For all the build up, Spriggan gets sniped immediately at the start of the episode, and by Tsav of all people, too. Rhyno, the demon formerly known as Puck Puca, then personally finishes the job by stomping the life out of Spriggan. Not before relishing in Spriggan’s cries of fear, of course. Naturally, I don’t feel bad for the demon who murdered a bunch of orphans. I just… sure, I didn’t expect Spriggan to go out like this, so I guess you could argue that the show surprised me. But why? Why take this route? Franci did this whole “I must find the demon lurking within the city” schtick episodes ago just for said demon to go out like a chump. Spriggan didn’t even put up a fight. Hell, its best laid plans were to try and assassinate Teoritta in relative daylight. It’s so anticlimactic. Defying expectations doesn’t mean it’s automatically narrative brilliance. What it does mean, however, that Xylo was just a decoy. All this time, I thought that this was his story, but it was someone else’s instead: Kivia.
Elsewhere, the captain of the Thirteenth Order has her worst fears confirmed by Frenci: her uncle is a filthy coexister. As a result, she tries to have him arrested, ’cause she probably still assumes that this is a just world. She assumes that she can convince him to atone. To put it another way, this confrontation is the real climax of the show. After all, I would love to know what deeply motivates folks like Marlen to betray their own kind. Sure, you can toss out one-word concepts like greed, but I expect a compelling conversation — a battle of opposing worldviews, if you will — between a man of the cloth and the niece who once looked up to him as if he had been her own father. And at first, we kinda get that…? Like Shiji Bau, he claims to be doing all of this in order to the protect the people he cares about, including his own congregation. But immediately, alarm bells should go off, because what sort of religion are you preaching if you’re willing to abandon “complete strangers?” That certainly doesn’t sound like any religion I want to follow. As a result, Marlen’s next move doesn’t surprise me: he immediately tries to murder his own family, which calls into question whom exactly he actually cares about. But that’s how it always is with the hopelessly immoral.
Right from the get-go, I wasn’t a big fan of Kivia going after her uncle. It’s not that Marlen doesn’t deserve to go down. Oh, he definitely does. But he’s family; this is too personal for her. As a result, she lets her guard down and starts crying. This isn’t “I’m a manly man, and crying is for weak babies!” It’s more, “You’re doing a fucking dangerous job, so you can’t afford to have a crash out even for just a second.” Well, a second is all Marlen needs, so as soon as Kivia closes her eyes due to her emotions, he whips out a sealed staff that would’ve wrecked her if her second-in-command hadn’t jumped in the way. Unfortunately, the poor lad is now missing half of his face. Could we have avoided this tragedy if someone else had tried to arrest Marlen instead? Hell, maybe Kivia should’ve brought more people, but out of some misguided respect for a former father figure, she came woefully unprepared. I guess you could also argue that Kivia couldn’t trust others to do the job. The corruption runs deep in this society. Who knows who else could be a coexister? But if it’s that bad, then why are you even trying to arrest the guy? Do you really think he’ll even get a proper trial? Kivia allowed her emotions to cloud her thinking, so as harsh as it sounds, she dug her own grave. Sadly, her soldier is lying in it instead.
In the aftermath, Kivia is arrested for murdering a higher up in the church. Unsurprisingly, she’s not going to get a fair trial. Her interrogators are already making it clear that they intend to frame her for not only her uncle’s murder, but her second-in-command’s as well. That shady, bespectacled man then shows up. Y’know, the guy who’s always there to complete the hero ritual. Clearly, Kivia is about to become one — sentenced to be a hero, if you will. But we saw this coming from a mile away, didn’t we? The only thing I couldn’t really predict was her getting a choice. He actually offers to let her die, which is a mercy that the others didn’t get. But Kivia has grown too close to Xylo and Teoritta, so she isn’t about to abandon them now. As such, she readily takes up the blade to behead herself. You have to die first, because the goddess has to summon you from the dead. Welp.
Alright, so the fight will continue with Kivia officially a hero. But do we even have a plan? I just keep thinking back to the first episode when Xylo swore that he would get back at all the people who doomed Senerva and the men serving under him. Since then, he has made no inroads on actually rooting out any of the corruption plaguing society. To make matters worse, we’re suddenly told that the second capital has apparently fallen. Hell, maybe that’s the plan all along: let demonkind wipe out humanity, then wipe out demonkind afterwards. We can all just go to hell together.
Overall, I think Sentenced to Be a Hero is… just okay. It wasn’t boring; it’s certainly superior to recent action-oriented fantasy series like Clevatess. But for me, it felt like the show pulled its punches. I don’t think the action is as impressive as others seem to think it is. I thought the big showdown against Boojum and the mercenaries was a huge letdown. Moreover, the bad guys just weren’t that interesting. The coexisters never got a face until Marlen showed up, but he didn’t do or have anything particularly interesting to say. As for the Demon Lords, most of them were hulking beasts with no characterization. Spriggan got to chew the scenery when it killed the orphans, but that was it. So I guess the story is putting its eggs into one basket, which is why it won’t let Boojum die just yet. Meh.
As for our heroes, once Xylo started accepting Teoritta, his character development came to a standstill. He hasn’t really changed much since then. Teoritta is just cute. Other than that, she’s pretty flat as a character. What has she learned? What personal obstacle has she overcome? The rest of the heroes are pretty much side characters. They get introduced, then shuffled along. There are no meaningful interactions between any of them — none that sticks with you. There is, however, one exception. As the series progressed, Kivia started to take more and more of the spotlight. She got to know the gang and how they operated. She started to sympathize with them. As a result, her association with the “criminals” triggered her eventual fall from grace. Obviously, Kivia is still a good person. Her motivations was and still are pure and genuine through and through. And for that, she doomed herself to being a hero. Ultimately, this feels like her story. Xylo gets all the glory in battle, but from a narrative standpoint, he doesn’t really deliver.
Stray thoughts & observations:
— Our goddess has been, up until now, a detector for all things demon. After all, she sensed something was off with both Boojum and Rhyno. But somehow, Spriggan avoided her detection completely. I guess you can argue that she got overconfident, but that’s a bit unsatisfying.
— Speaking of unsatisfying, Boojum somehow survived his encounter with our heroes, because he wasn’t even there! It was a blood puppet all along! Wowie wow!
— I saw a few reactions to last week’s episode, and I don’t know what people are smoking. Boojum waving a bunch of purple bullshit at Xylo and Teoritta is somehow peak? Man, y’all need to get better standards. But this does make me somewhat nostalgic. The reason I started this blog back in 2009 was simply because I found very few people who echoed my thoughts and sentiments on the popular anime series at the time (K-On!, if you were curious). Anime fans, in general, are just too lenient.
— What is this world-building? Are those modern-looking constructs in the background?
— So who wants an info dump before the season finale comes to an end? Oooh, I do, I do! Initially, the powers that be tried to isekai people from other worlds, but naturally, folks don’t want to be plucked from their homes to fight for a world they know jack fucking shit about. So instead, the powers that be started summoning from the dead instead. Morbid.
