Reincarnated as a Sword

Episode 12

There, perhaps expectedly, feels like there's a ton going on in the season finale of Reincarnated as a Sword. Like sure, there's still a big-tiddie spider monster to contend with, and that's been compounded by complications including teleportation-trap party-scatterings and informative owl familiars. But the big finishing fight here honestly wraps up pretty briskly (if busily, thanks to all that clutter complexifying it). It's the points of resolution afterwards, the backstory clarifications and intrigue reveals in the name of dialing up drama and setting up elements for the just-announced second season, that really make this one feel like one of those "Forty minutes of story stuffed into twenty-two minutes of show" situations. Fortunately, the series seems to mostly wear that extra baggage well.

There are just a few extra wrinkles sprinkled into the final round with the Trickster Spider, seemingly more for character drama than any sort of magical mechanical climax. The writing actually had me convinced just for a second that Amanda wasn't going to make it out of this alive, her desire to protect Fran and reflect on her own past losses leading to some sort of self-sacrifice. But no, her established super-powerful mommy magic makes short work of the angry arachnid, avoiding tragedy and ending on more of a funny anticlimax instead. It does feel like Amanda jumps in a little quickly on this one, seeing Fran take one (1) significant hit and deciding she needs to go full last-ditch, reckless-abandon mode. This is all meant to fit in with the final, more dramatic reveals we get about Amanda's backstory in this episode, seemingly supposed to provide something of an emotional core that Reincarnated as a Sword can close out on.

Does that work? It's almost certainly going to depend on how receptive you are to the framing concept, as well as Amanda herself overall. I admit I've softened to the character over the last few episodes; she's still got her overbearing moments of mommy-mode molestation played off as jokes, but it's not the all-encompassing character bit it was at the outset. And this episode especially makes an earnest effort to pivot her affections to feel as if they're coming from a genuine place. We find out that Rufus was one of her previous adoptees, and he seems to get on healthily enough with her in the present. More prudently, this last episode drops the detail that Fran's parents were in fact previously in Amanda's care, and that their bygone deaths directly contributed to Amanda's tone of perhaps-exaggerated overprotectiveness, especially towards Black Cats like Fran.

It's a lot of arguably convenient coincidences, but it does also give Amanda's character something more to do in regards to Fran and her journey of growth and evolution. Amanda's key advice upon immediately completing the surprise-complicated dungeon (we're reminded there was still a whole 'exam' portion in there that the rookies had to finish) is "Do not strain yourself beyond your limits". That sounds demeaning from a centralized perspective, but we already know that Fran has no intention of stopping her rise to power, and is meant to speak more to Amanda's worries about losing these beloved children she projects her efforts onto a little more strongly.

The vibes of that internal struggle are resolved by the end, Amanda letting Fran go after realizing that the most she can do is prepare her for anything and everything she can encounter in this wide RPG world. While it's not the most effective deep articulation of this sort of caretaker bond (I just watched Maquia: When The Promised Flower Blooms for the first time the other day, ain't nothing else going to compete), I will say it was genuinely more than I would have expected from Amanda's story when she first appeared, and closes this arc out effectively.

Working all that in also mercifully leaves little time for Reincarnated as a Sword to take up too much space in its season finale with any of those damnable technical explanations. Yes, we get a showcase of Fran's cute new Black-Cat-specialized armor, complete with the ol' excuse explanation that bits like the exposed tummy are purely for sensory and range of motion reasons and certainly not for fanservice! But points like the benefits of using Fran's new electric magic to stun enemies before hitting them with other spells are simply briskly demonstrated in the battle with the spider monster, which is really how it all should be.

The remaining bits are setup for the forthcoming second season. I am happy enough to hear about that; I've come to enjoy Fran and Teacher's antics enough that I'll be glad to check in with them again later. Some of it comes off like more post-hoc excuses, particularly the idea that the elf dude with the owl familiar was an undercover nephew of the GM's who was looking to sabotage what they already knew was happening in that dungeon. So either they recklessly hauled some students along to serve as nearly-dying distractionary elements in their investigation, or Fran and the others were never meant to be in any real danger in the first place. It's a minor issue of seeding intrigue in the end, but if I didn't already know this was fuel for a follow-up, I'd accuse it of being nought but a distraction. As-is, it's fine as more juice for the little "To Be Continued" card thrown up after the credits on this one, between some mysterious stuck-up mage, Fran crashing into skeleton knights, and finally getting to see her sky-surf on Teacher in-show. Extra points for finally cashing that check before the very end, anyway!

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Reincarnated as a Sword is currently streaming on HIDIVE.

Chris is a freewheeling Fresno-based freelancer with a love for anime and a shelf full of too many Transformers. He can be found spending way too much time on his Twitter, and irregularly updating his blog.