Isekai Office Worker: The Other World's Books Depend on the Bean Counter

Episode 10

Oh my god, guys, I think that the organized religion of Romany might be corrupt. It's crazy, right? How could a group that's set itself up as a powerful organization independent of the governing body with outsized influence on the populace's beliefs possibly be corrupt? It's not like there's precedent for that in real-world history and politics!

Sarcasm aside, what's frankly more astounding is that it took this long for someone to realize it. Although everyone apart from Seiichirou and Yua has been raised in the Abramic religion (gee, does that sound like any real-world group of monotheistic religions?), they've effectively been raised to accept any corruption as part and parcel of daily life. It's just the way things are: you summon a holy maiden, you pray to the holy relic in the church, you get baptized and have your magic power measured…why would anyone question it when there don't appear to be any problems?

But as Ist, Seiichirou, and Yurius figure out this week, the problems are absolutely there. The church has been counting on the higher-ups, like the crown prince and the magic department, not caring about the church's daily activities. They've carefully trained people to assume that everything the church does is good, plus they used their accrued magic power to summon the holy maiden, something that has very nicely distracted the palace from anything else they may be doing with that power. And even if they did question it, it's being done under the guise of charity. Who could object to the church taking in and caring for poor orphans?

Seiichirou, as it turns out. He's given himself a job in this new world, and he is not going to let any waste or corruption get by him, and what the church is doing counts as both. Yua's power, specifically, is meant to protect the nation and purify the miasma, so that the church is siphoning some off doesn't say anything good about their leadership. And as Ist notices, the way that the orphans are praying isn't normal. Although he doesn't say it, the implication when we combine it with everything else we've seen is that this is a way to get more magical energy out of the kids. It fits with what we learned last week, that the church is essentially exploiting the children it purports to care for, using the boys to fill out its ranks as well. The next question is whether or not Siegvold is aware of it.

I don't think he is. Everything he's said, both in this episode and earlier ones, indicates that he's just as brainwashed by the church as anyone else. He joined them because they “helped” him with his excessive magical energy and now his devotion to them as his saviors is intense, as we can see from the way he can't see Seiichirou as anything but an emissary of his god – accepting that the otherworlder is just a guy with a different thought process and way of life is foreign to him. He does recognize Seiichirou's good qualities, as his conversation with Selio makes clear; he just can't associate that with anything but Abram. His worldview is narrow, and that's probably how the clergy likes it.

Sigma is part of the key to blowing this wide open. Unlike Selio, he's confident in himself and his skills without any religious complications. Three minutes' conversation with Ist shows how brilliant this kid is, and that he's been denied an education is awful – as is the thought that if he were orphaned, he'd likely be shunted into the church to use his mind solely for them. But if Seiichirou had never found him, Sigma's genius would have gone unremarked due to the class system at play. He's the proof that things need to change, while Seiichirou is the means for it to happen. That's not to imply that Japan is perfect; as Norbert notes, Seiichirou's workaholism is ample proof that it has plenty of problems. But there has to be a happy medium, and exposing the church's corruption is a good start.

Or at least, a good start for the country. Seiichirou is in imminent danger because the church's reckless actions have caused a little boy's magic energy to overflow, presumably endangering the child as well. There may be other options for saving the boy, but Seiichirou's health is entirely tied to Aresh, who, fortunately, has returned from his mission in what looks like the nick of time. It's a good thing that Seiichirou has finally admitted to himself that he loves the younger man, because some serious healing is going to need to happen…assuming Aresh makes it to where Seiichirou is in time.

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