Episode 4 – Apocalypse Bringer Mynoghra

Sandwiched in a season between gorgeous-looking shows like DAN DA DAN season 2, The Summer Hikaru Died, and Toilet-Bound Hanako-kun season 2 part 2, I get it. Just about anything is going to look lesser if you’re watching it fresh off the heels of any of those shows. And yet, even so. Wow. We’re not exactly anywhere near rock bottom, visually, but this week’s episode definitely had more than a few moments where it’s hard not to notice things like misaligned eyes and poor textures. Before, the visuals were just unimpressive. Now I’m worried if in spite of that, we’ve already seen the visuals at their peak, and it’s only downhill from here. Hopefully I’m wrong—there’s still plenty of time for me to be wrong—but at least anecdotally, I’ve encountered way more anime whose visuals only got worse over time rather than better, so I’m not exactly feeling optimistic.

And what an especially unfortunate week for this show to show off how visually boring it is, too. This was a largely uneventful episode up until the last few minutes. Some much-needed visual flare—whether from the designs themselves, or perhaps in the fight scene we saw between the giant and the knights—could’ve been just what this episode needed to feel more substantial.

Still, meager as it was, let’s talk about what we did get from this week’s episode. After a divine revelation, some knights from what ostensibly seems to be a neutral nation (I’m not sure I buy that they’re neutral, but whatever) have come by to examine the forest. Atou greets them, pretending to be a dark elf who’s just chilling with the rest of the dark elves, and there’s totally nothing suspicious going on so you all can go home. That may as well have been exactly what Atou said—dear lord, was she even trying with her excuses? She basically said, “We’re definitely not building an evil empire, so you can go home. There’s nothing to see here.” Surely, Atou must have put the leader of the knights under some type of spell, right? There’s no way that act unironically fooled him. …R-right? I’m sure we’ll find out next week. But in the meantime, this anime desperately needs some conflict or political intrigue, so I’m glad we finally got that going.

Here’s something I’m left wondering, though: when Atou and Takuto are talking about the potential heroes they could summon, they mention that Isla, the Queen of Bugs, is the only practical option, mostly because she can buff other insects (and Takuto has been using a lot of insects), but also because she’s the one whose personality is the least likely to clash with their goals. And they know this because both he and Atou are aware that they’re in the world of a video game, and they both have memories of playing the game.

The way it’s been framed, Takuto in particular had dumped a metric ton of hours into this game in his previous life. We haven’t been given any reason to believe thus far that anything’s been deviating from the game as either of them remember it. In theory, they—or at least Takuto—should know every possible thing that could happen. And the knights suddenly appearing due to a divine revelation is a pretty noteworthy event—yet there’s no comment from either Takuto or Atou about whether or not this is something that happens in-game. You’d think Takuto would know about this event, and by extension of that, how he can reach his desired outcome. And yet, there’s no such conversation of any sort. Not even a passing thought along the lines of either, “Oh I remember this event” or “I’m not familiar with this event.” Maybe this will get addressed later—I hope it does. But on its face, it just makes it look like the writing wasn’t thought through.

This is all to say I was pretty unimpressed by this week’s episode. And I hate how disappointing this series has been so far, because its premise actually seems pretty cool. There’s still plenty of time for it to turn around, but at 4 episodes in and still nothing about this series that really wows me aside from that aforementioned premise, we’re reaching a point where one starts to wonder if the show is just starting slowly, or is the whole thing going to be like this? Still, now there’s others that know about the existence of Mynoghra, and that could give us some conflict next week. It took a moment, but the gears are finally starting to turn, so hopefully that’ll give us the material needed for a better episode next week.

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Apocalypse Bringer Mynoghra is currently streaming on
Crunchyroll.