This season isn’t getting any easier, that’s for sure.  We’re basically at the halfway point, and it seems silly to still have shows I’m on the fence about covering.  But while I’ve had seasons where I was probably close to this many bubble series, I don’t think I’ve ever had one where they made up a higher percentage of the total.  These aren’t the olden days where I might have 15-20 shows under consideration – if I have four or five series on the bubble that’s pretty much half of the total pot.

I’ll say this much – my season check-in a couple of weeks ago wasn’t exactly prescient.  I was at “Probably” with Komi-san and that one’s pretty much dead, and Mieruko-chan was “On the Respirator” and now I’m leaning towards keeping it.  Saihate no Paladin (along with Platinum End, probably) are the closest things to true tossups for me.  Every bubble series is there for different reasons (which is sort of interesting, at least) and with “Paladin” it’s mostly a matter of whether it can overcome its mediumistic bad habits and hold my interest for the long term.

This was kind a big week for this series.  With the prologue over and Will and Grace off to see the world, it was our first chance to see whether the main story had traction.  Immediately, Saihate becomes a much more conventional fantasy story, with a lone hero searching for human companions and dealing with the dangers of the wilderness.  There aren’t any humans around, even as Will passes through deserted settlements – the demon war has obviously cleaned the area out pretty good.  But the zaku demons he meets on the road are no real danger to him – no more than the mosquitoes and ants he uses his magic to protect himself from as he sleeps.

The first human in months, in fact, is a lone hunter named Meneldor (Murase Ayumu seems to be in just about everything these days) – and not a human, but a half-elf.  Yanagino Kanata (the light novelist) is obviously a fantasy fan, and he betrays his Tolkien bias here – Meneldor is a name straight out of Middle Earth, one of the great eagles who rescued Frodo and Sam from Mount Doom (in a nod to Tolkien Will notes the name means “fast-flying eagle” in Elvish).  Will puts his spear through a boar Meneldor has wounded (just for fun I pretended it was Inosuke), and eventually the two agree that Will should have a shoulder as compensation (and they share the liver, albeit absent a nice Chianti).

This pattern of negotiation will play out again in the episode, after it turns out that Meneldor is the leader of a gang of raiders about to attack a human village nearby.  These are lawless territories, and Gracefeel has tipped Will off in dreams about what’s going to happen.  Will handles the crisis with too little difficulty, then finds himself in the position of trying to prevent Menel and the others from being hanged (which is the usual course of action in such cases).  Will ends up buying their lives with some of Gus’ gold, and takes on Meneldor as an assistant in hunting the demons that attacked his own village and turned him into a raider in the first place.

To be honest, all this is far too neat to be realistic.  And Will is far too pure and infallible (so far) to be really interesting as a protagonist.  But the premise itself is fairly interesting if you’re a fantasy geek (which I am).  The vibe is kind of like a campaign in D & D, actually – that’s what pops into my head as I watch Will negotiate these situations.  I played a lot of D & D a long time ago, but whether that works as a narrative fiction is an open question.  I also thought the first part of the ep was (again) way too talky with the inner monologuing, but given that Will was on his own that was understandable.

I am indeed a hardcore fantasy nut, and when I was cutting my teeth in anime fantasy series were more common than now (good ones anyway).  So that part of me really wants this to work, and Saihate no Paladin continues to give me just enough each week to keep me hopeful the show can succeed as a whole.  But as much as it pains me, I still can’t commit – this could go either way.  Meneldor is obviously a major character; where he comes, others are sure to follow.  And with a relatively bland lead (he is a lawful good paladin, after all), the degree to which those characters are engaging is going to be a huge factor in Saihate no Paladin’s ultimate success or failure.