Rating: B+
If I recall correctly, Lawrence has alluded before in the anime to how travelers are always a source of suspicion to locals, and thus the first to be blamed when things go wrong. Those on the fringes of the community and/or which are hated by the locals because of their roles also fall into this category. Thus it’s no surprise at all the accusations would immediately be thrown in the direction of Lawrence, Holo, and Evan when the villagers start to panic. Even Headman Sem, who’s one of the most sensible of the lot, isn’t entirely above this, and Elsa, whose close association with Evan is well-known, isn’t free of danger herself. Faced with such a big lot of unreasonable suspicions and a very real potential for violence, there’s only one viable response: run.
Most of this episode involves building up the circumstances to the point where this approach is inevitable. Despite the danger afoot, though, the course of events carry a remarkable lack of tension, especially involving Lawrence. He’s in a position where he might have to give up his horse, cart, and trade goods and risk his reputation just to insure the safety of him, Evan, and Elsa, and he’s definitely being coerced into a monetary contribution to the village elder, yet he seems unconcerned about all of it. Granted, he has the comfort of a fantastical ace in the hole in the form of Holo, who’s plenty willing to chuck this whole scenario and just take off with everyone on her back, but given how uptight he’s been before about his very livelihood being at risk, this almost seems out of character. That could be explained away if he has a broader scheme in mind here where flight is only a temporary retreat, but so far he’s given no indication of that, and I can’t accept that making peace with Holo has mellowed him out that much.
Holo has little reason to be concerned here, since she knows she can get away and no one can stop her, but thankfully, Evan and Elsa are properly worried; Elsa even faints from the stress. The motherly, no-nonsense Iima (who is really growing on me as a character) also acknowledges the threat enough to encourage them to go. But fleeing is also an opportunity for Evan, who clearly wasn’t happy with his role in town. The only one who needs any convincing is Elsa, who does seem genuinely pious and is desperate to maintain her link to Father Franz. However, she’s also sensible enough to not be too stubborn or a fool, and the disrespect the villagers showed to her earlier – and the village Elder feeling a need to assign her a protector – doubtless made an impression, tool.
As to the core economic matter at hand, Ernbech is clearly playing exceptionally dirty here. Whether or not the death is real, they have chosen a convincing story. From the description and name for the wheat disease, Ridelius’ Hellfire is most likely meant to be analogous to the real-world ergot, which is also known as St. Anthony’s Fire due to the burning sensation throughout the body that is one of the most common symptoms of ergotism in humans. It’s far from automatically fatal but it can be, and it has some nasty side effects, so declaring a whole harvest unsafe based on one case isn’t an unreasonable reaction. (This is, in fact, very reminiscent of modern-day food recalls.) Whoever is behind this knows full well that the village won’t have enough money on hand to pay back for the purchased wheat and will be forced into the unenviable position that Lawrence describes to Sem. To an extent this is a bit of hubris on the part of the village coming back to bite them, as they have had things unusually easy for a long time and, from the sound of it, only respected Franz and not his institution. Still, the villagers won’t appreciate that as their panic leads them to throw out nonsensical accusations; how could Lawrence and Holo have poisoned the wheat when they weren’t here when it was collected, for instance?
Really, the only person in any position to do anything about this is Lawrence, and that makes him the wild card in the plan that the schemers in Ernbech have come up with. If someone was trying to take advantage of Lawrence going there to trigger this, they chose the wrong person to use as a scapegoat, and if not, then their timing is unfortunate. In a meta sense, we also know that there are likely two more episodes to this arc, so we haven’t seen all of the complications to it yet. Some big twist in this scenario still remains., and we’ll see what it is next week.
USA Anime 