The power of handholding saves the day!

I thought that the red gem will explode, but it summons a brainless armored knight which is kinda stupid.

it "summons" a blood soup knight from condensed dudes, how is that stupid? $hit's horrifying. and wow this show really hates men XD

because you can't fight an explosion, it just goes boom and done. it is swift and efficient to send a message of violence, leaving the opponent little time to react. in comparison, a soulless knight is slow moving, can be outrunned or even defeated in a fight.

i mean, would rather plant an explosion spell under the horse carriage of a corrupt noble or would you rig it with a blood knight summoning spell?

oh ok that's fair. i was thinking more that the spell needs to kill like 12 people just to make that shambling tampon knight. the implosion part is good tho

Oh god... Tampon Knight is too accurate.

I mean, they do have magic (ether) and barriers and stuff so an explosion could probably be dealt with whoever was it that even led those thugs to become red orbs in the first place. At least a berserker knight would provide some trouble to the opponent. And perhaps, the train is explosion resistant or something. Or maybe, an explosion is harder to cast than summoning a berseker knight.

But all things considered, yeah, an explosion would've been far more effective. Though there might be an apt explanation to your question in the LN. Most anime adaptations of LNs sadly can't explain every single detail.

One good logical explanation of this is that, self-destructing person is not really effective inside a train, there will be survivors because it can only blow a carriage also unsure if the whole carriage will be destroyed, and also there are multiple person that has it and they will eventually scatter. The strategy used in this setting really does make sense, because the orbs were programmed to gather towards the leader whom went to the engine carriage so that the knight will cause destruction enough to overload the train making it go faster, in contrast to making it explode, the train will just stop. by making it go faster, passengers can't jump outside because you will die doing so. What the real problem that you guys should be addressing is that the engineering behind the engine, why the inventors didn't made it so that if it was damaged like that, it will just disperse the "ether" making it stop. there is no contingency plan in this engineering although the place is extremely technologically advance if that makes sense. I'm sorry about this long-a$$ boring essay.

edit: i just realized, if they intend to kill everyone inside, they could have just planted explosives seeing as how easily they can smuggle red orbs in their person. I know it seems a little cliche but i just can't help but wonder why terrorist are portrayed as the dumbest villains. planting explosives are the most easiest, most effective, most efficient way of terrorizing yet plot armor just won't let it happen.

edit2:fck i remember a movie about it "Source Code (2011)"

Yeah, I think that's a bit of a paradox in anime that has magic. Their technologies advance, but it also lags behind in some aspects. Probably since they really only focus on practicality, and not other aspects like security and stuff. It's really like they're skipping on practical advancements then they fail to address other factors.

Also, for the objective, I don't think they planned to kill everyone inside. Their objective was really just kidnapping the Princess and nothing else, perhaps they needed to get back to Garm too since that's probably where their hideout is. In that sense though, it would make sense if they didn't plant explosives in the train since they did need the train to go to its destination. So I guess it doesn't really matter what their contingency plan is when they fail anyway, as long as they can drag down someone with them, they're good with it. Nothing good's awaiting them after failing anyways.

And as for why the villains here are, borrowing your term, dumb, I'm guessing it's because these thugs lived their whole life in the streets, barely making ends meet. They weren't sharp enough to do something about their situations since they never really received any education, and that's why they resorted to things like crimes. It's the easy way out for them since they can at least survive doing things like that.
Though, I'm only talking about the thugs in this particular episode since I don't really know about the future villains nor which villains portrayed in other media you're talking about.

yeah i forgot to consider the upbringing of those bottom-villains. or they were just made to look that way in order to, uhmm, what's the term for that "to make the main villain shine" or something. i was talking about villains in general but i think your guess applies to everyone of them.

I suppose that if it had been an explosion and the terrorists were "efficient", the main characters would already be dead, and that would be the end of the show, or at least the priestess with her repertoire of spells could use one to stop the explosion, or knock the terrorists off the train before they trigger the explosion.

Opportunities already squandered in favor of "summoning" a red-blood-golem as the episode's "filler combat". A bad one, because even the priestess herself admits that it is quite easy to beat.

I guess the creator wanted to justify an "exciting" assault on the train, with derailment included... but with a priestess Mary Sue who doesn't get excited about anything, and the girl who rewinds time to avoid any mistake, you don't feel tension anymore . I mean, the priesstess realized that her friend, Momo, was fighting on the roof with a warrior princess... and she didn't care, as if nothing was wrong.

Well, this is still a theory of mine but I theorized that despite the summoned knight being fairly easy to handle, it did succeed in killing at least one of the main characters (Menou) since it slashed the train engine, and that caused the train to go out of control making it explode. If you remember, there was a brief moment where the characters felt like time has been altered. That's because Akari went back in time after the explosion happened. So basically, even if the golem wasn't as efficient, as you said, it still did succeed in killing the the main character. .

And also, I don't think the thugs are the main focus for this arc (?) but rather, the introduction of the princess and more insight on Akari's Pure Concept. Though I say that, I also think that that doesn't excuse the fact that the action sequence was bad. These thugs/terrorist fell into the trope of being literal cannon fodder for the demonstration of the main characters' OP powers.

And more dmg aswell like oh all guys got defeated lets combine them into smt clunkier but stronger instead of blowing them up with the whole train since they were gonna spread out

I agree, I had same question why summon/create knight it it's better to make 1 single strong explosion or multiple weak explosions.

well its more complicated than that but if i tell you what really happened it would be a major spoiler

I suspect that Red Knight was in fact more dangerous than the situation let on considering how characters in-universe were reacting to it. More specifically I'm concerned by how much caution Minou was treating the concept of it "sucking in" any more people. I suspect if that Knight had managed to even so much as TOUCH anything biological it would absorb it and add that matter to its own mass. Perhaps it might even evolve into more dangerous forms depending on how much mass it has.

Sasuga Minou.

Have you seen the funny video of a cat dancing (type cat whip nae nae) in youtube

welcome to the internet.

wait why does this show hate men that makes no sense men are just not the main characters

them not being the MC isn't the problem. it's how they're treated in the show. plot wise, men are only there to style on/ show how strong/ruthless/badass the female characters are. even the actual MC is all about how she was shaped & trained & groomed by powerful women and her BFF is the only person she couldn't kill. it's a very shoujo-ai charged show where men are treated as unnecessary. trust me i know because it's outside my normal viewing habits

no. it clearly is. Because this is how every action story is and this is also how women are treated when men are the main characters. I have no idea why you think this is a bad thing as there are hundreds of stories before this one where the main characters are all men and it's exactly like this too. This IS shoujo ai, why would it be weird for it to be women-centered? I have no idea why this is an issue or why you're making up shit like "where men are treated as unnecessary" when they're absolutely not. It seems like the Flaust field has majority of women and hitwomen probably because their friendlyness and apperance matters, while the rest of the world is more typically- Men are kings, guards- etc. I just don't get your point. You're definitely overthinking.

Your concept is wrong actually. In those hundreds of stories where the man is the MC, female characters always best him or slap him or bury him in some comedy routine and he never gets the respect he truly deserves. And another thing is that the MC is the ONLY male character with some strength and there are no other male characters of any significance in anime where the male is the MC... look at the isekais in the latest seasons - aside from the MC (who also gets trashed by secondary female characters sometimes), there is no other male character stronger than the multiple female ones that appear.

i'm not, but i'm fine if you disagree. i'm not in the mood to argue in the comments over it

I think the knight form is because there's involvement of knights. It's not random. If I remember correctly, Menou asked about the knight form later on.

Too lewd! Just look at Akari's reaction.

Goes to show that handholding is OP.

She was moaning out for Menou too lol

she said it could have summoned a dragon or angel too .. so its kind of a gamble and they didnt quite win it.

Blood-Tampon Dragon... OK I can see that, but Bloody tampon Angel?... that's a paradox.

Guys we found girl who can finally understand subaru.

Higurashi Subaru should understant her pain more

She dosn't remember anything so there's nothing to understand.

She said she didn't want to be alone anymore, if that doesn't show you that she remembers I don't know what will

It was all wobbly too, not very impressive

I found it a bit weird though... technically, if a taboo was going to be broken anyway, why not reverse the time of the control valve, call it "Healing objects" or something to that effect.

Akari doesn't know she can reverse time. All she knows is she can heal people, which technically isn't wrong, she can reverse the damage done on people, just she doesn't know that's what she's doing, and she thinks it's healing

Oh boy, she knows. It's pretty clear at this point that she's been redoing time over and over again to get her happy ending with Menou

That mean using her concept. Which will increase her error level. Which is a bad idea.
Giving her mana, doesn't do it so it's the safest way.

Basically Akari chooses concept (rewind the world) + giving Menou mana instead of concept (rewind the world) + concept (rewind the time of the control valve) since the latter would cost more

I believe she is FULLY aware of what she is doing, can do, and what is going to happen. Hence some of her Freudian slips when she speaks and why Menouis is getting the deja vu feeling. Why she thinks this isn't the first time the train was wrecked.

i think you're right but i don't think she's doing it a ton yet.
also what slip s are you talking about? if it's the "don't leave me alone" i kinda think that might be something else. i'm pretty sure they know each other from a past that Menou no longer remebers.
there's tons of hints that they both feel like they belong in anothe rworld and the memory fragment from that past is clearly Akari.

You mean that wasn't a sex scene?

Perhaps there was the risk of the explosion not causing enough damage for the engine to be destroyed as well? And perhaps, the berserker knight actually specifically aimed to slash the Ether engine rather than the hostile in front of him? Maybe there was someone controlling it even.

I also thought it would be an explosion, because that's just much more efficient.

I thought the same thing 🤣

Akari the exhibitionist!

Ban clothes lol

i was like FINALLY i get to see what she packing then it was stopped boooooo

And as the 3 episode rule goes, I'm gonna stick with this to the end no doubt about it, specially after the princess literally is on par with them so it's gonna be a good fight *-*.

Whenever they upgrade their weapon I get more and more exited specially with the thread on the knife cause it always makes them look more like assassin and bad a**.

I knew you wasn’t going to drop this lol

This is AMAZING, I love strong women (and a bit of yuri) so this feels too specific to my taste lol.

Well, the whole episode about a bunch of guys trying to pull a train on a princess and good girl only to have her take out a bloody tampon (knight) in the end. The two Yuri- candidates get intimate, no hands-holds barred action As they get a long hard big train "into the station"... Oh and the strip tease scene too.