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Reincarnated as a Sword
Episode 8

by Christopher Farris,

How would you rate episode 8 of
Reincarnated as a Sword ?
Community score: 4.2

Fran's backstory, the unflinchingly-assessed evils of slavery and her quest to grow and evolve past that station, has been the most serious component of Reincarnated as a Sword's plot since its beginning. So much else of the series has been filled with perfectly-pleasant daily life, mildly mind-numbing menu navigation, and occasionally high-stakes adventure battles, but that base was still boiling away in the background: There is some heavily evil shit lining the roots of this world, and now and then, it's going to poke out for Fran and Teacher to confront. One such instance appeared at the end of last week's episode, in Gyuran, a Blue Cat sicced on Fran by Allsand.

Reincarnated as a Sword's attitude towards slavery and racism against Black Cats has always been its best feature from its origin point. So things get a little murky with the introduction of Blue Cats via Gyuran. That is, there is a lot of the hoary old idea of fantasy racism powering this character's portrayal. To hear Fran tell it, the Blue Cats are a unilaterally evil race, mortal enemies of the Black Cats who were the ones who sold them out into slavery in the first place. Fran thus articulates that she genuinely considers all Blue Cats her kind's mortal enemies as a result. It is…clunky, even coming off of the previous arc's insistence that Goblins were also universal avatars of chaotic evil who could freely be exterminated, feeling like more simplified, effortless worldbuilding in the face of the story's earlier efforts.

Now obviously, other variables might be at play here. We're getting Fran's beliefs motivated by her experiences and upbringing. It might even be interpreted that the 'Blue Cats' and 'Black Cats' originally stemmed from the same tribe, with the divergence only being codified once the more villainous elements had sold out the others. And the show goes to great lengths to make clear that Gyuran himself is a genuinely nasty piece of work, as he gleefully recalls his torture of a Black Cat mother and daughter. That's the real motivating factor behind some of the rawest combat we see from Fran yet, as she even confirms Gyuran's evils mid-battle, seemingly herself wanting to make sure she's not motivated by broad racial prejudice. It all results in an interesting turn, after all, Fran's anger at this overall unjust world is made clear, and Teacher realizes that he might not need to 'protect' Fran as much as he had in other situations in this case— That he would instead be limiting her from growing, or 'evolving.' That kind of growth cannot always be a nice thing in a world that would tyrannize you otherwise.

Gyuran is dispatched with surprising swiftness, if no shortness of intensity, despite his seeming introductory importance. It is a central keystone of Fran's growth, but the story also doesn't waste time or dwell on it, possibly to maintain the overall tone it generally knows we're here for. What that does mean is that the Blue Cat ends up ushered off so Fran can be confronted with her real new arch-nemesis: Amanda. I got all excited about the appearance-teasing of this whip-wielding woman last week, and here it turns out she's all too interested in fulfilling the 'Mommy' role of the dommy-mommy for poor Fran, regardless of if she's interested in that or not. That one's on me for jinxing it.

So Amanda is going to be a polarizing character. Yes, plenty of us would hardly complain about being affectionately stalked by a 58-year-old half-elf mommy. Still, it's less appreciable when someone like Fran is just pointedly uninterested in entertaining her advances. Amanda effectively has one joke, which amounts to re-enacting a Droopy Dog sketch but with sexual harassment at every turn. The show tries to assure us that this is all down to Amanda, really, really liking children from a caretaker's standpoint. There might be even more to her interest in the cat-girl and her growing abilities. But even all the rather funny reactions from Fran (her little fast-walk away at one point is a great detail) can't underscore how tiresome it becomes to watch over half the episode get taken up by this lady repeatedly trying to slide into her DMs.

It ends up yet again indicative of Reincarnated as a Sword's forward-and-back approach to isekai presentation. It progresses the conventions of the genre in so many satisfying ways while still falling into some of the exhausting habits of it (or contemporary anime just in general) in others. This one ends with another tease for next week that indicates the interactions with Amanda could escalate somewhere more compelling, but again, that's a wait-and-see proposition.

Rating:

Reincarnated as a Sword is currently streaming on HIDIVE.

Chris is a freewheeling Fresno-based freelancer with a love for anime and a shelf full of too many Transformers. He can be found spending way too much time on his Twitter, and irregularly updating his blog.


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