The forge in Clevatess literally does to king candidates what you would expect a normal forge to do with metal: “melt” down raw material so that they can be reforged. Obviously, we do this with metal because an iron ore, ingot or what have you isn’t particularly effective in its initial form. But according to the headless king, “all is as the forge wills it.” The forge has a mind of its own, and the items it creates are kings that it can control. The king obviously can still talk, bring up old memories, and voice his thoughts; he just can’t control his body. We can conclude that reforging a person doesn’t destroy the ego. Rather, former kings simply become a hostage within their own bodies. I naturally have to wonder how many have tried to break this cycle, and as a result, how they all failed so badly until now.
The whole thing is a bit confusing, though. The king’s head says it himself that he doesn’t have any control over his own body. Sure, but then why is the body, i.e. the will of the forge, even pausing to allow the the head to answer Clen’s questions? The dark beast lord only has a hold of the body’s arm and not the hand. There’s nothing stopping the body from releasing the baby into the forge, which is exactly what it does but only after the king has finished his spiel. The likely answer is that this is just lazy, tropey storytelling where the antagonist always explains everything to the protagonist before carrying out their evil plans.
It’s all moot anyways, because Clen isn’t going to let Luna die like that. As a result, he pulls a fast one: he already swapped the baby when he grabbed the headless king’s arm. The forge seemingly throws a tantrum of sorts when it tries to burn Clen and Luna with its flames. Clen finally calls for the master of the forge to come forth, which turns out to be the “Book of Toah.” So this is one of those sci-fi setting masquerading as fantasy, right? The forge looks like a machine — a machine running instructions from a book. To Clen, it’s a form of magic, but as they like to say, any technology you don’t understand might as well be indistinguishable from magic.
Clen then seems to undergo his own arc of despair and nihilism. They’ve all been dancing to a book’s tune, and he’s not the least bit happy about it. He’s also not happy then none of the other dark beast lords bothered to fill him in. To him, this has all been a pointless exercise, and he just wants to return to his mountain. Fair enough, but that doesn’t mean everything is meaningless. Of course, I believe this is the penultimate episode, so the story has to try and strike some fear into the audience. Oh no, is Clen really going to abandon Luna after fighting to keep the baby alive all this time? Look at the baby crying! You can’t just walk away from that! Well, it’s kind of a pointless cliffhanger. First, Clen has already defied the book by protecting Luna, so why stop now? Second, he’ll obviously come to realize that he actually cares for Luna after all, so perhaps the moral of the story is something like how our connections to one another isn’t meaningless. How cute.
We’re near the end of the first season, but we still have more questions than answers. We still don’t know the point of perpetuating the hero legend, especially since the “true humans” are supposedly gone from this world. We still don’t know what the “true humans” were really after. But I suppose these are all breadcrumbs for the rest of the series to follow and explore. What always keeps me coming back to a story, however, are the characters, and sadly, these characters and the connection between them are just not that interesting. The whole reveal with the forge and the hero legend falls flat for me, but it’s not actually the biggest problem.
Ultimately, the show’s pacing is actually a double-edge sword. Clevatess never gets too boring, because it doesn’t have any filler. In fact, we pretty much go from one big event to the next with very little fat in between. We start with Clen murdering heroes to adopting Luna and reviving Alicia, the trio getting captured by bandits, escaping said bandits only for Drel to immediately rear his ugly head and attack the kingdom, and now we’re here at this pivotal moment in the story. At no point, however, did we ever take a breather to establish the growing bond between Clen and Luna or Clen with, well, anybody. The aforementioned fat is the best part of any succulent meal; it’s the special ingredient that this show is sorely missing. Clevatess would have greatly benefited from slowing down once or twice to inject a few slice-of-life moments between all the action. We needed to see the bond between Clen and Luna slowly build up over time. Instead, the show is going to have Clen pick Luna back up in next week’s episode without any proper development, and it’s going to feel so hollow.
The battle continues
The other half of the episode is the continued struggle against Drel, but this time, Rhode finally makes it back in time to join the fray. Frankly, it’s your typical anime battle, so I don’t care for it. The animation this week is pretty janky, which is disappointing to see when the stakes are so high. But more importantly, the sequencing of events just leave a lot to be desired. For example, Drel does the anime classic “I’m right behind you now” trick, but he keeps slashing at the ground like a dumbass. Dude, just slash them directly. Pointy stick at soft human body. Do it. Quit playing with your food. Moving along, Drel is only super fast when he can’t do any real damage. When our heroes need time to come up with a plan, Drel suddenly slows down enough for Alicia to yell a command at Rhode not once but twice. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: I love it so much when combatants in anime just fight. It’s so much more raw and compelling than… whatever the hell this is.
The worst part is when Alicia lands what she thinks is the killing blow. Hell, it certainly looks like one. Unfortunately, Drel is now made of dark ichor, so he can just reconstitute his body. Oh god, he then takes on a JRPG final boss form! He even proceeds to give a JRPG final boss speech! Something about true humans controlling the world, everyone else including dark beasts are just pawns, blah blah blah, destroy the hero legend. Someone needs to mash the “Wrap it up” button. Well, despite the situation looking super dire for our heroes, I’m sure Alicia will somehow pull victory out of her ass in the final episode.
Stray thoughts & observations:
- I switched over to the Japanese voice track on a whim. I think the dub is pretty good in general, but Alicia’s Japanese VA definitely feels more warrior-like. The same actress even plays the dainty Silica in that S-Rank anime.
- Luna is known to the world as Hidelius VI, but his real name is Toth. I’m gonna have to say “Luna” is the best of the three labels. It’s a bit… new age hippy sounding, but it’s better than “Toth.”
- I can’t blame Luna’s father for killing himself. Who would want to become a slave? All the “stay alive for the kid” arguments go out the window when you don’t even have control of your own actions. Maybe he knew he would one day have to hold Luna over the flames of the forge, and he couldn’t bear that thought.
- Since it failed to “reforge” Luna, the forge disposed of the headless king because it no longer needed him, right? But did the forge somehow know that Luna was alive all this time? Why did it keep the king around for so long?
- Drel’s nihilism makes even less sense now that we understand the truth behind the forge. Like, okay, the king has always been under the forge’s control. At the same time, it’s not like we have to obey the king, y’know? You could also reveal the truth, destroy the forge (assuming this is even possible), and then “forge” a new nation from the old kingdom’s ashes. Why do we have to destroy everything at all? The likely answer is that he’s just a horrible person, but still, I can’t come up with a compelling reason for Drel to be so single-minded about his mission. Meh, I guess you could argue that he’s lost most of his marbles, and thus Vordin is mainly calling the shots.
- In response to being told the truth, Alicia spouts platitudes about being a hero. She then adds that even knowing what she knows now, “it was worth making the attempt.” Seeking the unknown and overcoming your limits is fine. “Facing your fate with optimism” is fine. But look, attacking anyone or anything without understand what they are or why they exist doesn’t sound heroic. I think there are a few things the so-called heroes could’ve changed about their approach.
