Skeleton Knight in Another World

Episode 7

In last week's episode, Arc learned that, despite his physical strength and massive amount of world-breaking skills and magic, there were people capable of beating him easily. Basically, in this world, once you reach a certain level, experience becomes more important than raw power. As we've seen, this was beaten into Arc by Ariane's mother—an elf with hundreds of years under her belt. The events of this episode, however, force Arc to acknowledge that his battle experience is actually far below even people his own age—namely Ariane.

During the pair's battle with ghost wolves, Arc is not able to kill a single one. Oh sure, the wolves aren't able to hurt him either, but all that means is that, without Ariane alongside him, he would basically be stuck in a battle of attrition. Heck, to even land a strike on one, he is forced to shoot a fireball through his own cloak. Ariane, on the other hand, takes out four of the pack through expert use of both magic and sword. When it comes down to it, Arc is superior to Ariane physically and magically, but he is also a far less skilled fighter. All the spells and sword skills in the world mean nothing if you don't know when and where to best use them.

What's great about Arc as a character is that he has no ego. When he sees how useless he is against the wolves, his first thought is to start training with Ariane. He doesn't get hung up on the fact that he would almost certainly beat her in a fight due to his superior stats. He sees that she is vastly better than him in one key area and wants to improve himself.

But his lack of arrogance is just part of what makes Arc such a likeable character. At his core, he's just a really good person. Realizing that the ghost wolves may be under some sort of mind control, he frees them and lets them escape even though their tails are a rare and precious commodity. Then, when encountering the slayed princess and her party, he decides to risk using a resurrection spell on them all—despite (rightly) worrying that doing so could upset the balance of power in the world and draw attention to himself.

All in all, this is another solid, character-building episode for Arc. I'm interested to see where everything goes as we blaze forward into the back half of the season.

Rating:

Random Thoughts:

• So, the skeleton “curse” is a legitimate curse—though its exact nature (and how/why it keeps re-establishing itself) is a mystery.

• Ariane should have done the planning session in one of their rooms. I mean, she was free to eat the food in front of them but poor Arc had to just sit there and wait.

• Ariane singing a little song about “draining out the blood” was way cuter than it had any right to be.

• What did Ariane do with the rest of the wolves' bodies? I mean, using just the tails seems like a major waste.

• I love Arc just ignoring the attacking soldiers and their magic as he checks on the Princess. That should have been everyone's cue to run.

• If I'm understanding the whole situation right, those who escaped Arc and the wolves will report that the Princess is dead—meaning she has a major advantage in not only her current mission but also on finding out who killed her.

• So, who was behind the Princess' murder? Was it the corrupt brother trying to cover his tracks or the older brother, attempting to frame the corrupt one and secure his claim on the throne?

• I'm interested to see how the political drama and Arc's quest will continue to intersect.

• Ariane can judge a person's strength far better than Arc can.

• I'm happy to see the ninja is back. Hopefully the next few episodes will be fleshing her and her situation out a bit.

Skeleton Knight in Another World is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.

Richard is an anime and video game journalist with over a decade of experience living and working in Japan. For more of his writings, check out his Twitter and blog.