So... listen. I love goofy power of friendship stuff. Eat it right up. Villain joining the heroes because friendship is totally acceptable. Writing doesn't have to be stellar. So maybe I'm just too sleepy and my mood's off. Maybe I'm just frustrated with all the resources I wasted on Mercury prep. Dunno.
But here... like. Did I miss something?
Alex is literally an assassin. She was casually murdering innocent people, seemingly a significant number of them. Obviously a certain evil prince was behind it, and his forces participated too, but like... she did do some of that, without issue; maybe it wasn't the outright terrorism it seemed to be when it was first presented as being her alone, but she still sure did do some murder. She wasn't brainwashed or misled about who she was killing, she wasn't doing some magic ritual or something that got stopped before it hurt anyone, she's just a regular plain old murderer that everyone is cool with now? Like... literally what are you doing. I guess I don't exactly want The Halidom Prison to be a thing, not is there any other authority you can turn her over to, but uhhh you're really all just... cool... with that...?
Rather, it's not that I think the Halidom crew are foolish or being duped or something, I'm not saying "she'll clearly betray them". It's more that I think the writing around her motivation/actions is just outright bad to begin with? You shouldn't need Euden to tell you "actually, murdering random innocents TO SUPPORT AN EVIL EMPIRE LED BY A DEMON isn't really saving kids, generally speaking". Like it's almost funny because if it was just about believing the church's integrity/stability was the most important thing to her, it would come across better? Because it could have been framed as her losing sight of why that integrity/stability was important. But since she does explicitly and actively care about their services helping people (or at least just children), for all the talk of purging she doesn't actually sound fervently religious, so it comes across as kinda nonsensical?
I think they should have at least switched the side of the church split she was on. It's still messy but "I thought I had to immediately stop these people, who were literally worshipping a demon who is actively conquering the world, from spreading this further" is much more sympathetic than "I was worried about the church not being able to take care of children, so I started stabbing everyone".
Or else had this turn later. Have her show up like this, encounter her, sorta make her conflicted. She leaves. Something happens to her offscreen like... I dunno, maybe she realizes while pursuing a target that murdering people literally fucking orphans other kids, maybe. Later she shows up as an antihero, the same getting stuck together after a blast thing happens, and so she can join after having done at least some amount of thinking and redemption.
just, some ideas, y'know
Meanwhile, I sure didn't expect Mym to be my favorite part of this but I actually enjoyed her here. I feel like they've continued to make her less annoying than she was at the start, and after thinking "ah, so it's Super Mym time" it was kinda hilarious to see them literally go with SUPER MYM. Even in Japanese, if I heard that line correctly.
Unfortunately after that part you had Alex suddenly joining (I did appreciate them joking about the solo journey of redemption thing... even if I think it actually would have been better to do it here), and... also it felt like there wasn't much resolution to the whole incident? Like the people they saved kinda just left, no real scene of getting thanks or anything, just "well, time to go home". Felt like the last scene could have been set at the Halidom instead to cover that. I also feel like Euden probanly should have also been shown getting the invitation as a tease for next chapter, instead of just throwing it in the teaser summary, but that's kinda minor.
