「〈十戒〉始動」 (Jikkai Shidou)
“The Ten Commandments on the Move”
I’ve said it once, I’ll say it a thousand times: King is one of my sneaky favorites of this series. Though he’s a member of the so-far unstoppable Seven Deadly Sins, he comes off as a comparative underdog, since he struggles and scrapes and seemingly has magic more useful for wiping out mooks or utility, like Merlin with a power downgrade and none of her stone-cold assurance. It reminds me in a way of Thor Ragnarok, King is a character that should be transcendent but is made human relateable by his foibles, and because he’s outclassed by his companions.
Here, King was placed in a situation that’s illustrative for how you make characters like the Seven Deadly Sins work. You’ve got super powerful main character? Cool. Give them even more powerful enemies. That’s the problem with shows like Mahouka, it’s not that the main character is strong, it’s that he’s never appreciably challenged (except for by social institutions, which is hella frustrating). Here, the main characters are both strong and constantly challenged. Like I said in my preview, it’s like playing with action figures and making Superman fight Goku—only this time it’s, I don’t know, Booster Gold, and it doesn’t look like he’s got a shot at winning.
I’m happy that Ban didn’t get a chance to help. Not because I don’t like Ban—I’m always down to see Ban mix it up—but because it would have clouded the matter of King as a greedy ruler, who wants to protect his forest, his people, and Diane no matter what. I also really liked how, in addition to those others, King makes it clear in his little speech that Ban is one of the people he cherishes. Despite everything Ban is, he’s precious to King, because he recognizes who he truly is, and the love he holds for his sister. They really do come off as brothers-in-laws, they don’t exactly get along but they do value one another.
I also have no complaints about the shounen power up that leads to King’s victory. Like I’ve said before, this is very much a shounen series, and it embraces that fact. It just uses te tropes well. Of more concern to me is the ridiculous disparity between the Ten Commandment who’s shown up—Galand (Iwasaki Hiroshi), at 26,000—and the Sins. As I suspected, it really mucks things up. The battles against the Albions worked great without laying down numbers, and even mentioning that King’s power spiked to double that of his Albion was fine. Now it seems unreasonable that the Sins would have any shot whatsoever (outside of maybe Meliodas’ Full Counter), which could have been achieved without bringing math into it. Still, we’ll see how it goes. While I still think explicit power levels are a shitty idea, I’m sure it’ll be fine in the end.
Random thoughts:
- A fun game: see how many of the main cast’s seiyuu you can pick out voicing all the random fairies.
- I smell doujins coming! (That’s a lie. I’m sure they already exist.)
My SECOND novel, Freelance Heroics, is available now! (Now in print!) (Also available: Firesign #1 Wage Slave Rebellion.) Sign up for my email list for updates. At stephenwgee.com, the latest post: The Last Jedi SUPER SPOILERY Review.
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Omake
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