The Faraway Paladin

Episode 11

Will faces his first major setback on his journey so far. I found myself a bit at odds with this episode, which is a shame given the solid streak The Faraway Paladin has been on for a while now. There's nothing necessarily wrong with it, but nothing all that compelling for the audience to grab onto either.

Everything that happens in this episode makes sense from a zoomed-out perspective. Will heads into the Beast Woods with his new crew in tow and begins righting the wrongs plaguing the townsfolk. While riding high, he gets his ambitions and overconfidence checked by a dangerous world. He decides to pull back and go it alone so that none of his friends get hurt again. Sure, okay, A to B to C. That all checks out.

The problem is that it all feels really empty. The best moments of the prior episodes were those that leaned heavily into our investment with Will and his background. Here, everything zips by so fast that nothing seems to stick. We've hardly been familiarized with this new location and now Will is running around with an entire army of nameless soldiers in new villages full of people he is saving. It sure might be nice to slow down and, I dunno, actually meet these people, yeah? Who are these new mercenaries? Who are the people in these villages? No, we get a montage and its off we go.

The battle against the Beast Woods chimera and crew suffers from this paltry setup. Sure, Will tells us they've done a lot of fighting up to this point, but this is the first fight we really see in this new area. So when the chimera shows up with an army of beast snakes and goats it just feels… random. Will loses because he got “overconfident” but we never really saw the buildup to that confidence in the first place, so it has no real impact. Without any connection to this new location and these new personalities, Will heading off on his own and leaving the other cast members behind ultimately rings hollow. Hopefully things slow down soon.

Rating:

Grant is the cohost on the Blade Licking Thieves podcast and Super Senpai Podcast.

The Faraway Paladin is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.