Apocalypse Bringer Mynoghra

Episode 9

After several weeks of planning, this week Takuto and co. have finally summoned another hero: Isla, queen of the bugs. You wouldn't look at a giant bug like her and expect the tender touch of her...exoskeleton-y?...hand to be able to ease people's hearts so. And yet, at its core, this week's episode was nothing if not full of head pats, which made for a mostly fun episode despite its obvious shortcomings.

Well, okay, we also got that moment between Isla and the twins, where we learn about how they cry a lot in their sleep and how they've developed a system to be with each other when that happens—I'm oversimplifying it massively, but in a nutshell, that's what's going on. I worry the series is laying on the tragedy of the twins too thick and making it feel less impactful because of that—almost like they're caricatures of tragic anime characters, rather than actual tragic anime characters. And while we've seen Mynoghra take it farther in previous episodes, this episode didn't exactly do anything to move the needle in this regard. While difficult, plenty of anime have managed to balance having particularly tragic characters, without going fully over-the-top with it. Makes me wonder if we're going to see this happen to any other characters as the series continues.

Still, the biggest question I'm left wondering after this episode revolves around Isla and Atou. Atou was one thing, but now we've seen that Isla—another character from the game that Mynoghra is except when it's not (this will never stop being so absurd to me; like, just pick one. C'mon.)—remembers Takuto as well. The only other people Takuto's encountered are the dark elves, who are now part of Mynoghra. Nobody else in the world at large has met him—more specifically, other characters from the game. I wonder if any of Mynoghra's political rivals and enemies remember Takuto. It'd feel all-too-convenient if only his allies remembered him. But then again, I'd describe a lot of the writing in this series as “all-too-convenient” (see the aforementioned example: we're in the world of the game except when we're not), so perhaps I shouldn't get my hopes up too high. Still, this is something I'm starting to be curious about, and if done right, I could see this being a juicy source of potential, not to mention substantial, conflict.

But getting back to Isla, I only wish the visuals could match the grandeur of her summoning. Can you imagine how much more dramatic and intimidating her introduction would've been if, for example, ufotable was doing this? My point here is that week after week the visuals have remained so thoroughly underwhelming. And week after week, it's so massively to the series' detriment, and this week might be the biggest example of that yet.

Isla's is probably the strongest character introduction we've seen yet in the show—or at the very least, hers is the one that had me saying, “Oh, I like her” the quickest. It's obviously too soon to say whether or not she'd fall into favorite character territory, but she's definitely emerged as a possible contender depending on how the rest of the series goes. I hope she gets more screentime, for sure. But to say nothing of how we're down to Mynoghra's last few episodes, based on the ending of this one, I'm going to go on a limb and guess that next week is going to be more focused on whatever manner of chaos Atou and co. have gotten themselves wrapped up in—or maybe even inciting themselves. Knowing Atou, it really is a 50/50.

The past few weeks, Mynoghra's been on an upswing, and even though we're drawing closer and closer to the soon-approaching end of the series, I really do hope that it's able to keep this up. Every week, I worry that it's all going to come crashing down—that my always remarking on how it's been on an upswing is going to jinx everything—and we'll get back to the monotony that took up more or less the entire first half of the series. But until then, while the series has seen a lot of improvement in recent weeks, I still don't think we've had any episodes really smash it out of the park. Hopefully we can get such an episode before the end.

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Apocalypse Bringer Mynoghra is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.