Elm states that no one bothers doing this in the video game because there aren’t any decent in-game rewards (relative to the required effort) for defeating that kind of enemy.

As to the rewards for doing this, I suppose any economic justification is possible given that Elm hasn’t explained that much about what such a monster could drop or what kind of activities might become impossible if a party cannot successfully clear this kind of boss.

It’s a bit of a miracle that she didn’t accidentally destroy her power due to malware despite having no assistance from an IT department. Also, what even are the chances that her world is actually based on a game that was documented well enough to be found on the internet?

I suppose there is an argument that it’s actually 100% because it’s a cozy comedy, but there is the equally valid argument of what if it’s not?

In an MMO, it is understood that players take notes and compare them. The economy of these games is partially based on information and the prize is largely social status based on reputation- there is an honor in being a member of the guild that achieved the first confirmed kill of a given boss.

(It is a feature (or a bug I suppose) that people in this world do not share information and instead hoard it jealously and we saw that in the form of the ordeal with the skill book.)

As to the question of the mechanics of this particular evolution, Elm is running into the problem that he is thinking about his particular situation from the perspective of someone playing a video game rather than being a person in a strange world that shares some mechanical similarities with a video game he is familiar with.

It’s for that reason that he cannot imagine why this boss could have been deliberately set up to be a trap since players in his video game never deliberately did that (this lack of trolling is somewhat implausible, but I digress).

But trolling is a huge feature of the world in which Elm and Ruche currently reside.

As to the specific purpose of this trolling, it is possible that it is intended like most information hoarding we has seen so far to be a type of gatekeeper behavior.

Her stoicism is relatable when you understand her relationship with her mother. It’s one of those “if you know, you know” deals that fundamentally changes how someone is shaped- she [Romelia] is obviously brilliant, but she is also reserved and has had years of practice conserving her energy.

Her inability to relay possibly important information to her party near the start of the episode immediately becomes clear; it’s simply a habit and everyone’s hostility is baseline background noise- you could argue that someone as smart as her should know that this baseline is nuts, but that’s what she has spent her entire life doing. Being misunderstood is her baseline.

I was very impressed. I did envy her a little bit because she had a good relationship with one of her parents, though.

It occurred to me that while this second dungeon excursion has so far been similar to the first trip, Ruche has changed- she unprompted tells Elma that she trusts that he has a plan that he thinks will work via a surprisingly complicated chain of reasoning that is pretty solid from the perspective of game theory.

That is not to say that there aren’t pitfalls in such reasoning given the existence of game theoretical chaotic loops that might result in two would be partners behaving in bizarre ways, but I suppose such a discussion is outside the scope of this particular episode.

Anyway, Elma knows that he can trust Ruche to fully commit to any plan he comes up with and knows from his fight with Malice that Ruche won’t “jump the gun” if his plan appears to go off the rails, even though his plan there had upset her. To be completely honest, this is subtle stuff that I did not notice while I was watching the episode and I had to ask myself later what was different this time around in the dungeon.

I suppose the surprise for me was the lack of shopping/bargaining in the new town (which would be the first thing I would do in a CRPG, if I am being real).

Having a new scary skill book for Ruche to obtain in order for Elm to return the favor is a funny juxtaposition, though.

I think what we were shown was that he was a hothead with a hate boner for weird builds. Was Isaac a bad parent for that? Of course.

Do parents that beat their kids say they also love their estranged children? I guess, probably?

The nonsense about how nobles are supposed to behave did happen in various medieval aristocracies; basically the idea is that without strict boundaries elitism disappears and the aristocrats lose their power soon after- elitism is what keeps everything running smoothly even when the aristocrats are dolts.

The story in my opinion is editorializing by giving Elm a specific flashback of his father to a time when their relationship was still good.

I suppose you could argue we were not supposed to take anything away from that flashback.

Count Izas wasn’t going to say anything when he left, but changed his mind because Ruche demanded an apology. The risk here is that both Ruche and Elm are commoners at that point because that’s the promise he gave in the previous episode.

Lords aren’t allowed to give in to commoners because that rule protects all lords, but he compromises and tells her to take care of Elm which keeps his promise to Elm because that’s some good old D&D rules lawyering going on with that promise to leave Elm alone.

I enjoy this anime even though characters are sometimes stupid. Especially his father: really no investigation beforehand?

I consider Isaac being a dumbass realistic given that the likelihood he has received significant pushback from anyone is close to zero. There is plenty of lore indicating the aristocracy through greed and stupidity has warped the economy of this world.

The butler did his homework (in other words, the investigation) and reported his findings, but Isaac was having none of that, decided that Elm had cheated his way up the ranks, and the only thing left to do was to unmask the collaborator who knew of Elm’s aristocratic roots.

The plan had been to expose Elm’s failure to uphold his promise and then to execute him.

I suppose that there is a kind of irony that Isaac had unintentionally invalidated the spirit of Elm’s promise because he had barged into the guild with the expectation he would be killing Elm and leaving.

At the risk of incurring the wrath of people who are hate watching the show, I will say that the episode was fine. It is meeting my expectations in most ways.

The explanation that Malice was draining high level criminals was good that it confirmed certain suspicions that she is indeed power leveling and that doing so does result in a lack of practical experience.

Luce refusing to allow Elm or his father Isaac to negotiate her out of the room is a pretty funny running gag at this point. Also funny is that Elm sets a condition that should he win, Isaac has no more right to interfere with Elm’s life- clearly Elm has not thought this through.

Isaac already thinks it is impossible for Elm to win, but if Elm wins, Isaac would be forced to reconsider his decision to make Malice his heir, but Elm’s condition makes that decision irreversible. Elm really could have asked for the moon and just asked instead that Isaac pound sand instead.

It’s easier to chalk it up to cars are like mecha- if they aren’t the focal point of the anime, producers are not going to find specialists, so you end up with CG cars and maybe that will be better than okay if the anime is mostly CG (for instance, you probably wouldn’t notice cars being particularly noticeable in Dorohedero).

To some extent if you watch enough anime, you will tend to notice issues with characters playing musical instruments if you play that instrument or with sports techniques when those activities are not the focus of the anime.

Cooking can look terrible when it’s done as a kind of afterthought, which is especially funny because most people are familiar with what food ought to look like. Cars are probably more important to Americans than cooking is, so the cars thing probably is more of an afterthought to anime production in general.

I chalk it up to narrative convenience. It could have been told as a flashback in a future episode or left out entirely, but I think it serves the purpose of world building and character development even if it’s not exactly subtle about either.

We knew that, and Elm knew that, but there’s no reason to assume the shopkeeper knew that. Unless there is, but I’m not gonna go rewatch the scene to find out!

My baseline assumption is that Ruche is figuring things out a bit later than Elm, so if she arrives at a given solution, particularly an obvious solution, Elm probably thought of it and then rejected that solution for some reason. Even supposing that this is not the case, Elm still rejects this solution and argues completely valid reasons for rejecting her solution.

As far as the shopkeeper is concerned, Elm is just another party leader trying to drive a hard bargain to maximize the party’s gold and her suspicion about Elm is that he is taking advantage of Ruche. The crone mentions this early on in their conversation and doesn’t believe Elm when he says it’s not like that.

When Ruche makes her suggestion and Elm refuses despite having wanted that skillbook, she revises her opinion of Elm and Ruche because it is then obvious that Elm is not bargaining in a way that is self-serving or even optimal. Her internal monologue stops short of saying this despite making basic observations and obvious deductions, but withholding the less obvious deductions is a something this show has been doing throughout its run.

I suppose it’s possible that someone might have to rewatch the episode. Or perhaps just rewatching the scene with these three characters might be necessary. Personally I find it funny that the audience is forced to imagine the mental state of these characters right at the point where we no longer have the benefit of hearing their internal monologues.

Personally I liked the episode.

There was some funny stuff like the parody of every other cooking show and it sets stakes for the not-Italians should imperial high command decide to open up yet another war front. There was also a nice contrast set up between what Tanya’s squad was used to and what they were able to experience during that day.

Technically high command might still be angry they could have lost their drunkard general because the not-Italians did a cowardly thing forcing his transport by sea in attempting to maintain their neutrality.

And speaking of easy and cliched writing, Malice is suddenly obsessed with Elymas? That makes zero sense to me, at least only watching the anime. If she was really that obsessed, why wouldn’t she have killed him rather than letting him leave home at the very beginning of the anime?

My hypothesis is that Malice was not in a position to just kill Elm when he was exiled, but his feats as an adventurer could undermine her claim to the position of heir to the head of their House. Her killing of the prisoner highlights two things in particular: she is efficiently power leveling up in a rather game player like way and the other is how ruthlessly she is pursuing her goal of staking her claim.

I guess in a way it wasn’t obvious because Ruche had to sacrifice her share for the trade to work and Elm was still stuck thinking he was working with 20% of the haul because he is still laboring under the assumption that his 20 80 split is the deal he has agreed to.

This works out fine for Ruche because now Elm owes her big, and he has no hope of abandoning her. Probably the hag worked out this strange relationship as well, so Elm got played good by the two women.

I suppose you don’t have to elaborate if you don’t feel like it.

Personally I was surprised at how willing Victoria was in becoming an asset again. Her new agency made clear that they have been watching her, that they know that she was being hunted, that they knew she was involved in the jailbreak, that they killed her pursuers, and that they were able to leak disinformation to stop the hunt.

I suppose one subtext was that they really could have arrested her at any time.