Episode Review: Trails of Cold Steel - Northern War ep 7

Did this before god damn it!

This episode explores the backstory of the hero of Northern Ambria, and the reason why Lavi’s so bitter about her past and identity. Also we get a surprising new perspective from Jayna Storm. This woman is not simple at all! In addition, we get a bunch of subplot development including Rean, Captain Martin, Talion and even the introduction of Ouroboros! A lot of crazy plans are in motion, and they even found time to squeeze in a flashback and an brief fight. Now this feels more like it!

Yup, this is what I would expect from a series took place in Trails series. Actions with motives behind, dialogues that have meaning. At least tried to spread them out in the first place. From factions to sides in Northern Ambria, those things are far more interesting than what were shown in the previous episodes. Jayna shows her scheming side, seemingly knowing everything that’s going on in both nations and pulling the strings to lit the flames of war.

Rogan has now been reduced to an extreme nationalist that focus on the brute force side of things. For Glark, he’s pretty much just an old man that spouts ideals now. The flashback to Sarah Valestein and her father is a very good way to resolve some major background issue, but still the way the shooting went down was kinda silly, and Vlad and Glark making an instant promise that Vlad would take the fall to unite the Jaegers under Glark is honestly very questionable. But still, this is Trails, it’s better than nothing.

This episode developed Talion far better than any previous episodes. He definitely made some significant decisions for himself and stuck to it. Even managed to convince Lavi. He’s very idealistic and live with a whole lot of heart. It’s a very typical character type but it’s undeniable that he’s very likeable and we want to root for him. Iseria played the usual devil’s advocate when she act all nilly willy when Martin was captured and left in the Empire. She knew that someone have to keep the team’s morale up as well as their well-being, so she dropped some harsh words on Talion – and that inadvertently spurred him into action. Now Iseria isn’t bad, but she’s very one-direction. There’s not much to her character and this type of mature yet playful woman is very easy to grow bored of. Hopefully she pulled a good plot twist in the future.

And Captain Martin has officially “partnered” with Lechter and his plan. Well, we all know that Lechter’s plan to subdue Ambria peacefully. The Nothern nation stand to lose a lot, and the Empire won’t just give them resources as they are their own citizens. There’s a lot of “fine print” material that Martin and Lechter are both aware of. But it’s also clear that Martin understand the risk and won’t just simply be a puppet. He’s definitely a self-sacrificial kinda guy that seems laid-back but will pull through when the plot demands it.

Lavi, finally something she did that we could say she decided to do it. I’m not sure if its intentional or not but Lavi seems to be excluded from all the big things that moving around her. Her action was significant to either the story or the plot, why did the staffs decide to create her like this in the first place? I just hope that the rest of the series could at least make her having some visible progress or development in her character. Not like in episode 4, something that we could tell her character has improved, or else the only saving aspect of this series is the “shadow” of the main plot.

Even though Lavi got a lot more “emotional” this episode, the series still gloss over her character abilities. She seems invincible, strong and agile, able to wield just about any kind of armaments from swords, to twin blades to guns, etc…and excel at it. She doesn’t seem to have any weakness aside from not having a giant mecha like Valimar and her denial of her title, but that’s been changed after this episode, what will Lavi do as the “granddaughter of the hero?” Actually looking forward to the story’s development. As the “mysterious” person that approach Jayna and the appearance of Ouroboros means we can expect some throwdowns!

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