Cavalry of the Failed Knight #12 — Who Needs to Animate a Fight?

December 19th, 2015

 

We don't even need to show it!

Impressions:

I wasn't expecting a lot from this episode, but holy Zeus, was it horrendous. The protagonists barely even showed up for the first half of the 'climactic' battle, then it was time for friendship power, and the entire 'battle' was shorter than the time spent to summon their weapons, and ended in a single blow. This was without any hyperbole the worst fight of the entire goddamned series, and I hesitate to even call it a fight at all. What's the matter, Silver Link? Did the budget completely run out? You should be ashamed of thinking that fight was acceptable.

Anyway, stakes at minimum, struggle was to show up, not to actually fight, and it was won in seconds. But boy, did they win that tournament! Why the hell am I supposed to care about that again? Special note goes to the supposed Big Bad who was Team Rocketed away at the conclusion of the arc because 'love' conquers… school tournaments, I guess?

Final Thoughts:

While it did distinguish itself a little bit from others of its light novel ilk early on by having a bit more of a budget and moving the main duo into their relationship quickly, it extremely frustratingly proceeded to do jack all with either of those and got mired in a goddamned school tournament where the stakes could not be lower and coincidence always contrived to fall into line where they were supposed to. While the fights were animated, there was rarely ever any weight to them because of the aforementioned tournament, so very little was ever on the line except for bruised feelings, and almost all of them were badly broken up by exposition in the peanut gallery. Even when they shut up and focused on animating the action instead of talking heads, it all too often took the form of batting practice until someone spontaneously remembered they were holding an extra secret power back thanks to someone yelling encouragement, rather than anything not exasperating.

As for the characters… as I said, early on, they seemed promising. However, it began at ridiculous levels of physical… I hesitate intimacy, so let's go with contact, tried to rewind it, and make things cutesy and chaste after the fact. You can't unring that bell. Even without that, the relationship between the two leads was insubstantial as hell. You could've removed the two or three kisses and it would've fallen right back into being indistinguishable from all its other "do nothing" LN bretheren. All of the rest of the characters suffered similarly. At best, they existed for the 2-3 episodes of their arc, and then immediately disappeared off the face of the planet again. I guess it's better to have them obnoxiously insert themselves into every single episode, but damn near everyone was a whiff of smoke passing in the breeze. Antagonist was… nonexistent, but that ship's sailed this season.

It threatened to be a little better than the usual magical school magical fighting magical teenagers light novel schlock that Japan spews 23,481 out a year for a few episodes, but those were ambitions it didn't come anywhere even close to reaching and like so many of its ilk, is going to be forgotten in approximately 2 hours after the final episode, a particularly terrible one at that, is viewed.

Posted in Cavalry | 10 Comments »

10 Shouts From the Peanut Gallery

  • Paulo27 says:

    “Guys, it’s the final fight, I think we should go with something big!”
    “On the other hand, it *is* the final fight, I don’t think anyone cares about this at this point, we can probably get off not doing anything.”
    “Hmm, good point.”
    “And with the leftover budget we should go drinking! Gotta try to forget about this…”

  • The Phantom says:

    So what is the backsotry between this and Asterisk, the show are just waaaay to similar to be coincidence, there has to be something we dont know about it.

    To be fair Asterisk is the better one, and anti magic academy is better than these two, but even then Fafner and Monogatori were the best of the season, which as usual was average at best.

    Having said that, when can we expect a next season preview?

    • Aroduc says:

      It’s not like either are any different from things like Absolute Duo, Sky Wizards Academy, World Break, Blade Dance, etc.

      These two just happened to have adaptations on the same day, in the same season, and both be especially ridiculously unambitious for their ilk.

      As for the preview, I’m busy as hell with family/Christmas stuff this weekend, but I was going to get started on it early next week. Goal is next Saturday.

      • XK says:

        Uh, no. I’ve seen Sky Wizards, Blade Dance, etc. They were magic harem shows, but they had somewhat different plots.

        Asterisk and Cavalry were were MUCH closer to each other than this!!!

        They had nearly identical character sets, relationships, and story arcs throughout – even individual beats followed closely to one another. Something is weird here.

  • Germanguy says:

    Ikki is to worn out for an Long fight, he put all his last Stamina in this 1 only Attack, he need to overpower the “raw Lightning Power” like Kenpachi from Bleach. All in one attack. but if she would came out unharmed, he had fall from exhausted anyway

  • algorithm says:

    Every time you wrap up one of those pieces of shit you can’t drop for some reason, I imagine the stories you’re gonna tell your grandchildren later on.

  • sage says:

    Next up, Regionals!

  • *Sigh says:

    Some people can appreciate the intensity of the battle and good directing while others complain it didn’t look “eye catchy”

    It is what it is,sad but thats how our world works

  • OverMaster says:

    “We don’t even need to show it!”

    Negima has a lot to answer for.