5 Point Discussions – Knight’s And Magic Episode 11: “Hit & Away”

This 5 Points Discussion focuses on Knight’s And Magic Episode 11: “Hit & Away”.
1. The first seven minutes of this episode can be described as “the bad guys are idiots”. We kick the episode off with the Second Prince of Zaloudek having learned the location of the princess of Kuschpercha. Having never met the enemy before, having gathered zero intel other than a location and rumors from terrified people who’ve actually faced Ernie and the others, he immediately rushes off to try and put an end to the Order of the Silver Phoenix. I’ve complained about the enemies not lasting terribly long before, but in the show’s defense every time someone dies it’s because they made a fatal error.
Last episode, when Lady Kerhilt died, it’s because she assumed the same strategies that got her the first mecha would work again, despite being nearly killed/captured.  This time, Prince Cristobal believes that overwhelming numbers will somehow beat out superior technology.  The result is a costly loss, as Ernie introduces his latest invention: anti-air weapons! Ernie’s technically cheating here–he’s from the modern world so missiles aren’t really an alien invention to him, but hey–it’s not stealing if no one else knows you did it, right?
The only smart villain here is Gojass, the inventor. Tricking his own ship into holding the line while the Prince retreats, he lets the Prince take all the attention of the forces and escapes on his own, having had another chance to witness Ernie’s inventions for himself.
2. One of the more satisfying elements of this episode is seeing that Ernie isn’t just a genius inventor who’s obsessed with robots and nothing else. Mid-battle with the Zaloudek forces, Prince Cristobal is dealt with easily, offering a satisfying conclusion to his story after he burst onto the scene a few episodes ago and brutally murdered the King of Kuschpercha. But rather than letting Ernie kill him, he initially tries to bargain with him, offering him a proper title and “twice the rank” he currently has.
Unfortunately for him, Ernie’s current role in the Fremmevilla army involves serving as an inventor who owns the rights to all his inventions and leads his own cadre of knights, and being so powerful and so respected that his orders can in some cases supersede those of the King. Upon pointing all this out, Prince Cristobal literally seems to lose his mind, and starts attacking his own ship in an attempt to take them both down at once.  It’s hard to blame him–Ernie’s life up to this point is pretty insane.
3. Speaking of Ernie being a shrewd businessman, after the battle he winds up in a meeting with the royalty of Kuschpercha, where he’s asked if he can allow the Kuschperchan army to rebuild their military by keeping the mecha he’s modified. Ernie initially offers to loan them any Knights they help rebuild while they’re at war, but also points out that since they’re technically his mecha, that any other Silhouette Knights they defeat should also belong to him, in a kind of compounding mecha ownership deal.
…After he senses the mood change, he writes it off as just joking, but his longtime friends immediately notice it as being serious, which is kind of a good thing. Ernie often comes off as a perfect, too-good-to-be-true Gary Stu of a character, but when it comes to giant robots he becomes blinded. He can get greedy, he can be reckless in his inventing, and in battle he becomes downright uncaring that there are living beings inside of these Knights. It’s those kind of flaws that bring him back down and make him feel realistic…before he rushes off to create something more impossible than before.
4. The one thing I was bugged about in this episode was the rapidly developing relationship between Queen Eleonora and Kid, Ernie’s long-time friend and member of the Silver Phoenix. He rescued her and makes this grand proclamation that he’s her knight, but that’s only because she was wasting time wondering if anyone should even bother saving her, but ever since then she’s just been pouring attention over him. It feels rushed, especially when you see scenes like Eleonora trying to feed Kid cake, but I guess that’s the price of having such a quick adaptation.
5. The episode ends with Ernie’s Order helping the Kuschperchans take back their nation over a span of several months, but just as they seem to be finished, a wrinkle happens. Oratio Gojass finally responds to all of Ernie’s myriad mecha inventions with one of his own: a robotic dragon!  The series calls it a wyvern, but considering it completely incinerates an entire fort and the army defending it in one single fire blast, I feel like that’s doing it a disservice.
Gojass’ own version of using explosive power for flight as well as offensive capabilities, this is the first invention anyone’s ever shown that seems like it could even top what Ernie’s done thus far!  With only two episodes left, it’s safe to assume this is the series’ final boss. Makes sense–what’s a series about Knights without a dragon? There’s no more time to improve on the Ikaruga, so can Ernie bring down this monstrosity on his own? Probably–I’m even betting he’s got some super-secret weapon he’s yet to reveal that’s going to make this a much easier fight than it should be.
Knight’s and Magic is available for streaming on Crunchyroll.