Sword Oratoria Episode 5 Review: The Redhead and the Lone Ruler

Greetings everyone! It has indeed been a while. Before getting to the review I would like to apologize for the delays. A lot has been going on in the real life and I couldn’t manage to get down to writing the articles. It is hard to be a student in Japan, who has to make presentations all the time as well as keep up with the part-time job of being an English teacher. But luckily things have calmed down quite a bit, and with everything settling down it will be easier to get back to the reviews. I promise to make no more delays, and finish the reviews with pride (lol, all the anime is getting to me).

But enough of useless speeches, and let’s talk about Sword Oratoria. Things have been quite fired up for the last couple of episodes, and we shall get through them one by one. As a person who had avoided Danmachi because of the impression that it’s your regular ecchi and harem anime, I must say that this show has surprised me more than any other one in the past couple of years. I am pretty sure that many of you who watch it might have had the exact same opinion and impression that I had before actually watching the show. But while there is quite a bit of fan service, including panty shots and many other cliches of the genre, Danmachi manages to live up to peoples’ expectations. The most amazing thing about this anime is the fact that it actually has more to offer to its audience than just fan service. When you get past the couple of first episodes of the first season, you realize that it actually has a pretty deep story, and is quite dark. I dare say that Danmachi reminds me of Sword Art Online at some times (however, just the very first Aincrad arc). And while the latter was a disappointment for many of its fans, including me, by switching to mainly fan service, Danmachi has the advantage of showing you all the cliche things from the very beginning, and switches to be more focused on the story from the middle of the show. Simply genius.

Okay, I won’t bore you with my opinions on different anime, and will get straight to the point! Let’s get down to business!

Japanese Original Episode Title: 赤髪と孤王

Plot

Well, this was one hell of an episode. I don’t even know from where to start. There is so much to say about it. But I think I want to mainly concentrate on Aiz. For the first time in two seasons, we got to see Aiz in a situation where she couldn’t really do much. The animal standing against her was strong, really strong, to a point that Aiz was actually having a hard time defending herself, not even talking about trying to put up a fight. But the thing that bothered as well as interested me the most was the fact that the strange tamer who was pretty much the mastermind of all of the ordeal in the dungeon town, as well as behind the murder that happened in the previous episode, knew stuff about Aiz, just by looking at her magic, Tempest. She called her Aria, and this seemed to really get to Aiz. I am pretty sure this has something to do with her backstory, maybe even with the person to whom she wanted to match up with strength, maybe her mother?

Come to think of it, we really don’t know much about Aiz, except that she is an exceptionally strong adventurer, a bit of an airhead, and belongs to Loki Familia. Considering that she is one of the main characters, this is little information about her. Being damaged so badly by the tamer is something I find unbelievable. The tamer even managed to get Finn to sweat, while Finn is considered to be one of the strongest adventurers in the whole universe.

Episode Highlights

Going back to the fact that Aiz was called Aria, we were shown a flashback in a form of her dream. The woman who looks a lot like Aiz, who I assume is her mother, or maybe older sister, was also called Aria. The thing is: what is an Aria? I don’t think it’s a name, but rather a title. Her child-self is very different from her current-self. She is more… how should I put it, bright and full of life. Current Aiz is more of a cool and thoughtless creature. There must have been some traumatic event in her early childhood connected with the woman from her memories. But I guess we won’t get the answers that easily.

Comments

Turning to the other part of the episode, we saw Loki doing some more of her investigation. I wonder how much of her questions got answers, because I personally have a lot of questions at this point and none of those have gotten answers so far. What is interesting is the fact that this season which was supposed to be a gaiden, basically a backstory, ended up to an extent even more interesting than the original. I do miss Bell and especially Hestia, but I must also admit that thanks to the fact that Aiz is the center of second season, I got to love and appreciate her a bit more.

Aria?

Well let’s stop this review right here! I hope you enjoyed it, and I do hope that you agree with me at least on some of these points. However if you don’t, feel free to start a discussion in the comments! We here on MANGA.TOKYO always welcome debates! See you in the next review of Dungeon ni Deai o Motomeru no wa Machigatte Iru Darouka Gaiden: Sword Oratoria!

Did you like Episode 5 of Sword Oratoria? Let us know in the comments below by using either the forum or the Facebook tab! Join us in our new forum and let’s talk about our favorite series! Also, don’t forget to check the rest of our episodic anime reviews for Spring 2017.

NEXT TIME: Subjugation and Escape (討伐と逃亡) Toubatsu to Toubou