Record of Grancrest War (Episode 10) - Blade of Betrayal

Marrine steps up her attack on Alturk. When word reaches her that Milza has fulfilled his part of the bargain, she sits and waits. Villar, however, is busy handing out orders to his lords and taking the fight to the Alliance.

What happened?

So, Milza has killed his father and assumed the position of King of Dartania so that he can lead its army against Villar. He sets sail with his fleet but is met by opposition from Villar who is aware of his treachery. After several battles, many of the ships are damaged, forcing the Dartanians to head to land on the small ships.

Villar has given orders to all of his lords including Theo, who is to hold the Forest of Eternal Darkness. David Lasic, however, is given free rein to attack a neighbouring nation and cause all sorts of chaos.

One of Villar’s brothers was hasty in his decision to attack and needed to be saved by Solon, the Theater King and his army, who then waged a brutal skirmish against the Waldren Knights. Sadly, it didn’t end well for Solon or his men, but Villar’s brother escaped unharmed.

Another of Villar’s connections, Edokia, the Queen of Haman has set sail with her fortress ship and meets Milza at sea, destroying what was left of his fleet.

Meanwhile, Theo defended the Forest of Eternal Darkness with a much smaller army, although no one is quite sure how he did it…

Record of Grancrest War Episode 10 Milza Attacks

What did you think?

When it comes to epic fantasy, I’ll put up with quite a lot. You want to have uncomfortable sex scenes and troubled relationships, fine. Maybe, you’d like to introduce a mysterious force know as chaos and then not worry about it for a while. All right, I’ll wait and see. However, I draw the line at an epic battle going on and not getting to see it! It reminds me of Lord Marksman and Vanidis with the battle tactics and how it would then only show us a small portion of the actual fight. Well, we didn’t even get that much.

It was an interesting decision to throw so many new characters at us in this episode, and of course, that made it hard to care about their battles, especially when Theo and Siluca are off fighting another one. I did quite like the historical references with Solon quite clearly supposed to be a mash-up of the Greeks. A lot of Sparta references there. And, Queen Edokia reminds me somewhat of Cleopatra, at least with her lavish baths.

I feel like this episode was a bit too convoluted and we would be better off focusing on Theo and Siluca. After all, aren’t they the protagonists?

Record of Grancrest War Episode 10 Edokia Queen of Halan

What have you learnt?

It feels like this series has lost sight of the story it was telling, or at least the one that started things off. If this was a book, the head-hopping and the sheer number of perspectives would make it a hard one to get through. What that tells me is that the focus is too wide and that will make it hard to get invested in the events that unfold before us. I think people think epic means that you can just keep adding more and more, but there needs to be a purpose to it. It’s especially ineffective when a new character is introduced and killed before anyone has the chance to connect with them.