Apparently, this is a dragon.
And these are also dragons. But don’t forget that Bloody August was also a dragon… that looked like a dragon. Anyways, I’m kinda busy this week, so any grand plans I had in mind will have to be shelved for the time being. As a result, I’m just going to pump out this post real quick like and get back to my actual work.
— When we last left off, Orphen was leaving on a journey when he found a couple of stowaways in his wagon. Did he kick them out? Nah. And is he going to keep complaining about them tagging along? You betcha! We’ll find out later, however, that Orphen is half tsundere and half broke. Money talks.
— Where are we headed? I’m not sure. I just know that we have to cross through this forest that is apparently the home of all life. Somehow, I find that hard to believe.
— We’re off to a rousing start when Majic uses his magic in order to creep on Claimoh…? Claiomh? Man, if I can’t pronounce it, I can’t spell it.
— Anyways, I usually expect the roguish anti-hero to be the pervert. For whatever reason, I thought Majic would be clean and wholesome. I guess the joke’s on me.
— By the way, his name is Majic. Maybe that’s why he wants to become a sorcerer…
— At least Orphen tells the kid off. Nevertheless, he’s astonished by Majic’s ability to pick up magic so quickly. I mean… it’s in the name. Majic? That’s like being shocked that Mr. Crentist is a good dentist.
— Still, that doesn’t spare us from the inane conversations like how Claiomh is wearing Orphen’s pants because she intelligently decided to go on a road trip without packing. Or how food supplies are low because Majic eats too much. Oh, I shouldn’t forget to mention that Claiomh isn’t a good cook! I love road trips!
— It’s also pretty annoying how Orphen likes to dole out incomplete information and neither of the other two characters will call him out on it. Ooooh, neither Tafrem nor the Tower of Fangs are impressive! So, um, do you want to explain why? The royal family and the Kimluck Church don’t like sorcerers because…? I mean, I hate anime’s complete and utter reliance on exposition, but if we’re already here, we may as well just get it over with.
— Elsewhere, we see a girl converse with a giant wol–… I mean dragon! Dragon! It’s a dragon!
— In the middle of the night, Majic wanders off on his own to find more food. What is he going to do? Cast fireball on a poor forest hare?
— He eventually bumps into some forest maiden. Even though he had just been informed by his master that the forest is full of people who don’t take kindly to practitioners of the magical arts, Majic begins to perform his best Ryuji from Persona 5 impression: “HELLO DID YOU KNOW THAT I’M A SORCERER STUDYING SORCERY UNDER ANOTHER SORCERER? IN CASE YOU COULD NOT HEAR ME I AM A SORCERER.” Ah, bless his dimwitted soul.
— Like Orphen, the girl likes to speak incompletely. She tells Majic that he must leave because the forest is dangerous, but of course, we shan’t elaborate! There’s also a hidden village in this forest, but she can’t take him there and we shan’t elaborate on that either! Perish the thought!
— Eventually, the bad guys do show up and they’ve got gun power!
— And torch power!
— Claiomh tries to look all badass, but she immediately trips and falls on her ass. Nice. Needless to say, Orphen has to save the day. He also now has to rescue Majic. Our stowaways are just deadweight, essentially.
— It’s a small world so these two idiots are somehow involved. In fact, they’re the ones who leaked out information to the villagers about Orphen all because they didn’t want to clean a barn.
— So our hero and Claiomh eventually locate this hidden village in a massive forest. It’s magic, okay? Orphen’s one of the greatest sorcerers, so obviously, he would know how to use Google Maps.
— Even though Claiomh sees a wolf in this flag, it’s clearly a dragon.
— Then we take a detour in order to dump some information on the audience.
— Yes, the Weird Sisters. That’s just what they’re called, man. I don’t decide this stuff.
— So again, these non-dragoon-looking idiots are dragons… but they’re also called Celestials. And they couldn’t leave heirs… but they could somehow mix with humans? In any case, that’s how human sorcery was born!
— So I guess there are people still loyal to the dragons, and they hate sorcerers who are practitioners of sorcery that is derived from dragons. It’s all very clear now!
— Like in a shounen, Orphen tells Claiomh to go away because girls don’t get to have fun. On the other hand, she claims to have been trained to fight, but she fell on her ass just moments ago.
— After the girl departs, Orphen fights a few angry villagers before Fenrir, the dragon, appears right behind our hero.
— We’ll just open up MS Paint and invert the colors… aaaaand the end. No, really, we’re done now. That’s the cliffhanger. Come back next week. If you kids behave, we’ll invert the colors back to normal.
Moe Sucks 
Have you noticed a trend of adventure anime not being about adventure at all? Most of the time they are obsessed with explaining and expositing all the mechanics and systems of a world or introducing pointless characters or conflicts (which get defused in the most boring way possible).
The isekai genre is the one most guilty of this, which is odd because this genre has a lot of potential. Almost all isekais are obsessed with boring and dry world building or political machinations and schemes(Light novelists are obsessed with this particular concept for some reason) of a place we barely know anything about. And any isekais thay aren’t harem trash or airheads dicking around aimlessly belong to the “Adventure is not as fun and lighthearted as you think” tier. Goblin slayer, Re:Zero, Shield hero etc. all deal with this topic about how adventuring is a dangerous and brutal endeavor. Ironic considering there is no real adventure anime coming out while we get these dark and edgy anime showing you the ‘startling truth about adventuring’ by the handful every season.
The only anime that I can think of that possesses actual adventuring would Little witch academia and One piece. This makes me sad because anime is such a wonderful medium and it has the capacity to show some really interesting shit. I would really love to see an anime similar Tin Tin. Tin Tin covered most of its adventures with an overarching mystery that made uncovering them mich enjoyable as the show progresses, and it also introduces characters in an organic and grounded way. At the same time, it does also deal with adult topics like dictatorships. Hell, I’d even take an anime’d version of Tin Tin.
Maybe Shield Heroine is up your alley, but I feel it goes too far in the other direction: all adventuring and no conflicts.
As for your point about these shows being inundated with exposition, I dunno… I think the people adapting these stories to anime are just bad storytellers. You can get away with certain things in a novel. When you have a visual media, you’re supposed to replace a lot of those words with visuals instead, but these guys don’t know how to do it. Or they’re too lazy to do it.
About the grimdark storylines, they get people’s attention, I guess. Goblin Slayer is actually pretty damn boring, but it got people noticing thanks to the goblin rape… which honestly rarely came up again after the first episode. It feels like a cheap ploy. Shield Hero also wasn’t that dark after a few episodes. It just became standard harem trash and thus boring. I couldn’t even finish ragging on the series.
But shield heroine basically has no context to its exploration or adventuring. Then there is the case of it being an MMO, which means it’s manmade hence very predictable. The real world (Any world that isn’t inside a game) is far more unpredictable and can make up for some interesting shit.
I think what I’m gunning for in adventure anime is a good mystery, something that compels our characters to go to places.
Well, I never said the show was good.