Clevatess Season 2 ‒ Episode 11
I have one major bone to pick with Clevatess II, and it's all the more relevant now that we've got Clevatess and Vorden duking it out in their Smash Bros. arena. How in the name of the Dark Lord of the Beasts have we not gotten a proper kaiju battle yet? The show even rubs the dirt of disappointment into our collective faces by having Klen struggle to do a half-transformation that is more adorable than anything else. I've been waiting patiently for long enough, dammit, and we haven't been given the opportunity to see Clevvie really do some damage since that fantastic series premiere. I demand a Wrestlemania cage match between a giant evil lizard and an unfathomably powerful shadow dog from hell, damn it all.
I suppose I can at least take solace in the fact that we got a surprisingly emotional and satisfying showcase of Alicia's inner struggles as a consolation prize. With how insanely busy and complicated this whole season has turned out to be, our opportunities for character development have been few and far in between, so I was very pleasantly surprised when the dark doppelganger of Margo actually put down his sword and invited his daughter to come back home with him. It's a well-worn but fantastically cruel gambit by Princess Dean to trap Alicia with the honey of her long-dead parents. For all of the body-shredding violence Alicia has had to endure as Clevatess' vassal, I don't think any strike has cut quite as deep as this vision of the peaceful life she might have shared with her loved ones.
True heroism is not merely a matter of martial prowess, after all, and it has been clear for a long time that what makes Alicia special is the strength of her heart. It's a cliche, to be sure, but a mighty effective one when wielded properly. For Clevatess to work at all as an anime, there has to be a wellspring of human empathy and resolve to balance out the title-character's whole “being a megalomaniacal hellspawn with a knack for destroying entire cities on a whim” shtick. At no point do we ever believe that Alicia is actually going to succumb to the false world she's been trapped in and freeze to death in Prince Dream's frigid prison, but her journey to accepting the hand she's been dealt is a rite of passage that must be endured. The show wisely plays the sequence as straight as it can, letting us live with Alicia's nostalgia and happiness for just long enough to make sure we understand how hard it is for her to willingly cast it aside and pick up her blade once again.
How great is the moment where her path back to life is secured gets marked by the return of her signature eye scar? Alicia has lived and died with more burden and indignity than most humans could stand to bear, but she never fails to crack her bones back into place and rise to the occasion. Some of that is Clevatess' Dark Ichor, sure, but there's a reason that she was chosen to be brought back from that mass grave of other would-be heroes. Yeah, Clevatess claimed that he only cared about securing a pair of mammaries with which to feed his kidnapped little princeling, but let's be honest and admit that Alicia manages to impress one of the most powerful and dangerous beings to ever walk this planet. Vorden's got it all wrong. The True Hero has been alive(ish) and well for a long time, now, and she's ready to kick some ass.
Episode Rating:
Clevatess Season 2 is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.
James is a writer with many thoughts and feelings about anime and other pop-culture, which can also be found on BlueSky, his blog, and his podcast.
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