However, if that was the case, wouldn’t it have influenced Duke and the handful of others that don’t seem affected by it by now?

Right? We’ve seen Henry get broken out of it. Maybe Alicia has some kind of cheat skill too since she’s a reincarnation.

The confrontations with Liz are going to be epic. And yes, that push to Ms. Freckles so Alicia could whisper to Liz… amazing.

ALICIA IS BACK! And the first thing she does is give her eye away. Guess she really wants a reason to wear that eyepatch. And boy does it make her look like such a villainess

@rikka@ani.social

Still, I found it weird that she gave it away basically for nothing. That wasn’t very villainessy of her. We get confirmation that her magic is now at least at level 91, since she needed that level of magic to give away her eye. Whether or not her magic is at 100 or not remains to be seen. I still think it’s possible she went straight to 100, but considering she was so excited about giving her eye away she did it immediately after leaving the cottage I have my doubts now.

And the confrontation with Liz. That was so fierce!

This exchange seems a bit more straightforward in answering some lingering questions. It appears that Liz doesn’t have knowledge of the game. Rather, she is aware that no matter what she does things always work out for her. She basically has plot armor as the protagonist. It could be that her brainwashing is just a side-effect of this phenomena and she’s completely unaware she’s even doing it. If that’s the case, it makes me wonder how Alicia is able to counteract it. I do love how Alicia basically reprimands Liz for not trying to min-max her cheat ability.

Prince Duke shows up to be creepy again. Yes Duke, tell the girl you’ve been watching her constantly without her knowledge.

But in a surprise twist, Alicia screws up. She ends up chastising Duke and pushing him away. Wait, isn’t that a perfectly normal thing to do when someone basically admits to stalking you? Well, considering that Alicia internally says she didn’t want to say those things, it makes me wonder if the game phenomenon isn’t trying to force Alicia back towards her intended path. Or maybe she was just caught off-guard and genuinely screwed up since she wasn’t expecting Duke to be angry with her.

At the very end we finally get a good look at Mel

This is the glimpse we got of Mel last week:

Considering that Duke tasks her with finding out the secrets of Liz’s ability to brainwash people, how she seems to talk in an omnipresent voice to Duke, and how Mel calls Alicia a “villainess,” I’m guessing she’s some kind of supernatural entity. She might even have some insight to the workings of the game.

Just wow, what a lot to unpack this episode.

Infantry throughout history has often used horses or mules for transport, then gotten off them for the actual fighting.

I believe the name for those were “dragoons”. I thought about it, but my understanding was they were armed with muskets. Since firing a rifle from horseback usually meant you missed, they would dismount before engaging. I suppose it’s not a stretch to have dragoons that only carried swords, but we also know that they had 5000 troops in that battle and even if they doubled up the riders that’s over 2000 horses. We saw, maybe 2 dozen in the retreat

They knew what route they would be retreating along, so why were there no traps?

Wait… I know! They couldn’t get any wood for pikes or chevaux de frise so they had to retreat all the way back to the forest… the forest that’s entirely made of wood… nevermind. Maybe we just shouldn’t think too hard about it. ;)

There’s that one he buys from the store in an SLF Mini, but we don’t see the inside of that one. But aside from that, I think that about covers all the ones we’ve seen so far.

I’m really enjoying Let This Grieving Soul Retire, if only because it’s exactly the kind of trash I enjoy.

Okay, this episode brings back the awesome. Glad I decided to give it another episode.

@rikka@ani.social

Koga FINALLY becomes interesting. He realizes he’s weak and has always been weak because he never stood up for himself not even once. He’s still a puppy though, but now he’s trying to be a wolf.

Also, turns out that Noel is part of Laughing Coffin! THIS IS ACTUALLY A DEATH GAME AND HE’S A PLAYER KILLER!

Okay, so not really. But damn if the talker “level up” icon isn’t ominous.

Oh, good idea!

Look at you doing all the detective work once again!

made it all the way up to chapter 85 in this episode btw

Neat! How many chapters have been released total?

I think this series does the politics/negotiation side of things a lot better than the actual warfare. The tough thing about writing characters like Rosell and Mireille that are supposed to be geniuses is that they can really only be as smart as the author.

Very true. I was reading the Destiny’s Crucible series (which is not a Japanese LN series… crazy, right?) and the author did a good job with this particular isekai because the MC is basically a smart Earthling placed down on a Medieval Times planet so he’s constantly like, “I THINK this is how stuff like this works, but I’m not sure.” It allows him to get things wrong. Unfortunately things got really boring in the 4th book and I haven’t gone back to it.

But back to Aristocrat, the strength really is in the character development and political intrigue so I can let some tactical buffoonery slide. I mean, one battle basically boiled down to “My mage is better than your mage” so it’s whatever XD

This show was just stupid fun. The insanely OP MC who just does whatever he wants. His maid who is a legendary swordswoman. The ultimate evil demon who gets tamed into something of a pet. Oh, and let’s not forget the adventurer that falls for the MC’s alter-ego, lol.

Has a season 2 been announced?

Oh snaps, I loved the original. And it’s a sequel and not a remake. Joy!

Haha, yeah. It’s a big giveaway that something is adapted from a Japanese Light Novel when the title is a full on description. Oshi No Ko and Blue Lock are also a manga adaptations, so also normal titles. Fun times!

Anyway, I’ll definitely have to check out the manga now!

Oof, what a weird episode. The pacing, battle tactics, animation, etc all felt off.

I did like this exchange though:

@rikka@ani.social

Ars giving him the toy spoke volumes without using words. It makes his appearance later feel very natural and in-character.

But the battle itself felt very un-natural. Telling people to get in a circle formation to counter the cavalry… no, that’s what pikes are for. And it wasn’t like the cavalry was a surprise; they knew the castle had cavalry.

“Hey great strategist, should we get some pikes? You know, the most basic military infantry tactic against horses?”

“Nah, just stand in a circle with swords. They’ll NEVER see that coming!”

Later:

“Retreat!”

“What about our infantry?”

“They have horses now!”

“Uh… where were we keeping all these horses? And if they have horses why are they infantry and not cavalry?”

“Pssh… i dunno.”

Even Later:

“The enemy cavalry has speed hacks and can get in front of us!”

“It’s because your horses have to carry all that heavy armor”

“But… your troops also wear armor.”

“I know what I said…”

I feel this probably made a lot more sense in the light novel but translating that into animation didn’t quite work out. Speaking of animation, some of it was bad enough to be distracting. I know that horses are notoriously difficult to get right in anime but this wide-angle shot felt especially off:

If the foot soldiers had just retreated normally without magically summoning horses from their horse pocket, then the enemy cavalry catching up would not only make more sense, but would be more dramatic when they split the retreating army in two rather than nipping at their heels (as would be expected). Maybe we fix the animation struggles too since people are marching instead of horses bouncing around like they’re on pogo-sticks.

I would also have liked to see more of the hostage rescue. “Oh no, it’s the enemy.” “We’re here to rescue you whether you like it or not. Check out my knife. It’s a Benchmade.” “Oh, okay, we’ll go with you.”

Oh nice. I like this silly and wholesome slice-of-life meets fantasy anime. And it doesn’t even have a stupid name like, “That One Time I Got Sold to a Demon by my Wicked Parents but the Demon is actually now my Loving Grandfather… As Long As I Don’t Let Anyone Know I’m Actually A Human As They’ll Kill Me For Sure!”

That was a thrilling race, and this episode captured that suspense well.

Yeah, I think I would agree with you there. The race as a whole is absolutely thrilling. This episode wasn’t BAD by any means, just nothing surprising happens. But hey, that’s racing. And the conclusion is going to be mad epic.

No, women don’t think of anything except how to please their men… :-/ 😒

I remembered your words from last week the ENTIRE time. Bechdel Test Failure XD

Felt like an overall weak episode without two much happening. The Porsche GT3 drops a spot. The Ferrari catches up. Beckenbaur retakes the lead. Nothing really surprising there.

Some of the more interesting things happen outside the racing. As such, I’ll just leave this pic of the Angels here.

@rikka@ani.social

This episode is basically all just setup for the race conclusion next episode. We see that in both the episode’s title and the checkered flag in the preview. While this episode was a bit of a bust, next week’s should be epic.

4 minutes into the episode and we get the scene I was waiting for… Bilac totally freaking out at the Gold Crystal Scorpion Parts

One picture isn’t nearly enough to convey how shocked Bilac was. She actually dies from shock and now Sunraku doesn’t have an ancient craftsman anymore, hence the “Despair” in the episode title.

@rikka@ani.social

Okay, just kidding. Bilac’s fine. The aforementioned “Despair” is because Sunraku cannot equip any of the sci-fi armor in the Inventoria due to Lycagon’s curse mark.

It makes me wonder if Bilac might make Sunraku a sci-fi helmet or something. Either way, Sunraku is super bummed out about not being able to use sci-fi suits in SLF. To get over it, he does the next best thing: plays another game with Sci-fi suits: Armored Core 9 Nephilim Hollow.

For an isekai, it’s amazing how many different games we see aside from the titular Shangri-La Frontier. I’m sure some piece of information from Nephilim Hollow will become relevant to SLF.

Be sure to watch the SLF Minis after the credits (there’s two). They’re both good, although the second one reminds me of a joke from How I Met Your Mother.

Recalling Subaru’s arguably lowest point right before the speech was brilliant

I liked that too. I feel like Julius was saying, “you talked a bunch of shit but then actually made it happen.”

I thought they were going to bring in bard girl to sing and lift everyone’s spirits, but I thought this worked better.

I was thinking that too initially, but you’re right. This definitely worked better. At first his speech sounded… terrible. But then I realized it was actually perfect for Subaru. He’s an ordinary person with few redeeming qualities. He has nothing special going for him except Return by Death. He was basically saying, “I’m a weak and pathetic person but because there are people I care about I will fight and I will win. B-T-Dubs, I also killed a Sin Archbishop. Did I mention I’m weak and pathetic? What’s your excuse?”

What happened to “Don’t tell the Sin Archbishop your name?”

I’m guessing Gluttony has to know the name and face of the person to eat their existence. Subaru’s name is already well known so just saying it again shouldn’t be a problem.

Only ONE female character on the poster? Seems suspicious.

I forgot how amazing that original scene was. And this is freaking HILARIOUS and AMAZING. I can’t wait for the fansubs and the official dub.