Reign of the Seven Spellblades

Episode 3

So what's going on here? That was the main thought going through my head as Reign of the Seven Spellblades went through everything else in its third episode this week. Maybe I'm just looking to give this show more credit than it deserves, but so many of the reactions and resolutions to things in this one just came off as too shallow for the otherwise denser ambitions of the writing. Things like the brisk resolution of all our main characters learning about Nanao's past, ending with a damn-near sitcom freeze-frame on everyone laughing about how great their friendship is and how nothing bad will ever happen to them before we even hit the commercial break? There was also Oliver's deflection when Nanao asked him how much he knew about the titular Spellblades, which signals that he almost certainly is a user of those super-secret, instant-kill abilities. Effectively, the tone of this one gave me just the faintest whiff of another shoe, and now I'm going to find myself waiting to see if it ever actually drops.

Might that just be me constructing my external interpretations of Seven Spellblades as it remains technically a relatively rote kids-at-magic-school show this week? Maybe, but it's the most generous way I can regard the series as it keeps hurtling through the surface-level story signifiers it's setting up. Well, I say "surface," even though the continuation of the big brouhaha from last week takes place underground at the start here, but you get what I mean. They are still throwing new characters at us, including some antagonists with truly outrageous names that confront our main mess of mages, and it's not made especially clear how regular a thing trying to kill your new first-year students is here at Kimberly. This is mostly a showcase anyway, with the skeleton-summoning guy and the sexy succubus lady hurling huge magic monsters at each other and constructing a scenario that Nanao can try running headlong into so we understand just how deep her trauma goes.

Before we can even get an understanding of how much of an on-the-reg thing this sort of throwdown is, though, it's resolved via more new upperclassmen characters coming in to put the kibosh on it, and Nanao's trauma is instead elucidated on via sit-down discussion. At Oliver's prompting, naturally. Still, concerning Nanao as it does and integrating even more layers into her already enjoyable character, it was handily the most interesting part of the episode. It's not the most original tragic tale, but meshing her meatheaded warrior tendencies with the inevitable tragedy of militarized combat helps inform the exact structure of her personality. It lets us really see what a bizarre transplant she is in this situation she's landed herself in. And the twisted death-battle manner in which she interprets her attraction to Oliver is a premise I can get behind, even if the romance element (with Katie as another axis on the triangle) still comes off trite in that "They are setting us up for some kind of swerve" sort of way.

Contributing to that vibe is how we still feel like we're positively racing through the beats of these opening chapters. They are trying to intersperse some parts for more of a satisfyingly structured arc. I'm shocked Andrews is going to keep being relevant. Still, so long as I'm keeping my suspicions about there being more to this show than meets the eye, I'll hold that his challenging of Oliver and Nanao to a duel will become more than a simple grudge match. Given the Spellblade setup, alongside us already knowing that Oliver is secure in his other secrets, on account of the mysterious attendant that's been shadowing him since he got here, I've got to presume we're building up to some series-defining reveal about just what his deal is. I don't want to turn the majority of this review into speculation about stuff that wasn't in this episode, but that was the main thing it gave me to work with: calculatedly doling out information while daring us to guess about where it's going.

Honing in on stuff like that means some of our other nominal main characters, Pete and Guy, remain irrelevantly sidelined. But Seven Spellblades is at least still dedicated to following up on Katie and her crusade for the civil rights of magical creatures. It so directly mirrors an infamous plot point from this show's Hogwarts inspiration that I have to presume it's intended as either a direct callout of stories like that one which happily upholds a status quo or is being set up to be its own vector for some shocking subversion. Either way, the confrontation with the hilariously evilly named Darius Grenville ensures we remain aware of that plotline amongst everything else going on and have even more faces from the show's OP come out of the woodwork.

It makes it an awkward one just three episodes into Seven Spellblades, with a whole bunch of obvious table-setting, but I'm not sure if the meal they'll be serving will be bland or something I'm allergic to. The centerpiece of Nanao's flashback and the resultant elements of her characterization are the strongest (even as they make it even more retroactively hilarious that anyone was ever supposed to be worried about her losing that duel with Andrews). But even that feels beset on all other sides of the episode by the vibe of the show doing the "I'm not touching you!" dance regarding its potentially deeper plot points. Setting up for subversion shouldn't be a waiting game if your early stuff can be more interesting than putting pieces down on the board. If my intuition is wrong, this surface-level approach is all there will be to Seven Spellblades. Can you imagine?

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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