Sofia’s face when Makoto correctly understood how the Prison of Swords worked, and proceeded to destroy the swords, was amazing!

As well as Makoto’s “sorcerer? close combat fighter? nah, I’m an archer!”. Sofia was having such a hard time with Makoto, only to discover that he wasn’t even playing his strongest cards yet.

Damn, I really enjoyed this episode. Overall, I am happy with the adaptation of these fights, though I wish there was more. In particular, I feel like Shiki didn’t really get to show off all his ring powers enough. I did get a chuckle out of his chuuni-like lines that he said whenever activating them though. Shiki’s voice actor doing the deep Larva voice is pretty entertaining. One small thing about Shiki’s rings I noticed is that the healing ring he uses at the end is like a little spider. This would be a reference to Mio and her talents with healing.

Another thing that I think could have been elaborated on in this episode is about Makoto’s archery. When he calls himself a kyudoka, that is a very specific type of archer, an expert in traditional Japanese traditions and equipment. The bow that is used is asymmetric and is quite tall, even taller than most of the archers that use it. Here is an article about it.

Anyway, what I wanted to mention is that my memory is that by combining his kai ability with his archery, he is essentially able to guarantee he always hits his target every time, no matter what. And I mean no matter what. If he wants to hit multiple things with a shot, then the laws of space, time, and causality bend themselves to his will to make it happen. If you teleport away but Makoto still wants to hit you with his arrow, then he will. It is such a stupid OP ability that nobody can make sense of it. This is essentially what he is doing near the end of the episode when he blows up Fort Stella from half a continent away.

Looks like the final episode next week will be a bit of a denouement to the season. We need to debrief with everybody on what we have been doing and Makoto is now the proud owner of Kaleneon, so we have to figure out what to do about that.

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Navarre dies and Hibiki gains PTSD and goes through a season of character development. Sealy dies and everyone has moved past it in a couple minutes. o7 RIP random adventurer.

Though there was already a lot of death on that battlefield, hard to tell since there wasn’t much focus on it. I liked how they kept Lancer killing demon teammates as well as humans for swords but didn’t mention it like they did in the novel, you just had to notice the armor. Might be an actual example of show don’t tell actually happening.

Makoto knows that Root was watching 👀 Though Sofia didn’t have much of a comment on it, I can’t remember if she did in the novel or not… but not important so not going to look it up. He also didn’t appear to use Uchine in this fight, which I think is his strongest weapon (what he pulled when facing the goddess). I can’t remember if that was the same or not. I don’t really recognize the bow he had, so not sure if it’s special, though surely dwarf made. Also not sure about the sword Sofia pulled, I’m sure there’s some history there, maybe when the translated LN gets to… okay that might be a few years. (Edit: Oh right he literally says the bow is named Azusa. I completely missed that somehow. Now I remember, right, Uchine wasn’t his only weapon)

Really good episode, happy with how everything was adapted.

Excited for the finale, I imagine it will be a mop up episode not unlike season 1. There is one more thing I’m curious if they’ll adapt or not, so will have to see if it makes it into the last episode or maybe it was cut from the LN.