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Let's play a game!
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Not much discussion this week. Taken a bit for me to focus enough on it to write my impressions, as well.
Was nice to see Naofumi making the jewelry pieces for Raphtalia and Filo. Spending time at night when the others are sleeping to work on it, I'm not sure if there's supposed to be any implication about his sleep patterns, or just wanting to make sure they don't find out about the presents until he's done. While the latter is obvious an allusion to the parent-child relationship he seems to be maintaining (something akin to dad putting together the bicycle on Christmas Eve for the kids to find in the morning), I also realized that Naofumi really doesn't seem to have been doing much sleeping at all since the start of the story.
The only real sleep he seems to have had was at the end of episode 4, where he just collapsed and passed out on a stone floor for the entire night. Probably related to why he always seemed to have bags under his eyes back in the early episodes — he just never got any real sleep. He was more likely to spend the night making medicines, generally being a workaholic. Likely also related to the fact that he was robbed in his sleep at the same time as he got falsely accused. That would add a little extra paranoia about the risks of what could happen if he falls asleep.
Anyway, he seems to be getting more sleep now, but still seems to have that tendency to work more than sleep. I have friends of my own that I know basically get by on only 4 hours of sleep per day, and as unhealthy as that seems, I think Naofumi has likely shifted to that sort of schedule.
Of course, the group is still camping out in the wilderness, and likely sleeping in shifts to keep safe, so that makes his behavior more reasonable. But the focus of his character is definitely more on the workaholic side.
Naofumi continues to provide medicine for various villagers. In a fantasy setting like this, there are a lot of amenities that we take for granted that aren't as easy to get for commoners. A single village probably can't support a doctor or alchemist, most of the time. The village they arrived at was fortunate to have the doctor and nurse helping out, but they were barely able to do anything. Even Naofumi's boosted medicines only helped alleviate the symptoms, and that was far more than what the doctor could manage.
This is the sort of background that many isekai/games ignore. It's like people wanting to travel to the past, and forgetting that they don't have things like toothbrushes and toilet paper.
Anyway, just like Motoyasu's gift of the magical plant, Ren's killing of the dragon was a gift right up until it wasn't, well after he had gone. In fact, while Naofumi thought that Ren might have just 'forgot' because he was treating it like a game, I'm not even sure we can go that far in blaming him, since there were plenty of adventurers who showed up in the village to collect parts and generally dispose of the corpse. In other words, Ren killed the dragon (the hard part), and then wasn't greedy about collecting the remains, but left it to other adventurers, who are likely part of the natural cycle of dealing with monsters (ie: scavengers who collect materials to sell to merchants, etc).
Further, the fact that the other adventurers quickly gathered at the village to collect the dragon materials shows that they also didn't feel like there was any impending threat from the dragon being left like it was. Either this is not normal, or dragons just don't get killed often enough for this to be a well-known issue.
Moving on to the dragon: The dragon 'awoke' pretty much the moment Naofumi arrived. While it's possible that there was something like a 30 day resurrection timer or something like that, that seems incredibly coincidental. More likely, it is explicitly because Naofumi — or more precisely, the Shield — arrived that triggered the zombification to activate. Alternatively, it had already become a zombie quite a while back, which was the cause of the diseased wind, but there was just nothing motivating the zombie to actually move, so it just lay there, bored.
~ Minor aside: We see the XP gains from Filo running over the monsters on the way up to the dragon, and this time Filo is getting the XP boost. I wasn't sure about it before, but the comments people made about the party member who got the killing blow getting the XP boost appears to be valid.
~ Minor aside 2: Naofumi can't determine the dragon's level. It just shows as ??. I would normally expect this to imply that the creature is significantly above the characters' levels (eg: level 80, compared to the group being slightly below level 40), though it does remind me that we've seen that one other time: The old lady that Naofumi gave the medicine, that first time. That was odd because other people he met later were marked as just "human" with a level (eg: level 7).
So, after they got hit with the poison breath, we see a couple other things. Filo had lost about 1/4 of her health at that point, and Raphtalia had lost about 1/3 of her health, with her health bar turning purple (presumably: poisoned). We also see some little markers next to their names that look like teardrops, or shields, or stylized skulls. We'd actually seen those same markers earlier on, where I'd thought they were some sort of buff, but now I think they are poison markers. When first seen, Raphtalia and Filo had lost a minuscule amount of health each. When Raphtalia has two markers, her health bar is purple, probably indicating a second tier of poison.
Now, moving on to Filo getting swallowed. A lot of people commented that the hot springs bit last episode was just filler, and worthless fluff. However I'm reminded now that, even aside from the character development it was working on, it helped establish the stronger bond being formed between Raphtalia and Filo. I think that helps support events here, in the effect it has on Raphtalia, which in turn ties the entire group together in the apparent impact on them.
And back at the village, we see more on their state of health. Naofumi is down about 60% (along with almost all of his SP/MP used up), Raphtalia about 75% (with another marker next to her name that I assume means 'curse'), and Filo is down about half.
We also see the money reward, and there's a little interesting there. Naofumi is given 5 gold coins and 250 coins of unknown denomination. It doesn't look like silver (銀), but I can't imagine what else it might be. Either way, Naofumi was supposed to be paid 500 coins for the job, and 5 gold + 250 silver implies that 1 gold is 50 silver, rather than the 100 silver I thought it was. It does make a bit more sense in terms of exchanging payments (you don't want large gaps between high-value coin increments), but may slightly shift how some parts earlier in the show were interpreted (such as the cost of the werewolf).
Also, they didn't gain any levels from beating the zombie dragon. They're still 37/39/38, just like before the fight. I think they were gypped, given that the zombie dragon was such a high-level creature.
And finally, glad that they're learning lessons from their fights.
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