Reign of the Seven Spellblades/Nanatsu no Maken ga Shihai Suru

Spellblades is a decently long-running light novel series by Bokuto Uno. Set in a fantasy world that's similar, but not identical, to ours, main character Oliver Horn arrives at the prestigious (and infamous) Kimberly Magic University for the start of his seven-year school career. Along the way he'll make plenty of new friends and enemies, study the blade as well as spellwork, and possibly get to the bottom of a dark conspiracy...?

Are you feeling let down by a certain magical school setting and need something to fill the void? Do you like your magical creatures with a bit more blood on their talons? Ever wished spell battles involved bladework, close-quarters grappling, and more? Then Reign of the Seven Spellblades is for you! For bonus points, it's not an isekai, there's no "beat the school ace" type of plot, and each of Ollie's five friends have well-defined, charming personalities. And what's more, there are even canonical queer main characters!

Since the anime is airing in about a week, I figured we should have a thread here. The first eight books of the light novel series are also out in English, with an amazing translation from Yen Press, but we should probably keep this thread to anime-only unless we get a lot of people who have read the books too.

Edited by RedSavant on Jul 2nd 2023 at 7:01:23 AM

You know, I’ve always wanted someone to do this battle academy thing with more panache, so I’m looking forward to the anime. Hopefully it’s a good adaptation.

Question; is this a harem series?

Nope.

Nope. All the members of the Sword Roses (that is, the core six protagonists) are somewhat interested in Ollie, but they're also interested in each other. So if you mean, are there multiple characters attracted to Ollie, then in a sense yes. But, I think it's well handled, and it doesn't overwrite characterization at any point.

Well, with the first episode out, I'm pleasantly surprised! I do have a few notes I'd make, but overall it was a very solid start, if a bit too chatty at times. I guess they felt they had to rush a little to end on Nanao's scars.

One thing I'm very interested to note is that I think this is the first format to actually show who it is Ollie is reminded of when he sees Nanao in the fountain. That isn't the kind of thing a director could just guess at, so I have to assume it's a choice that also reflects on the story of the novels as a whole.

Wouldn't be surprised if that was the case. The staff for the anime clearly know the source material.

I'm elated that the monsters are 2D animated. Not often that you see that nowadays. I think I'm gonna like Katie, I think that's her name, the best, if her love for animals translates into her becoming a beastmaster or summoner or something like that.

Oliver is also a fair bit different from the typical lead in these LN-based battle academy series. He's a stickler for manners (at least at the dining table), has professed to his skill in customizing spells, and he seems to be somewhat familiar with the shadier aspects of life.

Edited by fillerdude on Jul 8th 2023 at 2:25:02 AM

I'll also say that I'm pleasantly surprised by the translation so far. I wasn't expecting much but it's doing better than the baseline.

X4 Oh, good. To clarify, I don't hate harem series — Rosario Vampire has a special place in my heart — but too many of them degrade into masterbatory fantasies. Plus, I feel they've gotten overplayed as of late.

Watching the first episode: I love this headmistress speech; "Welcome to school, 20 percent of you are gonna fucking die."

An interesting thing about this series is that it actually has a fairly...unrestrictive view of sexuality for a harem series.

Chela in book 2 straight up refers to nonmagical society as "heteronormative," yeah. There's also (character spoilers for later books) Carlos, an older student who's generally referred to with they/them pronouns; Tim, also from the Student Council, who's a cis male crossdresser; and Pete, whose body shifts between male and female but who identifies firmly as male (and is interested in Oliver).

Heck, there's even a school club that's essentially a queer students' union.

Yeah, that surprised me when I started reading this novel.

It occurs to me now that I have no idea what they're aiming for for an endpoint. I'm pretty sure the last thing shown in the OP is the broom class from the start of volume 2, but there aren't many good places to stop once they get into volume 2 aside from pushing forward all the way to Ophelia's Grand Aria at the end of volume 3.

Episode 2: Our first day of classes at Kimberly.

In stark contrast to most other battle academy anime, while Oliver is still the clear protagonist, the other five members of the core crew are very active participants in the story. Chela in particular impressed me with she'd often take charge and help others. If only more ojou-sama types were more like her!

Liked that the story went out of its way to establish why magicians use swords in this setting, and even better, there are purists that think mages should stick to wands. That's some lovely worldbuilding. There's also definitely something to Nanao sincerely wanting a duel to the death with Oliver. Kinda like a warrior's mindset where the glory of the battle is the highest ecstasy one could ever feel? Really interested in exploring that aspect of her character. I was also decently happy with how the duel was animated, too.

Magical biology was fun. The silkworms were cute and I support Katie in not wanting to kill them. Evidently monsters are treated as mere resources by current magical society, so I am expecting Katie to become the first monster tamer, or otherwise the first human to become capable of using unique monster magic, or something along those lines.

Oh boy the school literally becomes an RPG dungeon at night? That's taking Academy of Adventure to the next level. Seems like one of the contributors to the 20% mortality rate is upperclassmen looking for guinea pigs. Cool, cool.

Edited by fillerdude on Jul 15th 2023 at 3:04:53 AM

After watching the second episode, I'm really struggling to understand why anybody would ever want to go to Kimberly.

The Headmistresses' idea of an introductory speech is telling the new students that a fifth of them are good as dead, so if they could die in a way that benefits everyone else, that would be great. The biology teacher is the Anti-Hagrid; magical creatures are to be used and exploited, and if they bite back, kill them.

Oh, and the school turns into a death maze at night, but don't worry, because you can always count on upperclassmen looking for new guinea pigs — I mean, younger students in need of help.

But I do like Nanao and Oliver's interactions;

"Hey, want to try and kill each other in mortal combat?"

"Hell no."

"B-but why? I thought we were friends!"

The series is pretty cagey about it, but there is a reason. For later book spoilers: Kimberly is basically a school specialized in training vicious, dangerous fighters. It's unusual in-universe and famous for it.

From what I’ve gathered so far, Kimberly seems like a place where they want to push the boundaries of magic as far as possible, even if they have to break a few eggs along the way. Presumably if you’re part of the 80% that survive, you’ll immediately become part of the elite when you graduate.

Big spoilers so read at your own discretion.

The school is so vicious because they have to train people to kill gods that invade from other worlds. Since the mages of their world killed its gods its a godless world ripe for the taking. So its a case of having to be that cruel to be sharp enough, and strong enough, to deal with coming into direct contact with vicious and cruel otherworldly gods who are more like demons and eldritch horrors.

Training to be a mage in this world is very much "go big or go home" anyway, but Kimberly in particular is training people to be tigers, as the Headmistress said. It's not all combat and ethics violations, but Kimberly attracts people who are looking for results in their research first and foremost, and the more of those types show up, the stronger that attraction gets.

@Red Savant

Might I ask what magical school setting could you be referring to?

Of course, the systemic problems such a mindset encourages are also what makes it easier for said gods to invade. One of the main reasons cults worshiping said gods keep showing up is because the cults offer people an alternative to the horribly unfair system.

@DoubleOG: Harry Potter specifically. I don't know if Uno's ever made direct comment, but given a lot of character similarities, combined with some pretty pointed in-universe commentary...

I'm specifically talking about things like the bushy brown-haired animal rights girl actually being taken seriously in Spellblades, but I also mean things like (BIG spoilers for volume 1) Darius the potions master, a clear Snape expy, being tortured to death for his connection to Oliver's mother instead of treated like a hero and, more on a meta level, the fact that Kimberly has what's more or less a supportive student union for queer kids and that several of the protagonists are queer, with Chela outright saying that magical society isn't heteronormative.

There's also the fact that it's established that around 20% of students either go mad or die, which I can't help but think might be a deliberate jab at the virtual lack of safety standards present in the world of Harry Potter. Especially since the teachers at the school see this as a good thing!

If I was inclined to get a bit more meta-politicky with it, I'd muse that Hogwarts and its surroundings have a sort of... intentional disregard for safety, which helps add to a certain insulated "the adult world may be scary but we're just kids and they'll take care of it" feeling.

I don't necessarily blame Rowling for that part of the worldbuilding, since to some extent I think it was inevitable when she started pivoting from a whimsical boarding school story to having grander designs in mind. A lot of the things established in early HP work out fine for a boarding-school story with a blurry background, since the series itself is not really interested in interrogating its own surroundings and not really equipped for it.

On the other hand, Uno has the benefit of writing with foresight and clearly having a larger scope in mind for the world and the implications of what there is.

Edited by RedSavant on Jul 19th 2023 at 7:10:17 AM