Reign of the Seven Spellblades

Episode 13

So let me lead by admitting that I have no idea what's going on with the length of this show at this point. All prior research I'd done into Reign of the Seven Spellblades's run the past few weeks indicated that it was a single-cour affair that would cap off at thirteen episodes, but that's not the case now. Technically, that's for the best. My prior misgivings with the show's choices that brought it to this episode are thus mitigated by the fact that it doesn't have to rush to resolve everything in this entry. So with those pacing problems put aside, surely Seven Spellblades can instead focus on taking a solid next step in this story, right?

Look, you've all been watching the same show I have up to this point, you know the results are going to be mixed at best. Even though it's technically not in as much of a hurry as I thought, Seven Spellblades is still skipping over plenty here. Multiple montages are glossing over Oliver's party having adventures in this forested layer of the labyrinth, including the deployment of those seeds Guy gifted them. I had presumed those would wind up a more prominent plot device. Though the characters do allude to using them in other ways in the future, so maybe that's still coming up. Still, it sticks out. The thing is, the way that possibility is brought up speaks to the odd choices in pacing the show makes here. They skip and summarize the explorative parts, but sit down for full sections of the characters camping out and chatting. Priorities, I suppose.

I quite enjoy the conversation as a vehicle for characterization, but Spellblades largely goes about it the wrong way here. It's honestly pretty funny to have the likes of Katie or Guy receive the most detail they've had in weeks (or in Guy's case, ever) delivered via the other characters standing around talking about traits they aren't here to demonstrate. Funny, but not ideal. Similarly, it's amusing to have Miligan point out how weird it was that Oliver and the others all but immediately sorted themselves into a friend group at the beginning of the story. Oliver's rather basic answer almost comes off like the author coming up with their own excuse after all this time: That the group recognized the hostility of the rest of the school environment and naturally understood their obligation to stick together. But it doesn't dig deep enough for me, to the point that it made me wonder if Oliver wasn't covering up some other reason he aligned with the group. Perhaps something pertinent to his revenge angle, but I don't know that Seven Spellblades has earned that degree of doubt-benefitting at this particular moment.

That leads into the last piece of unintentionally funny material I found in this episode: Carste from Oliver's cabal revealed to have been shadowing the group all this time, protecting them from the more dramatic dangers of the forest. She nearly literally tells Oliver "This whole succubus subplot isn't important to the overall story, so we need to get it over with as quickly as possible". As with so much else in Spellblades, it thus begs the question of why we're spending this time on it at all if that's the case. Yes, detailing and enriching the world these characters occupy is a key feature of a story like this. This episode gestures at that sort of thing, with an opening flashback implying that Ophelia was part of some forced-breeding magical baby and/or chimera factory. But just going "Surprise! The wizarding world is dark and messed-up, actually!" isn't as effective a trick anymore, especially when we've barely gotten to hear from Ophelia herself on the matter as everyone just slowly meanders their way towards her.

Instead, the primary feature of this week's episode is demonstrating the increasing closeness of the combat-worthy members of the Sword Rose, and how that feeds their tactics and abilities. Some of it is neat enough like former soldier Nanao internalizing Katie's appeals to peaceful resolutions with magical creatures when possible. Then when a fight does pop off against one of Ophelia's chimeras, we get to see the kids apply experimentation and adaptiveness to the battle instead of simply power-leveling their way through. One thing I'll give Seven Spellblades is that even though its magic system is rather basic, its application has made it interesting. This fight with the mantis monster is another example of that, with the team trial-and-error-ing with different spell elements and attack points until they find a solution that works. It's some kind of progress, even as I'm still wondering how long they and the other parties present down here will be wandering before they finally get to Ophelia. The irony of skipping over so many parts of this episode's journey through montages is that it just makes the wheel-spinning more apparent when they've still hardly gotten anywhere.

Rating:

Reign of the Seven Spellblades is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.

Chris is back for another season of calling wizards nerds. Feel free to disagree with him on that on his Twitter (for however much longer that lasts), or check out his irregular musings on other nerdy subjects over on his blog.

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