Atelier Ryza: Ever Darkness & the Secret Hideout Season 1 Episode 5 Recap & Review

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3sRNt93A2ZU

The Best Idea

Episode 5 of Atelier Ryza Ever Darkness & the Secret Hideout begins with Klaudia visiting Empel and Lila and informing them that Ryza, Lent, and Tao are getting wound up in their studies. Lila and Empel ask the trio to accompany them to a beach for special training. The crew wears their swimming attire, but Ryza admits that she has a fear of water, preferably swimming. However, she promises to use this opportunity to get over it.

While Lila helps Lent and Tao with their water training activities, Klaudia assists Ryza in getting over her fear of water. The first group switch to playing a baseball-like sport. Meanwhile, Ryza recalls a time when she drowned in the water and relied on Lent and Tao to save her. She hesitates to dive into the present, but Klaudia ensures her everything will be fine. After Ryza conquers her fear, Lila tasks the group with a fetch quest. The item she’ll fling will have a hint to inform them of their next challenge.

Ryza finds the item and leads the group to the Warding House from a previous chapter. Klaudia tells them that a Warding Flower is protecting the area from monsters. Lent tells Ryza not to go near the barrel because it’s a trap. He throws a rock at it to confirm his theory. Ryza and her friends find Empel inside. He tells Ryza and her friends to find five alchemy materials in the area. After they find the items, Empel tells them to return to the beach for their final challenge.

Lila says they must swipe the Kurken Fruit from her grasp to pass. Ryza and her friends attempt to grab it from Lila but fail. They take Empel hostage to encourage Lila to give them the fruit, but Lila intimidates them. After pulling off a successful plan as a team, Ryza and her friends defeat Lila and capture the Kurken Fruit. They leave the beach. Empel tells them this whole beach fiasco was Klaudia’s doing. Klaudia tells them that she wanted to see them revert to their old ways since they were getting too serious about their goals.

Ryza asks Lila if the Warding House will always be a safe location. The episode closes with Ryza suggesting Klaudia and the others turn it into a secret hideout after receiving confirmation that the place will remain safe.

The Episode Review

As with most slice-of-life series, it’s best to expect the inevitable beach/pool episode to crop up. It appears Atelier Ryza: Ever Darkness & the Secret Hideout is another victim of this fiasco. Admittedly, it was great to see our cast unwind after their first mine exploration in the previous chapter. Although that event wasn’t as masterful as it could’ve been, Empel gave Ryza some meaningful feedback. 

It appears she took it to heart a bit too much. Nevertheless, this episode doesn’t offer much significant content. It simply has our characters participating in random activities that’ll help them relax and work as a team.

The episode gives fans some bit more intel about Ryza and her fear of swimming. However, this is a bit weird considering she never showed signs of fear in previous chapters. It feels like the writers put this in just to have a reason to create a beach/pool episode.

It appears the next chapter is alluding to more calm shenanigans between Ryza and the cast. Hopefully, the next episode contains more wholesome and significant content compared to what we received in this chapter.