Rakudai Kishi no Cavalry – 09

Rakudai Kishi - lovely soft focus

Asking a serious question in lovely soft focus

winter15-highw Ask, and ye shall be answered

Relaxation Time?

Rakudai Kishi - They always compose the student council this way

They always compose these officers like this

Not a whole heck of a lot overt happenings in this week’s Cavalry. With Ikki and Stella undefeated through 12 rounds of the tournament, so the school director has “rewarded” them with a trip out of town to a retreat. Stella’s got a bit of the wrong idea, tho, thinking that it’s a vacation for them. That idea is abused when they arrive and are immediately put to work with the student council… cleaning the retreat building for the training camp for the school representatives next month. And it has to be said that Alice figured that they wouldn’t get a vacation trip, although I don’t know if he knew how right he was.

Rakudai Kishi - Cleaning with the student council

Can’t break character for steam cleaning

But in reality, the cleaning doesn’t take that long, not with the speedy Renren doing a lot of the work. That gives Stella and Ikki some free time to actually enjoy their vacation… if they can. It’s obvious as they set off that Stella’s feeling under the weather, but she doesn’t let Ikki catch on until halfway on their walk to the waterfall. But that, combined with the sudden rainshower, leads to an “alone time” situation for the two of them in a convenient mountain cabin. With Stella’s illness and the wet clothes, that means time to take those wet clothes off, which the show plays up similarly to the way it played up the intimacy of Ikki’s correction of Ayase’s stance.

Rakudai Kishi - Giving Ikki a show

Ikki gets a show…

And having that done, even her front-clasping bra (because of course it is), with her reduced reactions due to sickness, she’s more willing to bring up the idea of being intimate with Ikki without being as embarrassed, even pointing out that Ikki’s Little Intetsu is “exploding” out of his pants. The interplay between the two of them, as usual, works pretty well, because they’re both earnest and caring about the other. But again we see that Stella is the aggressor, or at least the one who is pressing the issue, even to the point this time of asking if Ikki wants to have sex with her.

Rakudai Kishi - held this shot for 12 seconds

12 seconds of silence make for a great atmosphere

 

I really loved the way the show handled this, both with the loooooong pause before she asks (literally 12 seconds of them sitting looking at each other, an eternity in TV time), and her seriousness in asking, immediately taking the embarrassment out of Ikki’s “Do you know what you’re saying?!?!?” with her calm “Yes, I do.” And from that we finally get Ikki’s reasoning for keeping their relationship to holding hands and the occasional kiss: He feels that if they get too physical, when the time comes to declare their relationship (which they really haven’t done, even if everyone knows about it), he won’t be able to “be proud in front of [her] parents or [his] family.” Stella accepts his answer, even if she doesn’t like it, and realizes that she’s the one who wants to push the physicality of their relationship.

Have to Get Some Fighting In Somehow

Rakudai Kishi - Touka appears

Seems like all characters named Touka are awesome

We go from the intimacy of Stella and Ikki talking about their relationship to Stella and Ikki having to fight off a golem. This is pretty much a setup to waste some time fighting and introduce the Student Council president. The officers of the student council do some work to hold the golems off, but ultimately it needs the power of Touka Toudou, the president, to defeat the Blazer controlling the golems. She’s the strongest knight at the school, and was top four in last year’s tournament, but I wonder why they had to make her look like Kagami, with the glasses and puffy twintails.

Rakudai Kishi - Shizuku doesn't want to take your crap, dad

Shizuku is not gonna take your crap, Dad

The other person that is fighting, but more figuratively, is Shizuku, who has gone home for the vacation time at the behest of her mother. But it turns out that the reason for her letter is because Shizuku’s father wanted her to come home to talk with her. Shizuku takes a hardline stance with him, tho, and even though he wishes to congratulate her on her wins and undefeated record, unless he acknowledges Ikki, Shizuku’s not interested in talking to him. Her fighting will be more literal next time, tho, as she is now scheduled to fight the aforementioned Touka Toudou. This might be the end of Shizuku’s tournament.

Bonus Intimacy (NSFW)

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header-winter15-highw

Some really good stuff this week, and some not so good stuff. I guess Ikki’s reasoning for not being more intimate with Stella sounds good to a teenager, but from my perspective as an older person, I don’t really see how one thing (whether they are physically intimate) relates to the other thing (being proud of your relationship). Sex is a part of human relationships, and the fact of having it or not doesn’t necessarily change how proud you can be of the relationship, although like every part of a relationship, it contributes to the whole. I think that there’s far more risk to their reputation just from the mere fact of them being roommates. People are going to think that they’re doing that anyway, as Kagami did with her “Itto Shura of the Night” comment, and no matter how much they deny it, the rumors are going to happen. Personally, I think they’d do better to just announce it, but I’m guessing that Ikki is wanting to hold off on that for some other reason, probably his family.

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Proving that you don't have to be young to love anime, I enjoy all genres and styles of shows. If it's not hurting anyone else, you should never be ashamed of what you like!
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13 Responses to “Rakudai Kishi no Cavalry – 09”

  1. Wanderer says:

    Stella is both a literal princess and a major military asset of a foreign country. There would be significant consequences if a resident of another country were to have sex with her, particularly someone whose own family would gladly disown him and declare him to be a criminal rapist, terrorist, and mass-murderer if asked. The fact that she would insist she loves him would be immaterial: with his own family speaking against him, everyone would assume she’d been deceived and seduced, and not only could the political consequences be severe, but Stella’s own personal reputation would be ruined forever. Finally, Ikki would be thrown in jail for “raping” a foreign royal, and could suffer any number of extreme punishments.

    The two of them need to reveal their relationship with the proper timing to the proper people. Right now everyone at school has figured it out, but everyone also thinks the two of them are adorable together, so no one’s making a fuss about it. Revealing it officially to the world is another matter altogether.

    That said, I would be hard-pressed to resist Stella if she asked like that.

    • Highway says:

      That’s all well and good. However, 1) that’s not the reason that was given, and 2) if there’s going to be that much of a frame-up, whether they actually do it or not means absolutely nothing. They already live together and have for months. If someone’s going to use Stella to take down Ikki, they’ve already got more than enough ammunition for that just from the circumstance of them having so much time alone together, and that they could easily get others to corroborate their relationship.

      Again, I just don’t see where it really makes a difference, except in Ikki’s head.

      • Wanderer says:

        @1: That’s because anime writers think feelings play better with their audience than politics. It was understood clearly in the novel that Stella’s political status was one of the important reasons why the two of them had to be careful with their relationship.

  2. Wanderer says:

    Three comments eaten by the filter so far. Help?

  3. zztop says:

    There was a significant change from the source novel for this episode.

    In Vol 3, the golems were NOT sent by the sinister plump man to harm Ikki.
    They were instead sent by other persons to test Touka’s Blazer powers, as part of their greater plan. The Okutama trip in the novel was to investigate mysterious disturbances happening there (actually caused by the golems to draw out Touka).

    This change removes important foreshadowing for Vol 4’s plot, which introduces the recurring villain group for Rakudai’s next arc, the 7-Star Games. The other persons are members of said group.

    Some LN readers have taken this to mean there won’t be a Season 2 to cover the next arc (which I hear is pretty long – 6 volumes).

    • Highway says:

      6 Volumes is too long for a season to cover anyway, especially if the current one is pretty much only getting through volume 3.

      I wouldn’t see these changes as a significant impediment to getting back to that kind of plot anyway. You could always have another trip, or have them go somewhere else. Plus, they can always tack on “We wanted to see how Touka would handle that” to their reasoning later.

      You’ve mentioned people worried about ‘important foreshadowing’ a couple times, but honestly, to my mind it’s all mix and match, and one sinister deal is no different from other sinister deals. Or like when Stella talked to Kagami rather than Ayase, there’s no reason that Stella and Ayase can’t have another conversation about that, given Ikki’s forestalling of their physical relationship. It’s certainly not a big deal, imo. The story in the anime is working fine.

      • zztop says:

        6 volumes would definitely be too long for a 1-cour season; it’d become a rush job like Antimagic.

        They’d ideally need 2-cours/2 split cours to cover the next arc. The question is whether the tournament story + various character going-ons per the novels is interesting enough to warrant a 2-cour animation.

        • Highway says:

          The best thing about Cavalry so far, as far as I’m concerned, is that they’ve only tangentially talked about the tournament. The show has only had two (and a half, with Ayase) significant (as a portion of the time provided) fights, and only one of them was part of the tournament. It’s a show about tournament participants, not a tournament. And it does a very good job as that (see my Asterisk posts for my view on the opposite).

          If a second series were to go into more of a standard battle tournament, I certainly wouldn’t like it as much.

  4. zztop says:

    Congrats! Rakudai is now the 29th most top-selling light novel series in Japan!(out of the top 30)

    http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/news/2015-11-29/top-selling-light-novels-in-japan-by-series-2015/.95914

    Check out the top 3 sellers!
    (Hint: Hestia is still Bestia, and Super Shiba Tatsuya.)

  5. sonicsenryaku says:

    ikki’s reason for not getting intimate with stella was very weak..that is all. Seriously, the writing could have handled that scene more organically. It really just felt like the narrative itself was holding itself back because it felt as if it would have played all its cards regarding ikki and stella’s relationship if they had sex too soon, leaving nothing for the viewer to be interested in, which i find stupid. To an older adult ikki’s reasoning is weak but i would argue even a teenager would have exclaimed “COME ON YOU DUMBASS”

    • skylion says:

      …it feels like “oh,this is the honorable answer she want’s to hear…” in Ikki’s mind.

    • Highway says:

      Remembering my days as a teenage boy… or even older boy than that… there’s really no reason that a boy would say “no” unless he knew it was a trap. So frequently there’s this eye rolling reasoning about why they don’t do it. Of course, most guys, confronted with “Can you take my bra off, it clasps in the front…” would be like “OHMANOHMANOHMAN I wonder if I can brush my hand against her tits (without her being mad)…”

      I’ve been watching Mysterious Girlfriend X recently, and I think that show probably handles this tension between “I wanna do it” and “I will get in big trouble” the best that I’ve seen. Tsubaki wants to do sexy things with Urabe (and really, she wants to do them with him), but they have this tug of war between going too far and getting his shit all cut up. But he actually does try the things, like brushing his hand against her chest, or hugging her, even though he knows it won’t go well…

  6. Rathje says:

    You know, I want to be careful in how I say this… because we’re all watching this show and enjoying it. And I do like a good sexy romance. I don’t want to come off as holier-than-thou or anything. But…

    I like the hands-off approach Ikki is taking to sex so far, and respect the choice. I don’t think his reasoning is weak or contemptible or pointless.

    I’m 40 years old. I’ve been married to my wife nearly 16 years now. And both of us didn’t have sex until we were married. Yeah, it required some self-control. I thought she was hot and internally wanted to take the relationship there. Once she got engaged, a lot of her natural reluctance disappeared too. Both of us had the natural desire to go there.

    But we’d been raised in a culture that treated abstinence from sex until marriage as a sign of respect for your partner. We made the conscious decision not to go there until we were married. And while it was a challenge, we managed to do it, and I’m glad to this day that we did it.

    We didn’t suffer any real drawbacks from not finding out if we were “sexually compatible” before marrying. We had plenty of time after marriage to figure that aspect out, and 16 years and 4 kids later, we are very compatible and very happy together.

    Now, I’m not going to cast judgment bolts at people who were raised differently or do things differently. I’m not going to pretend to be some paragon of moral virtue or anything. If people want to cohabitate before marriage or whatnot, so be it. You can all make up your own minds about that. I don’t consider people morally inferior just for a different view on this subject.

    But I would like to think that what my wife and I decided to do during our dating and engagement period was something good. And I’d like to think that it wasn’t “silly” or “lame” or “pointless.”

    Just wanted to get that out there.

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