Rage of Bahamut Genesis

Episode 11

Man, this was quite an episode of Rage of Bahamut Genesis. So much happened! Jeanne fought and even killed the archangels! Hamsa inflated himself into a balloon! Kaisar fell a lot! Yet, this episode is much more about what didn't happen than what did. As we wind into the home stretch of this series, I can't help but notice how many threads it's left hanging in order to get there.

For example, let's talk about Jeanne, Bahamut's character with the most wasted potential. It was an interesting idea to turn her into a demon last week, but unsurprisingly, the episode didn't do much with it other than have her fight some of her former allies. That allows the angels to look confused until they figure it out (and heartbroken once they do), but not much else. After the archangel Michael succeeds in turning her back (by giving her the antidote in a kiss, of course), all he has to do is hold Jeanne and comfort her to make all her doubts go away. He gives her a speech about how his demise is the angels' fault for not trusting and working with humans more, and then he dies while she floats to the ground. The fact that her fellow humans want her burned as a witch (probably even more so post-demon-transformation) is left unaddressed, as is her shaken faith in humanity and her altered destiny as a result. I doubt there's going to be much room to work with it in the final episode, either.

That said, it was nice to have Michael's speech deal with the "angels are kind of morally ambiguous in their own way, huh?" thread the previous few episodes dangled. Still, it's brought up once, kinda-sorta resolved and then dropped. It's an interesting bit of moral relativism that's usually foreign to this kind of fantasy series, but this is still well-worn thematic stuff for the genre overall. You really have to do something different with "not-so-pure angels" to make it special, and Bahamut doesn't give it enough room to breathe. It really would've been nice to know the ominous angels and their motives better before demon-Jeanne killed them all.

Favaro becoming a demon also feels like a missed opportunity. Of course, he hasn't been cured yet, but last week's cliffhanger hinted at a much bigger showdown than the one we got. Kaisar spends most of the episode traipsing around with Bacchus, Hamsa and Rita, trying to escape Jeanne's attacks. Only as we approach the episode's climax does he get a swordfight with Favaro, one that builds up to heartbreak as Kaisar thinks "We've crossed swords so many times before that it's clear to me. You truly have changed into a demon, Favaro" over flashbacks of them as kids. (These guys really do have strong feelings for each other, and one of the best parts of the series has been watching their relationship grow.) Yet it's all over too quickly, within the space of around a minute, as Kaisar pelts Favaro with an arrow and he falls. Favaro's fate is left ambiguous as the episode keeps moving, because this series can never stay in one place for too long. It turns out the Orléans Knight that explained Amira's backstory might be evil, too! Will the series do anything interesting with it? Can it, with only one episode left?

Rage of Bahamut Genesis is still a gorgeous-looking show (some off-model character designs this week and the usual washed-out brightness notwithstanding), and its plot is a wild, expansive adventure perfect for a Hollywood fantasy movie. Its characters are fun and memorable, built on common genre tropes while still having enough unique twists to maintain engagement with their stories. Its raw material is excellent, and earlier in its run, before it was revealed as one-cour, its breakneck pace boded well for it. Now, it's become clearer that it suffers from an excess of ambition, trying to accomplish too much in too little time. I can only hope that once this business with the Key is wrapped up, we get a sequel season with the same characters on a new adventure. I want to hear more from them than this rushed story allows.

Episode 11 was still a good episode overall. It pushed the plot further forward and tied up more loose ends than I thought it could. It sets up well for the final confrontation. I just can't help but see in it the shadow of the episode it could have been.

Rating: B

Rage of Bahamut Genesis is currently streaming on Funimation.

Rose is a graduate student in musicology, who has written about anime and many other topics for Autostraddle.com and her own blog. She tweets at @composerose.