[Anime B-Side] William Shakespeare vs The God of Literature (Horizon S2) 🎵The Kaiju Jam - Neytirix🎵
"All the world's a stage. We're just acting." Welcome to the B-Side, where I just vibe with something from the soundtrack of my life and get personal, controversial, and probably spoiler heavy with whatever Anime topic I’m talking about. These are not full reviews, won’t be for everyone, and will often lack a steady flow or structure. Today, I’m pulling back on the dicey topics and treating this as just bonus content. Let’s jam.
Stage Left - The Actors Arrive
Horizon Season 2 did something a bit controversial according to many fans of the first run: it put several of the background characters in the forefront and gave them character development. Toussaint Neshinbara, a fan theorized author insert, was one of those cases. His fight against William Shakespeare was something I had forgotten about yet wish I hadn't. It was creative and showed off two different powers that I would want to have if I was ever Isekaied into a new world. Fighting with imagination and written words will never stop being entertaining if it's done well.
Shakespeare was a young silver haired girl of short stature and frail physique. Her alliance was the English Trumps, a group of knights under the rule of the Eternal Fairy Queen, Elizabeth. Their powers varied much like the rest of the cast's, but hers was one of the more fascinating ones for me. She twisted MacBeth and other stage plays from her namesake and used them as reality warping curses. She inflicted one such curse on Neshinbara; his was to betray his class and leaders.
His power was similar except less focused and refined. Whatever he wrote would become reality in combat. It would just harm his body as part of the cost (as shown by the metaphoric blood that began flowing from his fingertips during the fight). Not only would the words warp his local reality, how he formed their glyphs was part of his power.
Stage Right - What’s At Stake
If any of the students of Musashi fell during their time in England, the Trumps would have the right to challenge and kill Tori, the main protagonist, and enslave and possibly destroy Horizon. Shakespeare was out for blood but asked Neshinbara to stay with her in London if he lost (although, it was heavily implied that she would end his life if he let her). He just wanted her Armor of Deadly Sin, one of the macguffins in the setting that could save or destroy the world.
Center Stage - Why Does She Want to Fight Him
It was quickly revealed that they grew up in the same orphanage. He was not from Musashi but from one of the Tres Espana territories. They never went too far into detail about it in the Anime, but an event happened and he became a refugee that was taken in by the Far East. After leaving, she broke. He was her family; her older "brother" died sometime after. Whatever happened to her, she essentially became the main "villain" of much of the second season.
Curtain Rise - How Did it Play Out
Five different fights were occurring all at the same time. This was my favorite of all of them (even though one of them had a jazzy song playing for its background track and visually was a bit more polished in my personal opinion). It started where the cliffhanger from the previous episode had left off. Both characters were coming to terms with their pasts in a proverbial theatre in the empty streets of London.
She started the combat by opening her suitcase and letting all of her spirits out while also wearing ribbons of ether (the magic source of this setting) in her hair. What's interesting about her combat style was how little she physically wrote. Her verbal prose directed and commanded the spirits into attacking him. Note: it's never stated that her magic was spirit based but one could assume such due to how the series had previously portrayed the small number of ghosts so far.
He quickly disposed of them with sharp wit and a defensive aura made from his fate. They kept coming. His panicked eyes burning into my screen.
When ribbons fell, her army faded. I was left speechless as her offerings were accepted by the gods. King Lear, the English patron deity of the stage, came forth from the void to destroy the false playwright. His power came from the combined works of all of Shakespeare’s theatrics and the consensus of the masses.
An Intermission - A Brief Discussion About the Races Based on Just Information from This Adaptation
In this setting, many traditional fantasy races existed from a variety of sources. All beings with any form of sentience (including automatons and dolls, both of which are the same general race with only slight differences) were either created physically by man, came from alternate planes of existence, or spiritually came into being from the mass unified beliefs of all other races. King Lear was most likely the latter, hence why the ritual summoning. And, even then, one could assume that it’s not the real deity but an extension similar to that of a Mouse, a familiar type lesser being made from a portion of the power of a god. Gods were also beings made of pure energy that required a physical vessel to interact with physical beings. The Christian God could be viewed as one of these and Jesus would have existed and been a vessel for it. Gods could also be assumed to be massive in size and scope due to the size of the Divine Gods of War (man made mechs modeled after four of the main ones, two of which were on display in Season 2).
Why am I bringing this up, you may ask? The rest of this encounter relied on understanding these to fully appreciate why I am here writing about it. This was one of the core examples of how this series portrayed the crazy and complex concepts of its lore in powerful and efficient ways if you were to step back and think about everything shown prior.
With how foreigners were treated and portrayed throughout the rest of the series (a big example was the curry-spawning Indian racial stereotype seen in the background of several scenes, twirling with a gargantuan plate of food above his head), I interpreted the next event as profound in the same way Neshinbara portrayed shock from it. As King Lear dropped the weight of both of his Claymores on the already exhausted student, a bolt of lightning and roaring thunder interrupted the assault. The Japanese God of Literature had been anxiously watching and waiting for his time to join in on the clash; no sacrifice or offering were needed. Only a story and warrior to tell it.
The core differences between both gods were as follows: 1) the bigger the offering, the more powerful the summoned vessel would be; 2) Shakespeare’s Armor of Deadly Sin was amplifying the power of King Lear; 3) the God of Literature was a natural creation from the universe and not a construct created by man. All three of these points lead to Nashinbara almost losing. Both writers rapidly created new content for their combined tale, but the young lad was also scheming behind the scenes. In one final attack, the vessel of the Lit Lord disintegrated.
The Climax - How Shakespeare Wrote Herself Into a Corner
By making him a part of her play, Shakespeare had inadvertently given him the right to rewrite and edit the tragedy of MacBeth into a spell that aligned with the historical events their clash was recreating. In this world, King Lear and MacBeth existed as real men in the same time period and the original Shakespeare was a historical revisionist along with being a playwright. It was a bit contrived but made sense within the already established lore. It also made for an interesting reverse play using her own character and tricks against her. She mostly followed the original plays to the letter, making her fighting style predictable. He, on the other hand, was a Doujin writer (which was shown in a throwaway gag in the early episodes of season 1 when a character found one of his fanfictions). It was further established that his “totem” was a Dragon Quest spoof in which he was the hero. Totems weren’t brought up much but they were one of the mediums in which a mage could access the magical energies of the universe.
Within the edit, MacBeth saw King Lear as his fallen leader and friend. Lear was no longer righteous or just and MacBeth wanted to take the throne through violence while also ending his own life out of compassion. They fell together within a loving embrace. The reason this wasn’t full blown nonsense was because every single action in this final scene was carefully set up.
I loved how the fight ended. It was adorable. She asked him who he wanted her to be now that she lost. His response, the girl that fell in love with him when they younger. Her anger was from a place of loss and she requested that he takes her with him. He also allowed her to save face by “stealing” the Armor of Deadly Sin through a sight gag. The applause of the audience and the ending theme song playing over the crowd was an amazing touch. It was also revealed that her totem was also his Dragon Quest doujin.
My Closing Thoughts
I wanted to write about this fight because I felt it encapsulated much of what I love about this series’ style of storytelling and world building. If there’s ever a Season 3, I hope to see more of Shakespeare and Neshinbara and their budding canonical relationship. Two crazy children writers fighting over each other’s works sounds like a fun time to me if they continued to spar like this.
What were your thoughts on this style of bonus content? If you enjoyed, feel free to reblog, vote and reply down below. Thanks for reading and I hope you have a wonderful rest of your night.