Season 3 is turning out to be more like season 1, which was something I hoped would happen. Season 2 was a lot of day-in-the-life stories, which was cool because it was the life of Earth Kids on a world full of animal-people who used magic and did all kinds of cool stuff. So it wasn't anything at all like my life.

But season 3 looks to be telling longer term story arcs, and they're back to dealing with demons again. I don't know if the current arc is going to end up occupying the entire series or not; that could go either way. But episodes 1 and 2 are part of a story arc and it's only just beginning.

At the end of ep 1, Nanami and Shinku had found their luggage and reequipped, and were finally able to fight at full power, which they did at the last moment to defeat a demon which was attacking Sharl.

"Sharl" seems to be her name (probably "sharu" in katakana, but the "L" sound is definitely coming through in how everyone pronounces it). She's a horse-girl (which is awesome).

This one looks like an iPad.

Things have changed since series 2. The obvious utility of "Brave Connect" has led to a lot of other people creating magical video phones of various forms, and it seems that both Shinku and Nanami had them in their luggage. (Why?) so at the beginning of this episode they both phone home, to Milliefiore and Leo respectively. So the panic is off; everyone knows that Shinku and Nanami are fine, and knows where they are: The Dragon Forest on the Corone Plateau.

Sharl introduces herself as ryuu no miko desu. Which means "I am the dragon priestess". Interestingly everyone knows the title. She's been living alone, so suddenly having dozens of visitors, let alone such important ones, is kind of overwhelming for her.

She gives Shinku and Nanami a bit of a tour and shows them a couple of the true dragons. The demon attacks started a few months ago, and they are weakening the true dragons. The true dragons seem to be elemental gods, even more important than the tochigami (land gods) like Yuki, and they seem to be weakening. The smaller demons are coming from a large one somewhere and Sharl hasn't found it yet. She's very worried.

She doesn't want help, but she's going to get it anyway. You know that.

There's a demon attack while they're waiting, and Sharl goes out to fight it. She tells Shinku and Nanami to not get involved, but of course they don't listen. Sharl stops the first demon, but the second one, which flies, almost bags her. Shinku saves her. And this is when Couverte shows up. The sky knights then fight the demons.

D'Arquien is obviously concerned, and asks Valerio and Adelaide to look into it. They're talking and then have an "oh shit" moment when they realize what it is. They stand up and start issuing orders for a full military alert and movement of all forces to the dragon forest. They also order messages sent to the other nations. Seems that the demon in question could eventually threaten the entire continent.

So it looks like the quest I hoped for is going to happen: everyone hunting some titanically powerful demon. The central force looks to be the three heroes, Couverte, Gaul, the Genoise, Rico, and Eclair. Those are the people who are with Sharl now. And I couldn't have hoped for better.

Here's a bet: We've seen that it's possible for two ring-wearers to combine their power in a single attack. Millefiore and Leo did it against that giant rabbit. I bet we see a six-way attack, three monarchs plus three heroes, before this is all done, because I bet the final boss is too strong even for Brioche.

Will this story arc fill the entire series? I think it's possible it might run like 10 episodes, leaving two at the end for wrapups and character moments. If so that will be just fine with me.

UPDATE: I'm not at all surprised by this. The second series does feel like "day in the life" stories, but if you look closely they're laying a lot of groundwork. They introduced two new heroes, one entire new country, set up the relationships between them all, introduced Adelaide and Valerio and Itsuka, and gave us a lot of back story. Since they didn't intend to use any of it in the second series, they took their time and did it in small pieces, spread out over all 12 episodes. But look at how much different the situation is at the end of the second series compared to the first!

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in General Anime at 02:35 PM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
Post contains 797 words, total size 5 kb.