「落第騎士 IV」 (Rakudai Kishi IV)
“The Worst One IV”

It’s the episode we’ve all been waiting for — and it didn’t disappoint. Unless you have no soul and/or can’t accept the OTP, which if that’s the case I have nothing to say.

The Scars of the Past

I’m sure we’ve all experienced that feeling when something from our past manages to trip us up. With the worst typically related to something embarrassing or some sort of epic fail, I’m sure every one of us has something that we’d like to just expel from our minds. In Ikki’s case, it’s probably twice or even three times as bad as any of our worst. Being shunned by his entire family, treated like a failure without an opportunity to demonstrate his skills, and having to face someone who probably has one of the most unfair tactics he’s seen to date? It’s probably a miracle that Ikki was even able to stay on his feet! Luckily, even when his nerves (or maybe it’s better to say his emotional scars) nearly got the best of him, he had one ace up his sleeve — Stella Vermillion.

The One True Pairing

As much as I’d love to write more about how Ikki managed to get revenge on a complete asshat, I’d much rather use this opportunity to highlight what’s probably one of my favorite moments so far this season (a close second behind Hinata’s epic jump at the end of Haikuu S2’s first episode). First, you have to give Stella a huge round of applause for shutting up an entire stadium with an explosion of emotion and heartfelt words of encouragement. Second, you also have to give Ikki the biggest brofist possible for saying what takes some people two whole seasons to even hint at. Skipping all the bullshit, how can you not love the way he expressed his feelings for the girl who saved his life? With one simple phrase and no hesitation stamping out any possible misinterpretations, this might be one of the cutest (and quickest) starts to a relationship, ever (okay, maybe in the past few seasons).

Looking Ahead

With Shizuku safely out of the romantic picture and Ikki’s first official victory, it looks like we’re finally about to hit our stride when it comes to the story. While it remains to be seen how far the story intends to go with only eight episodes left, I’d say we have a lot to look forward too based off of what the opening is showing us.

In any case, I can’t wait for next week to come since it’ll be the first episode where I can finally say that our favorite couple is doing stuff together instead of using their names individually. Ciao!

Takaii’s Notes:

  • Again, I LOVED Stella’s outburst during the fight. Screech and all.
  • Shizuku is such a good younger sister — she knows when to take a step back.
  • If only Ikki was 1mm closer, am I right?
  • I forgot to touch on it, but Alice was rather well fleshed out this week. Unexpected words of wisdom from a source that should seem obvious.
  • I love Iguchi Yuka.

End Card


    1. I am feeling good entertainment. Please continue. But i bet (i speak out of Veteran experience) their Love will be used against them. Perhaps in Hijacking combined with blackmail to lose battles or something alike

      This is my reddit posting

    2. The voice acting in this episode was AWESOME. Especially appreciated Yoshitsugu Matsuoka. I recognized his voice immediately but later forgot due to the “creepy” factor as he got more excited/terrified.

  1. End card link is not working.


    Well, these four episodes took us through the first LN, so at this rate we may finish the third? I’ll have to go back and check to see if anything in them might take more time in animated form than it took up space on paper. But if we get there, that’s where the translations have gotten to, so far, and it serves as a valid stopping point. A stopping point that makes it plain that there’s tons more story left to cover, but it’s a clear break between “what happened before” and “what will happen from now on.”

    ANYway! Decisive protagonists for the win! Major congratulations to Ikki and Stella for avoiding all the unnecessary dragging out of the will they or won’t they despite everyone being able to see it, and just confessing properly to each other four episodes in. If only more protagonists could follow their example we wouldn’t have to suffer through anywhere near as many ridiculous sets of harem antics each season.

  2. The anticipation that I had for this episode for the past couple of weeks were crazy, and it did not disappoint me at all. The battle animations, the tension, the emotional outburst and lastly the confession, Silver Link done them perfectly and even remove some cringy moments from the sources, such as the Kirihara and Stella bet. Base lord Silver Link, you are awesome :]

  3. Between this and Asterisk, I definitely feel Cavalry wins this week, primarily with the Ikki and Stella interaction and confessions. While Asterisk’s episode wasn’t bad, the amount of cliches without a decent payoff to balance them hurt it a little bit.

    Like, for example, Cavalry made it clear that the present antagonist had every intention of taking his time to humiliate Ikki rather than finish him off immediately, so giving Stella the chance to have her outburst and Ikki making a comeback both felt more natural and shows it all to be the consequences of the antagonist’s own arrogance and choice of how to fight that made him lose rather than making Ikki feel deus ex machina; that and actually showing that Ikki was indeed troubled and nervous about the fight due to their previous encounter, as well as his own life.

    This is unlike Silas in Asterisk who, despite saying he wouldn’t waste his time and simply take care of Julis immediately, still seemed to take his sweet time talking and giving Ayato the opportunity to pull the “nick of time save” cliche, and even allowing Ayato to somehow do a whole noble speech to Julis when they were only like…what, a couple floors above him after Ayato swept Julis out of Silas’s clutches? Unlike Cavalry, it didn’t really feel nearly as natural.

    While both episodes had cliches, Cavalry’s use of them didn’t really stick out so much as to bug me like Asterisk’s did this episode, like when Silas, as I said, says how he wouldn’t waste time, all I could think was, “THEN DON’T WASTE TIME TELLING HER YOU WON’T WASTE TIME AND JUST DO IT ALREADY BEFORE AYATO SHOWS UP!”…then presto! Silas talks a bit more, then Ayato appears and whisks Julis away. Then, Ayato giving his speech to Julis just had me thinking, “And where the heck is Silas during all this talking as you clearly didn’t go THAT far away from him?”, only for Silas to immediately show up just after Ayato finishes.

    I dunno, maybe it’s just me…

    1. i respect your favorite loving, but for me both (Cavalry and Asterix) are doing a great Job. Both are Siblings (Brother or Sister) of the first Episodes, but then they are about to walk their own path. And i like both of their stories

    2. I’m with you. Asterisk seems okay and is functionally sound, but in the end it falls into the exact series of cliches that this show avoids for the most part. The supposedly really strong girl has very quickly become a near-useless damsel in distress, the hero is basically a super saiyan whose only weakness is some sort of plot based limitation (in this case literally a plot-based limiter), and standard harem tropes abound despite the sheer obviousness of the two main characters’ like for each other.

      Basically the opposite of everything good that Cavalry has done. Stella, while slightly sidelined, is still well-established as strong (I really liked the conversation where they explain she would have obliterated Shizuya so easily he simply would have forfeit the match beforehand), Ikki is actually weak and has to work really hard to overcome it rather than the reverse, and our leads have already dropped the harem/love triangle pretense and confessed. Quite the achievement in 4 episodes.

      1. …actually, after watching episode 4 of both series, I have to disagree pretty strongly. I’ll agree that Asterisk plays more common tropes straight than this show, but I’m very much of the opinion that it executes those common tropes more competently than this show executes its attempted aversions.

        First, the positives. This show did one thing really well, this week, which redeems it back into watchability for me – that being Ikki’s anxieties and near failure due to his own unconscious fears. I thought that did a lot to ground him as an actual character, as opposed to a power fantasy. Now hopefully he remains consistent to that character in the future, which is (one of the places) where a certain other show disappointed.

        The problem is with the other characters. As much as it was amusing to hear Matsuoka Miyano-brand ham it up with Kirihara, it doesn’t change the fact that Kirihara was literally a two-trick pony with a cringeworthy personality – which basically puts him one trick above the previous week’s painfully obnoxious terrorist villains. Honestly, Asterisk’s episode 4 one-off villain came off as more intelligent than Kirihara. And the scene with the whole school jeering at Ikki was the worst kind of eye-rolling typical – basically the same kind of scene as Kirito being decried as a ‘beater’ by a whole crowd. But honestly, that’s still not the biggest problem.

        The problem is that I still don’t feel the main heroine – or most of the supporting cast, for that matter – as characters. Stella feels like a subset of Ikki, not a character in her own right – the only label I can rightly apply to her is ‘love interest’ and that’s it. Similarly, Shizuku still seems to have no drive other than Ikki, and Alice might have something but is right now not showing any sign of having his own direction as a character. It’s telling that the entire episode, the only characters I actively liked seeing on screen were Ikki and Iguchi Yuka’s character. This is, again, something I think Asterisk just does better – the various characters all have their own motivations and are not driven primarily by the main character.

        Maybe it’s because this show feels, frankly, way too shonen. If it didn’t know it was a light novel adaptation, I wouldn’t think anything unusual if you were to tell me it was a JUMP manga – it’s got the same kind of one-trick fights, often-painfully one-dimensional villains, and heroine/side characters that are basically just there for the main character. Which is why, for now, for me, Ikki is enough to make this watchable, but I’m not expecting any kind of depth out of it – whereas Asterisk and Taimadou both still have promise of something deeper.

      2. I’m not even sure how to respond to this… it’s just so off-base.

        First off, you call Stella a subset of Ikki while complimenting Asterisk where Julis’s only contribution to the episode was to give Ayato wings (i.e. LITERALLY a subset of Ayato).

        As for the rest… nope, can’t be bothered. And I find it kind of funny that you insult a show for being ‘too Shounen’ when generally LN adaptations themselves are considered one of the most derivative and uninspired genres in anime right now, at least to the level of Shounen, if not worse since they tend to be actually insulting and sexist where shounen’s worst crime is generally just being mindless.

        But whatever, everyone’s entitled to their opinions and all that. Some are just worse.

      3. ….good gods, man, how easily offended are you? And on top of that, you basically just said ‘nope, you’re wrong’ to my entire post. Great counterpoint. If you can’t be bothered to give some kind of reason for how offended you seem to be, I don’t see a point in continuing.

        As to the two points you did make… Julis put up a more decent fight than Stella did previous episode, saved McFail, and figured out who was behind Mr. Villain-of-the-week. That’s not ‘nothing but give Ayato wings’. And as for LN vs. shonen… eh, I’ll put that down to differing tastes. Suffice it to say that as bad as the genre can and has gotten, there’s still a good number of LNs I’d put above the likes of Bleach in its current form.

      4. Eh, I’ve never really believed in the ‘everyone’s opinion is right’ thing. The right to an opinion is the right to believe something, not the ability to make that belief true.

        Frankly, at worst, Rakudai and Asterisk are both derivative crap. Rakudai has evidence of more attempts to pull away from standard derivative crap, but it tows the line. Asterisk is firmly derivative crap.

        Rakudai is possibly better, or at least different, based on doing some very common things in different ways (having the leads actually get together). I’m not even remotely pretending Rakudai is amazing, if you look back through my posts (I’m not saying you should, just a turn of phrase) you’d see I’m the first person to point out when Rakudai is being stupid and stereotypical.

        I’m just not going to pretend Asterisk isn’t being stupid and stereotypical all the time. That’s why I dropped Absolute Duo, Kuusen Madoushi, World Break, Trinity Seven, Mahouka Koukou and Taimadou. I saw enough of them to see they were more of the same (bad) formula and I stopped. You can tell me Twilight is good and that’s your right, but it doesn’t make it good.

    3. To play a devil advocate, I didn’t buy that Asterisk was a deus ex machina when you claim that Rakudai is not. Stella’s outburst is good, yes, but it didn’t make Ikki’s sudden “I can trace everything and suddenly all of the previous damage that I got become irrelevant” to be any less deus ex machina if we’re using the same standard here. While in Asterisk Show Spoiler ▼

      , Ikki relies on tracing power gimmick which need to be balanced deliberately with plot element to make him not OP. That kind of trick is hard to be explained visually, which makes his sudden reversal felt rather cheap for me. Both also were guilty in “talking during battle”, so I have no idea why would you compared them in that aspect.

      But you know, that’s actually not a problem. Deus ex Machina in regards of power level balance is something which people should accept when they come to the genre (both in this kind of action LN or in action shounen manga). What I personally don’t really like is when people try to oversell Rakudai as something innovative and not cliche, when sometimes it’s just tweaked a little bit without actually changing the actual formula and still has similar weakness with its peer.

      That said, I do liked Cavalry a little bit more compared to Asterisk, but not by a long shot. Both seems to show good episode 4 compared to rather lackluster mid arc, and they finally start to part away with different focus (Romance Action in Rakudai, Magic Academy shenanigans in Asterisk), which would be interesting to see.

      1. The big difference is that Ikki’s abilities were developed entirely by his own dedication, hard work, and practice, simply not used immediately because, as I said and as the episode showed, Ikki wasn’t thinking straight like he made himself look like because he was still partially traumatized by his previous encounter as well as his childhood and the likes (which is a believable and relatable reason; normally great sports players can end up performing poorly if their head isn’t entirely in the game, causing them to make careless mistakes and such, for example), while Ayato’s power just…is…he’s somehow a;waus been “special” and/or so powerful that his sister saw a need to place seals on him to restrict that power so it didn’t hurt him.

        And I already said that both episodes used deus ex machinas and cliches, but Cavalry used them more effectively, IMO, and it had a much better payoff as a result compared to Asterisk’s use of them.

      2. deus ex machina is an exceedingly dangerous term to use in fiction, as the writer IS the ‘god in the machine’ so anything that happens is in reality happening just because the writer decided it is so. The issue is not that they won. The issue is that Ayato is the very standard godlike protagonist whose limitations are entirely plot based while Ikki is the struggling protagonist who must work to surpass his own limitations.

        Whether they win or not is irrelevant. The simple fact that the story follows a tournament means, by definition, that Ikki is going to have to keep winning which, if he’s as weak as they say, strains credibility. This is one of the reasons I always approve of tournament anime that use some sort of point system as opposed to elimination; it allows the hero to lose on occasion.

        That said, the difference between weak and godlike protagonists comes down to the writer ‘selling’ us on the concept since both of them are going to keep winning in the story. This episode did a pretty good job of that (I still don’t buy how Ikki was considered so weak, but they’re close enough).

        PS: talking during battle isn’t inherently a sin. In Asterisk it made no sense because the guy was explicitly trying to take Julis out and just didn’t. Shizuya on the other hand was a sadistic prick who wanted to make Ikki squirm and was taking great joy in getting the crowd to join in. Talking during battle wasn’t him being an idiot/indulging in cliche, it was his whole battle strategy, and he thought he could afford it because Ikki is freakishly weak.

      3. @KaleRyan

        Yeah, Ikki is definitely strong, but just in a different way than everyone else (and, thankfully, not in a “so powerful that a typical power-measuring system can’t read him properly” kind of way). Just because he’s not “special” in the same way as the other students, with big, cool/flashy moves or abilities, that seems to automatically translate in their minds as “weak”, which subsequently makes them underestimate him like Kirihara did.

        What I also like is that, given Ikki’s hard-working nature, it doesn’t seem like his wins be completely reliant on the same method(s) over and over either.

  4. If I were Ikki, at the end of the match, I would have just double middle fingered the crowd, F all y’all. And l’m not sure sadistically beating up people who can’t fight back qualifies you as cool. Also if you do love like pain, don’t be a sadistic asshole and inflict pain on a bunch of people. Also getting you ass kicked in the first round by a guy who is called the worst one after representing the school, no wonder they did so shitty last year.

  5. Explanations on Rakudai terms:
    1) In the novel, Area Invisible is written with the kanji 狩人の森, Kariudo no Mori (“Hunter’s Forest”). That would explain the illusory forest in this battle.

    2) Perfect Vision is written with the kanji 完全掌握, “Kanzen Shouaku” (“Perfect Grasp”); ie. Ikki’s perfectly grasped the extent of how Kirihara’s powers work.

    1. Perfect Vision is a little more than that. More than just a person’s powers, it’s Ikki grasping that person’s entire being – powers, personality, everything. Which is why he was capable of predicting every single action Kirihara would take.

  6. That was some great fight animation since Bell vs. the minotaur.

    I really like how Alice and Shizuku was also fleshed out a bit especially on Alice’s advice on Ikki. It show some depth on the characters.

    1. I take it you mean the second encounter, rather than the “Tomato Incident”?
      Ohhhh, yeaaaahhh! That was pretty much the best 12 minutes of fight I’ve ever seen, in any media. That boy can dance.

      Kai Lord
  7. Like I wrote before, for me it is the main characters and their relationship development which makes Rakudai special. The rest of the setting has been seen a few dozen times, and the action – as wonderfully infuriating Kirihara was, and as satisfying it was to see him go down – is only icing on the cake, at least for me.

    With Ikki we have a MC who is not owning people like a demigod, or whose victories are 95% the achievement of his harem. He has to struggle, but tries his best. He is not a dense idiot or spineless wet noodle when it comes to girls, he makes up his mind and _opens his mouth. How refreshing!

    Still, my absolute MVP in this show is Stella. In episode 2 I was worrying that Silver Link was screwing things up, because they seemed to alter her character, but 3+4 were spot-on again. For me, the right term for her is “endearing”. She is proud, impulsive, and sometimes a little bit immature, but she always tries her best, and when the chips come down, she possesses a strength and honesty that is so rare in anime. Two scenes stood out to me: First, how she gnashed her teeth over the crowd reaction, because she understood how much more Ikki did compared to them, and her resulting outburst when it became too much. And of course the confession scene when she overcame her embarrassed-tsundere initial response to come through. She is all too aware that her position as princess will massively complicate things.

    Looking forward to watching this 🙂

  8. All the hype due this show is due has already been said, so let me get something out of the way first.

    While the writers did well in getting the “bet” in the source material out of this adaptation, the cringe factor for me was still in here in the form of the students not only condoning Kirihara’s sadism, but actually JOINING in the taunting of a mortally wounded Ikki. I mean, seriously, what?! Coupled with what I have been told by the LN readers that what was in the original was that it was Kirihara’s supporters that actually jeered on the mortally wounded sap, the fact that the writers have changed it that the entire school was into such a horrible act strikes me as yet another misanthropic stroke just for a cheap attempt at drama. Seriously, writers, you can be dramatic without having to do the Humans Are Bastards schtick. Sheesh, this is the major issue I have with a lot of modern anime nowadays, it’s so prevalent that any shred of decency that is shown thru the characters or setting is decried out as “naive” and “idealistic”.

    Anyway, with my major complaint out of the way, let me just sit back and admire the protags. Yay for positive portrayal of LGBTs in the form of Alice. Yay for Shizuku finally getting the message and quitting the incest gig. Yay for Stella shutting the mindless crowd and being yet another proper example of what a tsundere should be and lastly, yay for Ikki being just a non-dense, decent guy with working brains and has the balls to grab the girl. And hopefully, just hopefully, he won’t swerve to the direction of yet another Byronic hero (as shown by him purposefully missing by a millimeter :P).

    TL;DR The Beef & Melons ship has sailed.

    1. He didn’t miss purposefully imo. He missed in a way that he didn’t mean to draw blood but actually off and made a cut to Kihara’s nose by some mm. Had Ikki fuck up the guy when he already surrendered he would have lost his chivalrous quality over anger for me.

      The writters left out some parts to further explains the scene/characters but for most part i am very well satisfied with the fight.

      1. I am aware that he did cut the guy’s nose on purpose to drive home his point. Maybe what I meant to say is that he stopped himself from ploughing thru the douche and just did that. And yes, the “chivalry” part of the title would have been lost if he went thru it.

        Still, yes, I agree. That was one sick battle sequence. It’s as if Silver Link has been made just to make dem sakuga fight scenes.

    2. I agree with pretty much all this. The whole school joining in on the taunting was a bit much; it was sadistic and horrible and while teens can be monsters, the idea that they would all happily join in on such a sadistic show is weird and seemed unrealistic.

      It would have made more sense if they’d all been uncomfortable, but too ashamed to say anything and then Stella’s outburst was for them to man up or something.

      That aside though, I also agree on all the stuff about the protagonists here. The fact that Ikki was the one to confess even when (apparently despite her screaming) he didn’t really expect a positive response was very nice. It’s generally the girl that finally gets over herself in these, the celibate harem lead rarely gets it together. And yeah, glad the incest is apparently finished, that was one of those Japanese subculture/trope things I simply have no interest in/find fairly creepy, so I’m glad it’s winding down quickly.

      Alice I liked, but I’m holding my breath on whether Alice is a strong LGBT character any more than various other ‘wise homosexual’ types that pop up in media. There’s still a lot of room to do terrible things with Alice, but for now the show is doing well in that regard.

      1. In normal school? No.

        In an elitist meritocratic school that encourage competition between students, and everyone, even classmates is seen as potential competitor? HELL YES.

        It happens in real life.

      2. SMinstrel: The “it happens in real life” argument is not going to cut it. Sure, there ARE exceptions(apparently where you live), but the way it’s presented here seems that its the norm, which is not only contrary to reality, but downright disgusting.

      3. @lalunafells

        Okay let me rephrase that. In an elitist, meritocratic and dogmatists school, this is the norm, and should rightly be expected.

        I am sorry if the presentation of this episode sicken you (it sicken me also TBH). But unlike the sudden stripping (for no reason) of episode 2, entire school joining with the taunting is actually very logical and felt natural, and we should kudos the anime producer/novel author for present the scene correctly and strongly, not bashing it as ‘unnatural’ or forced.

        Remember this is a school that, until one year ago, had the (un)official school policy of “make everyday life a living hell for Ikki”.

        Ever wonder why all of the students that are friendly to Ikki are first years?

    1. You’re misunderstanding. He was trying to avoid hitting Kirihara at all, and make the strike be purely psychological by having it land as close as physiucally possible without actually touching. The fact that he even scratched the guy’s nose is a failure as far as Ikki is concerned, because it means his strike didn’t land where he intended it to.

  9. After, episode 3’s horrible paint-by-numbers accidental double date/terrorist attack/fanservice/battle episode that’s been done 100 times before, this really went a long way towards redeeming the series for me. The character’s all rose above their archetypes similar to how they did in the first episode, no one in particular behaved extremely stupid, and the plot moved in fascinating and arguably unique (for a fantasy-battle-school-harem anime) directions.

    Just pretty great all around.

  10. Amazing! I was on the edge of my seat the whole fight scene, the intensity was crazy.
    The OST, the animation, and direction were really good especially the fight choreography. Silver Link definitely went all out this episode.
    The confession at the end, I was just as happy as when I had read it previously. Can’t wait for the rest of the big moments!!

  11. Well, compared to the source material, I can honestly say that someone gave this fight too much of the wrong stuff. The whole point was that Ikki couldn’t see his opponent, but then they gave up on even making his opponent transparent to us and added a forest for some reason. That was fine while Ikki was losing, then things got amped up to 11 and suddenly you aren’t even sure if dumbass has turned off his invisibility or what since we can plainly see him and his arrows. All they needed to do was make both transparent and it would’ve still been fine.

    This fight was supposed to be a lot more psychological, finished basically as soon as Ikki caught sight of chuckle-f**k, and a lot less crash-boom-bang. Not a good direction change IMO.

    1. He was very clearly invisible the whole time, they just depicted it as the semi-faded out thing that is used for nearly all invisibility in media. Not sure what was confusing about that.

      1. Like I said, the semi fade was fine, but they should`ve used it the whole time since he was invisible the whole time. It sounds small, but since the invisibility was what gave Ikki trouble it feels sloppy that they weren’t consistent.

  12. While the episode is great and the fight is way better than it was in LN/Manga, there was one thing i had a gripe about. They still fucked up his catch phrase, isn’t it “With my weakest….”? not “With my strongest..”. The original hit home more after all the worst one stuff people called him.

    1. Yeah, “With my weakest, I shall hunt the strongest.” Or thereabouts. Just another of the little bits the anime is getting wrong because of the 1.5x rush speed they seem to be doing to themselves. Can’t decide if it’s the “1-cour fault” or just the studio trying to be creative beyond the source.

    2. Is that REALLY his catch phrase or are you remembering it wrong/reading a bad translation? Because that’s idiotic. Even if Ikki is ‘the weakest’ he wouldn’t say ‘with my weakest.’ That’s just wrong by definition. In a fight, your weakest would be to just give up and/or tap your opponent with no force. You can’t use ‘your weakest’ against someone. The idea that Ikki, as the weakest, is using his strongest abilities to defeat his opponents, who are much stronger than him overall, makes way more sense.

      I get the idea the writer was going for if the catch phrase really is ‘with my weakest…’ but it’s simply not accurate and is a ridiculous use of both Japanese and English. If it was supposed to make sense it would need to be something like “I’ll show you the that the weakest can defeat the strongest” or something like that.

    3. Actually that’s the problem about translations. The phase Ikki used is originally this: 「僕の最弱を以て、君の最強を捕まえる」(With my weakest, I’ll catch your strongest). But both 最弱 (weakest) and 最強 (strongest) are pronounced as「さいきょう」(saikyou) by the seiyuu, so the translator who translate this by ear without any knowledge about the novel will translate this both into (strongest). Hence the ‘with my strongest, (…) your strongest’ translation.

      1. Then I go back to my point, it’s a stupid catchphrase. My weakest does not work grammatically. No matter how weak ikki may be, he should be using ‘my strongest.’ My weakest grammatically means he’s he’s using the minimum amount of his own power. If anything, it would make more sense if Ikki was powerful. As I said above, I get what the writer was going for, but the line is simply nonsense, and nothing I’m aware of in Japanese (I live in Tokyo and speak the language at a reasonable level) would make the meaning that different. If you changed my to the it could work. Does the original Japanese contain the possessive?

      2. “1. 最弱 is saijaku not saikyou”

        Here is page 280 from LN vol 1, with the phrase in question on the rightmost.


        The furigana author used for 「最弱」 is 「さいきょう」(saikyou), as a kind of wordplay. So I still call this a translation error. But then again, anyone who didn’t know about the source material will make the same mistake.

      3. oh, the Japanese and their wordplay. Honestly, that makes more sense and is probably meant to be both cool and a joke at the same time. That Ikki is using ‘my strongest’ (remember, this is a spoken line, so it’s not like his opponents can see the kanji), but the writer is using wordplay to give it a double meaning that his strongest is still the weakest sort of a thing.

        That means in english either would work, and honestly even in spoken Japanese either would work, since the trick relies on the written form to even make sense.

      4. But when you’re talking about it from the anime’s perspective, there’s no furigana floating above their heads to clarify what they’re saying.

        If anything, I personally think it’s a bit much to expect an anime viewer to somehow read in-between the nonexistent lines of spoken words. So I think Takurannyan’s issue with the phrasing still stands.

    4. I’ve only tried to explain that the anime still keep the same catchphrase from the novel and manga, not ****ed it up. The problem lies within translation, which is really hard to be 100% accurate without scenario book or japanese subtitles. But then again, I cant wait that long so I still thankful for those speedsubs.

  13. I loved this episode and how they got the romance out of the way instead of dragging it on.

    Rakudai still in the lead and Asterisk is starting to be a little below Taimadou’s level.

  14. Rakudai Kishi no Cavalry beats Asterisk again with this episode. Both had a “Confession” but Rakudai had more promise behind it and made them official. The action in this show FAR surpasses Asterisk as usual and Ikki gets me pumped every time he activates his ability. I’m waiting for the one episode where his power is simply not enough to beat his opponent.

    Aquarian DragonSlayer
  15. Since I’ve read a fair bit of the manga, I was about to drop this and check out what Gakusen Toshi Asterik was about. But damn this episode. Really didn’t expect to get this drawn in into it. That battle scene and the endearing end to the episode really hit the right spots for me (Okay, naked Stella too, but you could find that from other places). What more could you ask? Looks like I’ll be following this to the end.

  16. @lalunafelis

    I think I should add that the only people that wont join with the taunting/bullying are:

    1) Morally uptight (strong sense of justice) and strong willed people, which are pretty much the rarest breed in a Elitist school like this.
    2) People that are close to Ikki.
    3) Exceptionally strong students that can correctly gauge the true capability of Ikki, and thus find this unfunny.


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