Dec 23, 2023
It's unadvisable to pay too much attention to the details of Saihate no Paladin: the show is the anime equivalent of an ouroboros, except instead of eating itself it constantly retcons itself. There's no foreshadowing or implicature, there are only post hoc explanations not just for blatant violations of the established worldbuilding, but even for mundane narrative hooks. Which isn't a boundary that's wise to keep pushing, at some point the viewer might just unsuspend the disbelief.
Also this isn't exactly the kind of random seasonal isekai with harem & goofing, it can't get away with some mediocre production. The animations aren't actually that bad, except
...
the most clutch moments are covered by something, like the dust on the battlefield or light from the magic being cast. For instance, in one scene William is wearing the armor, in the next he's naked. The implication is that the armor was disintegrated, which would have been a pretty cool scene if only we could have seen it.
[Spoilers Ahead]
Plotwise, William being William means all the other characters struggle to keep up. For instance: a talking tree tells Meneldor that the off screen trial he previously undertook granted him the power of the forest. Ye, whatever, cool, a power up, albeit undeserved. Except it's not. After inheriting this power Meneldor is exactly the same as before.
And, because Menel is a lost cause, the show moves on to Al, a dwarven squire William starts training. Months pass and he finally gets to the point of being as useless as it's expected. The reason he's being trained is because a terrible foe is awakening: Valaciaca, the evil dragon. William is supposed to be scared of Valaciaca so he's scared of Valaciaca. After all, he can't be a hero without a proper obstacle to overcome. Except, despite the show's best efforts, nothing about Valaciaca feels that threatening: the most prominent signs of its presence are a bunch of dwarves displaced from their kingdom, and a random earthquake which I would argue is too intense to have originated from a dragon the size of Valaciaca, who's still resting miles away. So basically its threat level is hard to objectively parse. Again, William is scared, but also he intends to face the dragon with a party of 5, because: "numbers won't matter against a dragon". Nobody questions that logic, he doesn't elaborate.
The actual fight between the party and the dragon is just awful: half of it - to be charitable - is wasted on pointless predictable banter, the rest is William doing his usual heavy lifting while everyone else lies face down, and all of a sudden we're schooled about more stuff that just happened and shouldn't have, such as the existence of a single spell that is exclusive to dragons. William is then spent, with no mana left, which means plenty of mana left as soon as it's convenient for the narrative. Ex-machina Stagnate and Gracefeel summon the corpses and spirits of the dwarven heroes who died in the rust mountains to wound Valaciaca many years prior, and all of a suddden we have an army. Didn't numbers not matter only a few episodes earlier? And apparently this is the perfect time to bring up the fact that Valaciaca's flames can even burn the very soul of a living being. At this point the show is basically begging for the viewer to consider both the dragon as a threat and also the secondary characters as useful, failing on both fronts for the same reason: William is too much.
Of course everything ends with loads of pats on the back and some other shenanigans. I'd like some pats on my back myself, for believing in the show till the very end.
Reviewer’s Rating: 4
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