I enjoy this anime even though characters are sometimes stupid. Especially his father: really no investigation beforehand?

I consider Isaac being a dumbass realistic given that the likelihood he has received significant pushback from anyone is close to zero. There is plenty of lore indicating the aristocracy through greed and stupidity has warped the economy of this world.

The butler did his homework (in other words, the investigation) and reported his findings, but Isaac was having none of that, decided that Elm had cheated his way up the ranks, and the only thing left to do was to unmask the collaborator who knew of Elm’s aristocratic roots.

The plan had been to expose Elm’s failure to uphold his promise and then to execute him.

I suppose that there is a kind of irony that Isaac had unintentionally invalidated the spirit of Elm’s promise because he had barged into the guild with the expectation he would be killing Elm and leaving.

At the risk of incurring the wrath of people who are hate watching the show, I will say that the episode was fine. It is meeting my expectations in most ways.

The explanation that Malice was draining high level criminals was good that it confirmed certain suspicions that she is indeed power leveling and that doing so does result in a lack of practical experience.

Luce refusing to allow Elm or his father Isaac to negotiate her out of the room is a pretty funny running gag at this point. Also funny is that Elm sets a condition that should he win, Isaac has no more right to interfere with Elm’s life- clearly Elm has not thought this through.

Isaac already thinks it is impossible for Elm to win, but if Elm wins, Isaac would be forced to reconsider his decision to make Malice his heir, but Elm’s condition makes that decision irreversible. Elm really could have asked for the moon and just asked instead that Isaac pound sand instead.

It’s easier to chalk it up to cars are like mecha- if they aren’t the focal point of the anime, producers are not going to find specialists, so you end up with CG cars and maybe that will be better than okay if the anime is mostly CG (for instance, you probably wouldn’t notice cars being particularly noticeable in Dorohedero).

To some extent if you watch enough anime, you will tend to notice issues with characters playing musical instruments if you play that instrument or with sports techniques when those activities are not the focus of the anime.

Cooking can look terrible when it’s done as a kind of afterthought, which is especially funny because most people are familiar with what food ought to look like. Cars are probably more important to Americans than cooking is, so the cars thing probably is more of an afterthought to anime production in general.

And speaking of easy and cliched writing, Malice is suddenly obsessed with Elymas? That makes zero sense to me, at least only watching the anime. If she was really that obsessed, why wouldn't she have killed him rather than letting him leave home at the very beginning of the anime?

My hypothesis is that Malice was not in a position to just kill Elm when he was exiled, but his feats as an adventurer could undermine her claim to the position of heir to the head of their House. Her killing of the prisoner highlights two things in particular: she is efficiently power leveling up in a rather game player like way and the other is how ruthlessly she is pursuing her goal of staking her claim.

I guess in a way it wasn’t obvious because Ruche had to sacrifice her share for the trade to work and Elm was still stuck thinking he was working with 20% of the haul because he is still laboring under the assumption that his 20 80 split is the deal he has agreed to.

This works out fine for Ruche because now Elm owes her big, and he has no hope of abandoning her. Probably the hag worked out this strange relationship as well, so Elm got played good by the two women.

Clark does the klutz thing fairly convincingly, though.

We knew that, and Elm knew that, but there's no reason to assume the shopkeeper knew that. Unless there is, but I'm not gonna go rewatch the scene to find out!

My baseline assumption is that Ruche is figuring things out a bit later than Elm, so if she arrives at a given solution, particularly an obvious solution, Elm probably thought of it and then rejected that solution for some reason. Even supposing that this is not the case, Elm still rejects this solution and argues completely valid reasons for rejecting her solution.

As far as the shopkeeper is concerned, Elm is just another party leader trying to drive a hard bargain to maximize the party’s gold and her suspicion about Elm is that he is taking advantage of Ruche. The crone mentions this early on in their conversation and doesn’t believe Elm when he says it’s not like that.

When Ruche makes her suggestion and Elm refuses despite having wanted that skillbook, she revises her opinion of Elm and Ruche because it is then obvious that Elm is not bargaining in a way that is self-serving or even optimal. Her internal monologue stops short of saying this despite making basic observations and obvious deductions, but withholding the less obvious deductions is a something this show has been doing throughout its run.

I suppose it’s possible that someone might have to rewatch the episode. Or perhaps just rewatching the scene with these three characters might be necessary. Personally I find it funny that the audience is forced to imagine the mental state of these characters right at the point where we no longer have the benefit of hearing their internal monologues.

Personally I liked the episode.

There was some funny stuff like the parody of every other cooking show and it sets stakes for the not-Italians should imperial high command decide to open up yet another war front. There was also a nice contrast set up between what Tanya’s squad was used to and what they were able to experience during that day.

Technically high command might still be angry they could have lost their drunkard general because the not-Italians did a cowardly thing forcing his transport by sea in attempting to maintain their neutrality.

I suppose you don’t have to elaborate if you don’t feel like it.

Personally I was surprised at how willing Victoria was in becoming an asset again. Her new agency made clear that they have been watching her, that they know that she was being hunted, that they knew she was involved in the jailbreak, that they killed her pursuers, and that they were able to leak disinformation to stop the hunt.

I suppose one subtext was that they really could have arrested her at any time.

::: spoiler Tap for maybe spoilers I have watched and read enough espionage stories that I don’t really know what might constitute a spoiler, so I am putting these thoughts in a spoiler section. I am anime only and do not have any familiarity with the source material.

The agency had made it clear that her “safest” course of action (also convenient for the agency) involved some sort of expedition to acquire medication or something related to this special medicine. While the messenger was very nice and polite about it, the subtext was pretty clear, though.

Jeff is her new handler whether he knows it or not. I am leaning towards not because he has been “getting it” extremely late whenever the question of getting anything comes up. He did surprise me in these last two episodes even though the EP implied he would join Vicky and Nonna in some capacity.

:::

I chalk it up to narrative convenience. It could have been told as a flashback in a future episode or left out entirely, but I think it serves the purpose of world building and character development even if it’s not exactly subtle about either.