Clevatess Season 2 ‒ Episode 12
It's one of the oldest questions asked by hundreds of anime over the decades: “Is there any better time for an extremely lengthy lore-dump flashback than right in the middle of a climactic battle?” The obvious answer is, “Yes, obviously, let's not interrupt the thrilling action sequence if we can help it,” but this is a truth that has eluded so many shows. While I would have preferred more than a measly few uninterrupted minutes of Clevatess and Vorden duking it out, I cannot deny that the dark history of Toah is a welcome revelation. At long last, the story of the “True Hero” of legend has been told, and it's a doozy of a tale, indeed.
As any of us could have predicted, Vorden's motivations stem from his desire to bring back the most formidable and satisfying rival he ever encountered. It's a pretty classic case of an Anime Dude desperately craving the blood-soaked attention and intimacy that can only be satisfied by the heated rivalry he shares with another Anime Dude, complete with aggressive homoerotic subtext. What is surprising about Write, the Strongest Hero, is how his role in the twisted history of Clevatess' fractured fantasy world is more complicated than merely being the doomed protagonist of a forgotten chapter in the war against the Dark Beast Lords. For one,seeing Vorden be so down bad for Write gives me hope that Clevatess will one day understand what an Ultra-Rare-Tier pull he landed with Alicia.
More important to our story, though, is how the ancient kingdom of Toah turns out to have been a deeply cruel and apathetic kingdom that was all too happy to throw its legions of heroes into an endless cycle of brutal violence and reincarnation. What's more, I'm pretty sure that the Heroes were all victims of Ye Olde Isekai Routine, which means the bastards of Toah absolutely deserved the massacre that was coming for them. The Books of Toah and the Heroic Legend were all Write's ploys to bore holes into the foundations of Toah's rotting empire and set the stage for his apocalyptic reckoning. The apocalypse of Toah was not the doing of any Dark Beast, but a nerdy little writer with a talent for playing the long-con. That, my friends, is damned fine world-building. It's a shame that the production values of this episode were a little too rough to fully sell this cool and entertaining twist, but the overall impact is still felt. No wonder our big bad wants his rival back. Vorden spent a year frolicking with the most heinous Supervillain Isekai Boyfriend that his universe has ever known. Even after a millennium, who else could possibly compare?
Not Clevatess, that is for sure. To be honest, I absolutely love how badly our evil little pupper got his ass handed to him this week. He's spent the entire season acting like the unkillable King Shit of Demon Doggy Mountain, so it's been humbling to see Vorden clean Clevvie's clock while also pointing out the malaise of existential boredom that has been holding him back for so centuries. Also, don't think I didn't notice the moment where Vorden punches Clevatess so hard that the entire medium shifts to live action with a cut to a rotoscoped miniature explosion ripped straight out of an Ultraman joint. That single edit alone is enough for me to bump the score of this entire episode back up to four stars. Long live tokusatsu, baby.
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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