I don’t have a “four episode rule” – or three (as the tropes dictates), or any other consistent number.  When it comes to anime or any other narrative medium, I decide when I decide.  I try and be sure, and sometimes get it wrong and change my mind.  Sometimes it takes an episode.  Sometimes it takes two minutes.  And sometimes a lot longer.  I was really hoping to be able to make a firm decision on Saihate no Paladin after this episode, but I’m kind of right where I was before it started.  That’s what bubbles are for, I guess…

To be honest, I just don’t have strong feelings about this show one way or the other.  It’s kind of in that same “pretty good” category it has been since the premiere.  And those are the hardest series to make a call on.  Sometimes the schedule can help – if it’s barren you lower the bar, if it’s packed you raise it – but this season is bang average in the workload category.  And as I suspected it would be, it’s the most bubbly season in a while – a lot of series are right smack in that grey area.

In the end I don’t grade anime on a curve apart from the workload element.  So the fact that Saihate is good for an isekai is more an interesting sidebar than a relevant factor.  That it is an isekai cannot be denied – hell, we even got the requisite hikikomori regret speech this week.  But the isekai element seems pretty tacked-on, really.  Would things be different if Will had just been a normal foundling?  Arguably with his reasoning for rejecting Stagnate, maybe.  But materially?  No, not so far.  And actually that’s a good thing, with isekai anime’s track record.

If what made Mushoku Tensei interesting – for a while – was its authoritative embrace of isekai tropes, it’s the opposite here.  Saihate doesn’t seem as concerned with them as with broader fantasy genre guideposts.  We even got a Gandalf reference this week, after all.  If anything it’s maybe a little too generically fantasy so far, but it is fairly dignified as a result.  Seeing Will struggle with the offer Stagnate made to him – and with the reality of why Gus secretly opposed him for all these years – felt very archetypal.   Will is a bit of a bore but his love for his three parents plays as genuine.

One slightly discordant element of all this for me is the contract.  It kind of seems to me as if Stagnate (I quite like the work Takahashi Hiroki is doing here) did what he promised, and he’s collecting his due.  That sucks for the power trio, but didn’t they get what they paid for?  I suppose one could argue, as Gus does, that a contract agreed under duress is not a valid contract.  But while I get Stagnate is basically evil, I’m not sure he’s wrong.  I think Will is just resisting because he doesn’t want Mummy, Dad, and Gramps to have to pay up.  Which is fine, he’s entitled – but taking on a God is no bargain.

Will deciding on the Goddess of Light is no surprise – he’s clearly a mummy’s boy.  It seems to have been the right decision as far as resisting Stagnate is concerned.  But Stagnate has bigger fish to fry, and debts to collect.  The classic fantasy element would be for Will to lose his parents and have to soldier on without them.  We’ll see if Saihate no Paladin goes that route, or offers up a surprise turn.