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The Faraway Paladin downshifts a bit further and settles into a groove that is a little more familiar territory. Honestly, I’m a bit torn on how I feel about this. On the one hand, I appreciate the tempo shift from those past few episodes where the divine intervention and deicide was coming hot and heavy. On the other hand, part of what gripped me was the strong interpersonal connections and character-building between William and his found family. With this episode we shift into a more standard fantasy fare, for better and for worse.
Meneldor is, well, present and accounted for. The elf archer archetype is Just Fine Thanks™ with no real deviations thus far, but there’s no harm here in sticking with what works. Making him a bandit for a human village rather than an exemplar or virtue is interesting in a sense – I’m sure some viewers will find him a fascinating departure from expected norms, but then again these are the sorts of characters fantasy fiction and roleplaying have been introducing for decades so it’s old hat for viewers like myself. I find him more interesting for what he tells us about the world than anything about him particularly; we learn that Will is from a region that supposedly no humans have ever been to, and how difficult things have become for many of the smaller villages in the area.
There’s also more attention paid to the ideas of faith and devotion, which is nice. Simple things like praying over meals or invoking a god’s name should be important to a paladin, and it’s nice to see that being followed through, since it’s easy to see how non-combat aspects like that might be glossed over in other, lesser fantasy stories. We also learn that faeries and fae creatures are a part of the world as well, though at the moment they just function as a flourish for Meneldor’s spells.
There’s also a bit of – aherm – Tension™ between Meneldor and William. It will be interesting to see if that’s developed more in later episodes or remains as subtext.
Perhaps the biggest letdown here are the visuals. There are more than a few sequences here that just feel… flat, for lack of a better term. Characters, buildings, and locations all look rather bland and lifeless. The village buildings in particular were just giant uninspired gray slab blocks, and looked like the stockiest of stock assets.
The most pertinent question in my mind is how generic the fantasy elements are going to be going forward. As I’ve stated previously, I like rote fantasy tales, but I think the series would be wise to lean on William’s connection with Mary, Blood, and Gus. The more William can recall life lessons from them and couch his new experiences with his time with them, the stronger the emotional core will be (and the more invested I will be in the sellsword fantasy romp).
Rating:
Grant is the cohost on the Blade Licking Thieves podcast and Super Senpai Podcast.
The Faraway Paladin is currently streaming on
Crunchyroll.
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