I gotta say, I’m really not sure just what Lerche is trying do with Radiant.  I know that production committees don’t decide to screw up adaptations just for shits and giggles – there’s some kind of internal logic that makes sense to somebody at the time, every time.  But when I see stuff like this (and the most egregious example would be every Negima anime attempt, including UQ Holder) I just scratch my head.  Why not just give a series a linear adaptation, even if you have to compress some stuff or skip it altogether?  Why this disjointed mix of original material and canon material?

For the record, I have no idea what the mix was this week but if I was to hazard a guess, the A-part was from the manga and the B-part was mostly anime original.  The episode set up a very interesting follow-up to the Rumble Town arc, first with the Thaumaturges deal with the aftermath of the disaster (a loss of public trust in the Inquisition) and debating their next move.  Next the camera turns from Dragunov and his crew, who are suffering from severe shortages after having given most of their supplies to the starving people of Rumble Town.

See, this is good – cultural and political implications abound, and the whole fuzzy morality of this mythology is put under the microscope (at one point directly by Dragunov himself, who’s always been the one most aware of it).  But why didn’t this all happen last week, immediately after the events of Rumble Town – why did we get a weak filler (I hate that word, but it fits) episode instead?  And why did the B-part this week switch over to what seemed like filler too, a considerably less involving subplot about the price of coffee beans (economic validity to it be damned)?

To the extent that there’s a lasting import to this B-part, it’s Seth’s sober reflection on just what he is, exactly.  If the Inquisition is wrestling with doubts over their trustworthiness as a result of Konrad’s fascist ethnic cleansing, Seth is wrestling with doubt about his own trustworthiness as a human being.  There’s a beast inside him, no question about it., and not even Alma’s tough love mentoring can make Seth forget that.  All of this dog-paddling has left Radiant with an awful lot to try and wrap up next week, an especially severe challenge given that the manga is ongoing.  While it’s a foregone conclusion that one of the takeaways from this series is going to be a sense of missed opportunities, I’d still very much like to see it wrap up on a high note.