At a luxury hotel, Princess Sisbell encounters her older sister Alice and proclaims that they are rivals, both to inherit the throne and to secure the loyalty of their knight in shining armor—Iska. He and his comrades Nene and Jhin, who were supposed to be on vacation, discuss the trouble they’ve gotten into. Meanwhile, in the Sovereignty, the queen confronts her eldest daughter, Elletear, about leaking information on Sisbell’s whereabouts, but it turns out the “queen” was an impostor, and the whole conversation was set up by the real queen to test if Elletear could detect the fake. Sisbell confronts Team Iska about their big secret: that Captain Mismis has become a mage. Sisbell wants them to go undercover and escort her home to the Sovereignty, and in exchange she’ll provide a way to conceal Mismis’s status as a mage from the Empire. (Sisbell cleverly points out that her enemies are mages, and it’s natural for imperial soldiers to fight mages.) Iska, Nene, and Jhin agree for Mismis’s sake. As they travel, Sisbell aggressively tries to recruit Iska (Mismis and Nene DO NOT approve). The mysterious Lord Mask, member of one of the Sovereignty’s rival royal lines, visits Alice. There’s a gratuitous bathing scene so we can focus on Alice’s bust. The episodes ends with Alice and Iska once again having a chance meeting.
I have conflicted feelings about this. See, I dropped season one of this show without finishing, but it left me curious enough that I checked out the light novels the anime is based on…and became a fan! Unfortunately, this episode just confirmed my prior view of the adaptation: underneath is a good story with interesting characters, but it’s adapted poorly. This episode, with its incessant scene changes, awkward exposition scenes, and simultaneous neglect of important clarifying details, doesn’t live up the story’s potential. Oh, there was also a glaring error in the subtitles, where Jhin refers to “Lork Mask,” that was pretty distracting to me. Anyway, if you enjoyed the anime’s first season, I think you’ll like this one as well. Otherwise I’d advise you to skip this and go read the light novels, which are really good. That’s probably what I’ll do, anyway.
Our Last Crusade or the Rise of a New World is streaming on Crunchyroll.
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