Radiant is another of those shows about which I’m shouting into the echo chamber, pretty much.  Those seem to be more prevalent this season than any other that I can remember.  Maybe it’s symptomatic of the growing divide between my tastes and the mainstream – for me this is probably the worst season since Winter 2013, but it figures to be a huge one sales-wise.  But at least Radiant – and Gurazeni, and Hinomaro Zumou et al – got made in the first place for me to talk about.

I wouldn’t disagree if you argued that the first episode of this series was the best – I think it probably has been, so far.  And I’m finding myself wishing we were getting more of Kishi Seiji’s personal stamp on the material, but he has a tendency to blend into the background in a lot of his work.  That said I’m still enjoying Radiant a lot, and while it isn’t the easiest series to write about at this point – quite straightforward, without a lot of subtext – I’m hoping that will change when the series moves onto the material that Tony Valente promises is more faithful to the manga.

In the meantime, more of Master Lord Majesty (which is strongly in the running for my next cat’s name) is always welcome, since Yamaguchi Kappei always brings a jolt of comic energy to the proceedings.  And I was starting to worry that the whole “massive debt” thing was going to be conveniently ignored, so it’s nice to see it brought back into focus (even if Seth and Melie have no clue what it actually means).  Seth’s training with Yaga is also back in focus, and after the student trashes his gloves with clumsy fantasia gathering, the master forces a pair of black-silver (magic-blocking) lined gauntlets on him to force Seth to figure out what the problem is without relying on magic.

What’s interesting about the whole glove thing is that Alma gave those mittens to Seth, knowing full well he didn’t need them to gather magic.  No, they were there strictly to avoid Seth calling too much attention to himself by gathering fantasia bare-handed – which, in sorcerer terms, makes him a heretic.  It also makes him a rare bird indeed, which both Yaga and Dragunov (who’s back in the spotlight next week) are well aware of.  As for the Bravery Quartet’s guest appearance this week, that one was strictly for the kids – though it did offer Seth another chance to prove that when it comes to saving people, he doesn’t discriminate whatsoever (and for Melie to show that she’s learning offensive magic even in Jekyll mode…).