The Executioner and Her Way of Life/Shokei Shoujo no Virgin road

Was there not a thread for this before? Hmmm. Anyway, I’ve been waiting for this anime to come out since it was announced. I’ve definitely been blown away by the quality since it started airing. What do you guys think?

it's giving me Re:Zero vibes and i'm loving it

The exposition can be a bit clunky at times but I like the character dynamics and general plot. latest episode was interesting with the contrast of Menou arguably trying to help her world but insisting she's a villain and Orwell having incredibly selfish intentions but declaring it's what is owed to get for all her good work

Orwell basically went full episode 13 Subaru

The second arc here is... fine? It's admittedly kind of hard for me to stay as engaged now. I'm finding I don't like Base Akari very much.

Yeah, it feels like True Akari is doing some permanent damage every time she erases her memory

I definitely think that’s the case, considering that the guy in the first episode acted a lot more grounded than uwu dojikko Akari.

Have to say I wasn’t also feeling this arc so much but I think episode 9 managed to regain a considerable amount of my interest. Ashuna still feels like she pops up way too often, but I’m digging True Akari making more moves, and her conversation with Manon should prove to be interesting. I would guess that Manon’s mom was Pandemonium. Since that was the Error that was responsible for monsters in the first place.

Edited by fillerdude on May 28th 2022 at 8:20:08 AM

Pandemonium showed up a millennium ago

Obviously Pandemonium has managed to achieve quasi-immortality by transporting her consciousness into humanoid flesh monsters she creates with her Concept

This is my attempt to save face from forgetting important plot details haha

I mean, there's definitely something weird with the immortal little girl whose blood is apparently more or less crystallized original sin. I wouldn't be surprised if she was some kind of monster-adjacent creation of Pandemonium, nor would I be particularly taken aback to learn that Manon doesn't actually care about her mother beyond getting revenge given her usual bearing.

That said, yeah, I dunno. Usually I'm (overly) sensitive to potential ship chemistry, but I'm just not feeling it with Menou and Akari.

It is explicitly stated that overuse of a Pure Concept starts to erode the user's sense of self so True Akari might somehow leeching off or somehow shunting that effect off onto her past self everytime she loops so that she remains more functional when active.

That's guessing though.

the last two episodes of this arc has been absolute bangers, i'd say this is definitely in my top 5 favorite isekai

Hm, so I guess Akari's power doesn't work on the four major human errors, so they've been progressing forward in time while the rest of the world has been looping

What was that about Manon having a sister? It doesn't seem like it should matter, but why bring it up, then?

Unfortunately, I think I'm hitting the point where the promise shown by the first few episodes fizzles out as more is shown. After four episodes in Libelle, we learn that... Manon is evil, which we already knew; connected to Pandaemonium, which we already knew; and kind of crazy, which we already knew.^note I actually debated whether I should even spoil any of this since we've known for weeks now. It's hard to be invested in Menou's investigation into Manon's plans, since she doesn't seem to have one aside from summoning Pandaemonium; the plot intrigue is nonexistent, and the biggest change in characterization that may come from this whole arc is that Menou may decide that becoming kinky rebelling may not be a bad idea, but we already had that earlier with the Bishop's whole thing.

And then there's Akari... people have compared this to Re:Zero from the non-Subaru perspective, but the problem with that is that seeing someone who's already learned the pitfalls and what not to do doesn't give you the same feeling of mystery solving and character growth as watching someone mess up and learn. Past Akari may be lightly confused about why new things are happening in Libelle this time, but as of now she's still largely a plot device for moving things along and making sure no one (permanently) dies. And Present Akari is intentionally kept out of the loop to keep her out of danger, but that means she can't interact with the plot, and her usual character interaction with Menou is being overbearing and affectionate for (from both of their perspectives) no good reason at all.

I'll finish out the season and I don't regret having watched it, but this is definitely more of a fizzle than a hit.

Edited by RedSavant on Jun 4th 2022 at 1:34:49 AM

I also don’t know what the sister thing was about, unless Manon’s mom was remembering a daughter she left behind in Japan. Interesting that you really can “wander” into the other world though. Now it makes sense why Lost Ones are called that.

Turns out the arc villain is Pandemonium herself, in the flesh. And boy do we see a lot of flesh. I appreciate that the Human Error does feel wrong. She’s certainly a more exciting villain than Manon, who was waste of time that existed purely to set up this “shocking” plot development.

I’m curious if Menou knowing about True!Akari will stick. I hope it does. Would be way more interesting for the story and their character dynamics.

I do think that's about all they can do to progress at this point. And even then, it removes the main conceit of their relationship.

I don't think she's actually found out about it. They didn't actually spend enough time together for Menou to realise she's talking to True!Akari rather than the memory blanked persona she usually interacts with.

I’d say the change in relationship would be an improvement, because their current arrangement basically has the both of them acting independently. Uwu Akari is not a fun nor interesting character, and her interactions with Menou are bleh.

Yeah I’m waiting to see if Menou caught on. Their conversation seemed to imply that was the case, but it was vague enough to allow the opposite interpretation.

Today's episode was also pretty damn bleh. Pandemonium's whole "movie" thing doesn't really make any sense and it's not used except to give her reasons to make stupid decisions (yes, let's put all her 100 sacrifices into a single boss for the two characters specialized in giant single strikes to destroy!); she's also not physically threatening enough to be scary, with monsters that die in one hit or literally do nothing but show up and then disappear.

Really, the one good line we've had in the past... geez, probably six or seven episodes was Pandaemonium's insistence that Akari is selfish for thinking the world existed only for her. It's not particularly deep, especially given that Akari was bullied, but it's the closest thing we've had to characters with conflicting philosophies or motives in the entire series.

I thought the movie thing was fine because Pandemonium is Chaos. Her motivation doesn’t extend beyond being chaotically, pointlessly evil. This however does mean she’s not particularly engaging as a villain… I feel like leaning heavily on Rule of Cool would have helped a lot here.

I recently just noticed a giant issue with the show, which is that no one actually seems all that engaged with anything - not the world around them, and not really themselves, either. With Menou it's slightly more forgivable since she's growing up out of magically induced flat affect and is usually in Scheming Mode, but Akari (and Momo) generally don't care about anything other than Menou (as a concept, not a person), and even Ashuna is very cavalier about things that don't involve a good fight. Likewise, the character who claimed to have a personal reason to hate Menou turns out not to really care all that much about her at all, and kills herself to bring in an antagonist who's closer to a natural disaster who says "wacky" things than a character with any personal reason to care about either protagonist.

I slightly disagree with your criticism. Menou does care about other people, which a couple of folks have pointed out as her difference from Flare.

For Akari, I feel like we should have seen her be more proactive in trying to change the timeline instead of her trying to maintain the status quo until she has no choice to.

Momo’s character is just annoying in general. I would have preferred possibly a more grounded, normal woman instead of a clingy obsessive girl.

Ashuna still pops up way too much and makes the world feel smaller than it should. Also I call BS on the knights managing to get such an accurate count of the guys that melted into goo in such a short time.

I would say that Akari's lack of proactivity is tied to the fact that her goal is simply Menou assisted suicide aided by the fact that she's living in a world where her very existence can't be tolerated. I'm not sure how much I would care about such a world either.

Momo's case is more like the fact that being isolated during her Executioner training has caused her to take her feelings toward Menou and warp it into an obsession that isn't tempered by any other relationships because she doesn't have any. The whole point of the Executioner training (keeping kids in an isolated area for one) is to facilitate not only a sense of zealotry towards their goal but a distance from the normal world. Momo's behaviour is a natural reaction to that.

In Ashuna's case, this seems to be her normal behaviour, but considering her father was sentenced to death, I can't help but think she's sort of overdoing it here.

If these girls seem disinterested in the world, well the world certainly hasn't done much for them.

Edited by Chaosjunction on Jun 12th 2022 at 2:28:25 PM

Ashuna is easily the best character in the show imo. Really enjoy her and Momo's relationship.

When I mentioned proactivity I meant I would have liked to see True!Akari trying to figure out how to get Menou to kill her, instead of only showing up whenever she wanted to restore the status quo. I definitely don’t mind Akari not caring about the world.

I see your point about Momo, but she could also have been, say, a by-the-books Executioner who’s almost blindly loyal to the Church. I honestly think that would have been more interesting.

As for Ashuna, no issues with her personality, I just don’t like the way she’s being utilized in this story.

Ashuna is cool but she always appears. For example it did not need to be her that was the leader of those street urchins. Or hell no one needed to give Momo that exposition on Manon Libelle at all.