrealistic. Wars are lost all the time because of people not behaving with Vulcan logic as you always expect all characters to behave. Generals can get fooled. Egos can trump best tactics and thus lead to failure. Show me a war where woulda, shoulda, coulda didn't come into play at one point or another for at least one side of the conflict. You're always going to find one moron who wants to attack Russia in winter Smile (yeah, yeah, I know. It's a meme, don't @ me).


All possible, but then it reduce the tactical part of the show to "the main character win because he's up against morons" which I never find really interesting, especially not when they constantly heap praise on the main character for... not being the moron in a room full of moron. It's like watching a race between Usain Bolt and a toddler, no fun.


Last edited by meiam on Thu Jan 20, 2022 12:38 am; edited 2 times in total
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Minos_Kurumada



Joined: 04 Nov 2015
Posts: 1006
PostPosted: Wed Jan 19, 2022 11:58 pm Reply with quote
I haven't watched the episode, but, in the Manga it's told that the country they are fighting with it's quite corrupt and captains are stupid.

This is a comedy, anybody expecting Death Note... not gonna happen.
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meiam



Joined: 23 Jun 2013
Posts: 3442
PostPosted: Thu Jan 20, 2022 12:37 am Reply with quote
Minos_Kurumada wrote:
I haven't watched the episode, but, in the Manga it's told that the country they are fighting with it's quite corrupt and captains are stupid.

This is a comedy, anybody expecting Death Note... not gonna happen.


It is? There was like... maybe 2 jokes in the entire episode.
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Lirsen



Joined: 20 Jul 2021
Posts: 27
PostPosted: Thu Jan 20, 2022 4:31 am Reply with quote
this is what happen when you adapt one full LN in two episodes, that you must skip a lot of thing/features. In the case of the first episode it has almost skipped the part of the imperial ambasador ( in the anime it covers around 1 minute between 2 flashbacks, in the LN is a 25% of the first, a full episode).

in the case of the second is even worse, they skipped spoiler[the full negotitation with a character that is important in the future and the relation between the two factions of marden goverment]

aditionaly in the war they omited some extremely important parts spoiler[ like that all the plans of wein involve both phisical and sicological presure. in the case of the assault they omited the part that 5000 soldiers where at the back of the mountain to look out possible scape routes and the part that the "discovery" of the cave was responsability of wein spies so they could make the ambush.

another part that they fully omited is that untill one week after the start of the war the marden soldiers didn't use any siege weapon, and that for the next two weeks they where building them and waiting for getting some from home.

another one is the part with the fires, yes, they added it to the anime, but what they omited is that they did that multiple times and just the day before the final assault they burned the supplies of the marden army]


i only hope they slow down the adaptation pace and we dont have anothe seirei gensouki case ( at least with the opening we can see that they only adapted until the third LN, lets see what happens)
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Aerodynamic41



Joined: 20 Oct 2015
Posts: 225
PostPosted: Thu Jan 20, 2022 4:40 am Reply with quote
Lirsen wrote:
( at least with the opening we can see that they only adapted until the third LN, lets see what happens)


I think it's more than 3 volumes. It's very likely going to adapt until at least Vol. 5 based on the characters shown in the key visual.
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Lirsen



Joined: 20 Jul 2021
Posts: 27
PostPosted: Thu Jan 20, 2022 4:55 am Reply with quote
Aerodynamic41 wrote:
Lirsen wrote:
( at least with the opening we can see that they only adapted until the third LN, lets see what happens)


I think it's more than 3 volumes. It's very likely going to adapt until at least Vol. 5 based on the characters shown in the key visual.


so, another seirei gensouki. Why they must run so much when there isn't a lot more source matherial? slow down the pace and develop more the important parts
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