Summary
The spirits of Demon Kings past are banished from Queen through the
power of Hero’s love. Using his magic, they’re able to regenerate Head Maid’s
arm.
Mage shows up in the Winter Country and delivers Queen’s message. It’s the
cure for smallpox. Thanks to this information millions will be saved each year.
Meanwhile, the Southern Triad has agreed to Young Merchant’s request that they
allow him to conduct business with the demons. They’re starting to see how,
despite their surface differences, the demons aren’t so different from them.
Lady Knight’s successful scheme to feed the enemy horses infected
grain, and the squabbling of the Central nobles on how to carve up the Triad,
have delayed the fighting. A group of mercenaries finally get tired of waiting
and launch a raid of their own, but Knight uses hit-and-run tactics to beat
them with a smaller force. Just as the enemy has been routed, snow starts to
fall. There won’t be any fighting now.
In the Iron Country, the Maid sisters are working late in the print
shop when the Commander stumbles in, convinced Elder Sister is Crimson Scholar,
the source, in his own mind, of all his woes. He tries to kill the sisters, but
they’re saved by the timely intervention of the Iron General.
In the Demon Realm, Queen makes a public appearance before her people
and introduces Hero as her champion, Black Knight. His display of swordsmanship
is greeted with puzzled silence, so when Head Maid calls out “flashier!” he
uses some magic and blows away the top of a mountain. That’s more like it! Queen announces she’ll be calling a conclave
of the Great Races, and the people are even more thrilled. At last, they’ll take
the war to those cursed humans and beat them once and for all! Decidedly not
what Queen has in mind, but the crowd’s too exuberant to hear, or believe, anything
to the contrary.
In the Holy Capital, some officials are chewing out an Azure Demon
general over his people’s failed invasion attempt. Nevertheless, their deal is
still in effect – the Azure Demons will continue to antagonize the humans, allowing
the Church to maintain its power and influence. The Pope announces his
intention to call a Third Crusade, and a Holy Capital general shows the Azure
Demon a nifty little invention they got their hands on. It’s a wooden tube that
launches projectiles using black powder, and simple enough an army of slaves
can use it, guaranteed to change the face of war. They stole it from the
artisan Crimson Scholar hired to make it.
But that’s all in the future. For now, our protagonists have returned
to the manor in Winter’s Pass, and things are back to normal. The Maid sisters
continue to learn new things and come up with tasty new dishes. Head Maid still
says things that make Queen flush. Queen and Knight get into yet more arguments,
with Hero caught in the middle.
Thoughts
And so, the war goes on. Not what the protagonists spent the last
twelve episodes working towards, but from a story perspective I’d have to say
I’m not disappointed. Like I said last time, their goal is a big one, often
contrary to the interests of many powerful people and organizations, or at
least what they perceive to be their best interests. It’s not something that
can be achieved in a single lifetime, even a demon’s. And it’s not like they didn’t
have any successes either – the Southern Triad has embraced many of Queen’s
introductions and innovations. They’re trying to convince the Central Nations
that no, potatoes aren’t evil, and are beginning to entertain the idea that
they may have more in common with the demons than they previously thought. It
all ties back to what seems like the overall theme of the series, at least in
the anime. You can’t change the world completely, but that doesn’t mean you
shouldn’t do your part to try and leave it a better place than what you found.
Hero and Demon Queen have definitely succeeded in that regard.
Also, the Azure Demons and the Church are in cahoots. I LOL’d. I hadn’t
expected that, but it makes so much sense, and is amusingly ironic. Both profit
immensely from the war, so really, they actually have a reason to cooperate for
their mutual benefit. They’re already doing exactly what Hero and Queen are
working so hard to achieve, only they’re doing so in the name of destructive
ends. I suppose this would be the part where I grumble some more about the stand-in
for the medieval Church being portrayed as power-hungry and self-interested,
but I don’t see the need for it. Of course an institution as big and powerful
as the Church is going to have corruption within its ranks. That was true
historically, so there’s no reason for it not to be the same here, and it’s not
like the setting is supposed to be entirely true to history anyway. It also
fits with a secondary theme about the use and abuse of power, in a contrast
between how the Church uses it versus how people like Queen and Hero use
theirs. That comparison seems to suggest some implicit statement about power
wielded by organizations versus power wielded by individuals, but I’m not
prepared to go into that at the moment. Make of it what you will.
All told, I’m happy with the way things ended. There’s some unanswered
questions sure, and they saw fit to add to that in the final episode, with that
scene where Mage is in a cavern looking at some ginormous spell, and drops
hints about Hero and Demon Queen being reincarnations as part of an ongoing
cycle, with her as a “spare” of some sort. Then there’s also the various plot
coupons holy relics the Pope wants found (apparently the Light Spirit used
to be a mortal, since one of them is her bones), not to mention his intention
to launch another Crusade. There’s room for more story; there is more story (since
the title of the second light novel uses ‘kurultai,’ the term Queen uses for
the gathering of the Great Races, I’m inclined to assume the anime covers the
first novel), and this turned out to be a fun series, so I’d gladly watch more.
On the other hand, though, it’s hard to see where it could go without being
more of the same, and as it stands the anime was long enough to be both
entertaining and convey its central theme, so even if this is all there is, it
ended at a good place.
No comments:
Post a Comment