本好きの下剋上 領主の養女

Neither of those really implies gods though. Like I said, the prayers could just be something the people can do with magic. The moons changing color is even less of a hint because the moons changing color on a particular night then people explaining that with "it's because it's X god's night" would be a perfectly mundane process much like what happens IRL. The plant thing on today's episode showed a powerful supernatural force with intent, will and thought acting on its own, something that to memory doesn't really apply to any previously shown thing.

Neither of those really implies gods though. Like I said, the prayers could just be something the people can do with magic. It kind of does to a point though. If any old words won't do and you need to say specific things, you have to ask "why would these names and invocations in particular have actual power if they don't refer to something real"? It's circumstantial, but the stuff in this episode is too. Could be a "supernatural force with intent, will and thought acting on its own" but could also just be natural forces that kind of look like they have intent if you anthropomorphise them, or ancient magic that isn't even a force at all, just stuff humans put in place long enough ago for the origin to be forgotten.

What's the difference between magic and science we don't yet understand? The above could just be "natural laws of mana" that underpin this world that the people misunderstood as the whims of Gods. Except for this episode. The mana responding to the song, the guidance after the prayer, keeping the men out, and so obviously helping Myne get the nectar... All of that is hard to swallow as just "natural phenomena." Even invoking a god's name could just be seen as words to invoke a spell or the caster's intentions influencing their magic. But this episode is the first that makes it really hard to hand wave away everything magical as just natural laws or subconscious influence of the caster.

There's no shortage of shows where faith specifically or visualizing the use of magic in a particular way is necessary to use magic, without this faith or visualization needing to be linked to anything which actually exists. Alternatively the spellcrafting system could have been invented rather than discovered. To put it another way, there's a million plausible ways that magic could be set up in a way that incantations happen to work and given we've seen no attempts to deviate from them we're not even actually sure they are truly necessary in their current form. But what happened in this episode responded to their words and conversation and music, even when no magic was being used. The vines specifically targeted Myne's feybeast (not mine herself, it should be noted), carried it gently enough to not disturb the sleeping occupants for a considerable part of the journey, dropped them just as gently beside the lake, a powerful magical barrier was deployed that wasn't there before, the leaves reached down and helped Myne up - thus not only responding to her request, but understanding the concept and process of collecting the nectar. This goes waaaay beyond just "kind of looks like intent" and seems a little too responsive and adaptive to entirely new input to just be something that was pre-programmed. It is impossible it's not such a supernatural force as I described? Yes, it's technically possible. But unlike the chant thing where many plausible alternatives are presented, in this case you really have to stretch it to have a functional alternative - and even then it's far less plausible.

You're not applying the same sceptical thinking to what we saw in this episode though. Like it's not really much of a stretch to say "this might actually just be an ancient spell that does complex stuff". Or "this might be a feybeast/feyplants that act in complex ways". Consider the shield spell - it somehow allows for people with "ill intent" to be filtered out, in a quite nebulous way. Is it really a stretch to imagine a set of similar spells to enchant a spring, made by some person long ago? We've seen feyplants and feybeasts exhibit some quite convoluted behaviours and react to mana and people with it . Is it such a stretch to say this was just a series of actions taken by a magical ecosystem that only look kind of intentional if you presume intent? Of course, you could point to the fact that you can do spells like the shield without intending to and still end up with these very coherent complex effects as sign of divine intervention... but then we're going in circles.

Like it's not really much of a stretch to say "this might actually just be an ancient spell that does complex stuff". Or "this might be a feybeast/feyplants that act in complex ways". No, as I explained this really is that big of a stretch. The barrier is the low-hanging fruit to explain, yeah individually that barrier on its own could just be a defensive spell for keeping men out that happens to be active on this specific night, or even a weird magical phenomenon (looks a bit too clean for that, but if it was only the barrier I could see that being at least a little plausible). But that doesn't really fly with the trees giving Myne's feybeast a lift in such a convenient way, searching for it specifically and not even Myne specifically. Maybe you could say there was a spell for transforming the forest into that kind of convenient transportation, which would already be hard to believe because it's such a weirdly roundabout way of doing that, but to go to a random part of the forest in search of what was quite clearly a very specific target, and to choose not the person with special mana but her vehicle, and still have the care to adjust to the vehicle in a way as to not disturb the occupants... Well, it's a real Occam's Razor situation, there's just way too many things piled on top of each other that don't make sense unless you see it as someone or something making deliberate decisions about the specifics of the current situation. In order to justify such a thing in any way other than this would basically require inventing an entire other convuleted narrative about why anyone would have the prescience to predict such an alien set of events and have the motivation to do this God knows how far back. And this is without mentioning that things like the barrier would, if treated individually, have to just coincidentally conveniently be set up to coincide with this other spell. --------------- We've seen feyplants and feybeasts exhibit some quite convoluted behaviours and react to mana and people with it . Until this episode, the behavior of the plants has been relatively simplistic. Feybeasts do have more complex behavior, but wouldn't you know it, they are basically animals, and animals do have intent and complex behavior. However what was seen in this episode went beyond what even an animalistic degree of intelligence or intincts would produce, unlike the behavior feybeasts have shown up to this point.

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I would like to point out that in Overlord, holy magic is produced by the belief in something , and the magic effect will be produced so long as you truly believe in that something. Ainz at one point brainwashes someone into believing in a rock and that belief still allows them to produce holy magic. Its clear that isn't what's happening here, just wanted to point out that things aren't always as clear cut at "invoking this name produces magic".

Another explanation for the fanaticism of recent converts, is that they feel this subconscious pressure to 'prove' their faith more than those that grew up as believers. If you grew up being a good little worshipper, no one questions your devotion. Bob that joined last week may feel like he has something to prove, even if it's just a chip on his shoulder, so leans a little too much into outward displays of faith. But either way, it's definitely common for converts to be more fervently devout than those who just grew up believing as their parents did.

I definitely got this vibe from Ferdinand. He didn't even consider showing respect to the statue of hte Goddess, and even asked the others why they were wasting time with it. Nor did he seem... particularly devout... when they were on this pilgrimage. He even showed apprehension towards the Goddess's Spring, to the point his response was to bring violence against the sacred barrier. Afterwards, he sourly dismissed everything that happened as 'prank.' Not a religious bone in his body. It's all just magic and ceremony and rare ingredients to him. Things to master, customs to uphold just for the sake of publicly saving face, and research to conduct... not divine miracles to revere, honor to the gods that needs to be upheld, and be sacred gifts to cherish.

In fairness, that's not a matter of "religious" or not. It's more closer to viewing the gods as more "mortal" (in the sense of being relatable) rather than inscrutable and divine, I think. My vibe is Ferdinand simply knows they exist, but views them more as capricious, powerful "people". Things like the Goddess' statue would be beneath the notice of the gods, because it would be beneath the notice of nobles like himself. If that makes sense.

I would say so too. Sure prayers work, but they still require active mana and could be considered spells of some kind. But in this scene the nature reacts to Myne and her group even without prayer and seems to make informed and biased decisions by itself, clearly observing and reacting to actions that did NOT actively involve mana (See reacting to Rosina). There is also no one directing the initial events, so it can be well assumed that a divine power directly intervened. (Or the trees are Ents and we finally found the Entwifes 🤔 )

It doesn't necessarily have to be a god. It could also be that the whole forest is a giant magic entity (think of the Pando forest) that positively reacted to Myne's mana. The split in boys & girls in that case just happened, since conveniently all girls were in the same box that contained Myne. There's no real evidence for either theory I think, but I would find it odd otherwise that one of the combatants got in.

I was thinking the same thing, up till now you could chalk up all the religious incantations as....oh what was the word Mushoku Tensei used for putting yourself in a certain mindsent. Anyway, you could just assume the incantations didn't need to be specifically related to the gods, we might have seen a civilization later on that doesnt use them. But now it looks like the gods and goddesses might actually exist in some form.

Yes, this is indeed the first supernatural event that actually show vestige of gods in the world of Ascendance of A Bookworm. Before this event, I always thought that all the gods related things like incantations, blessings, praying etc are all just part of the culture and nothing more, similar to how many shows always pray to the god during the spellcasting but that doesn't mean god exists. I see many people reply that there are many events which involves god but those events doesn't actually prove gods exist, it can just be what the citizen "believe" and link any event that cannot be explained to god. Similar to many other series where spellcasting usually involves god in their spell but it doesn't prove god actually exist or plays a role. Heck, even our own world has many culture praying to gods like Christian, Buddhist and Islamist.

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Just goes to show how honestly and wholeheartedly she's praying. She believes in these gods no questions asked... We've already seen that it affected her song earlier in her debut, and she actively speculated now that it's affecting what's happening in the goddess' night. But I think she's already mostly praying in the new pose even in earnest now, an episode or two ago she startled someone when she burst into the pose and said PRAISE BE TO THE GODS! lol

The talfroshs landing on Rozemyne 's face and her reaction to it were hilarious. She must have seen Damuel as a real hero when he took them off her face, hahaha. I must say that the Goddess's Bath part of this episode visually seems to be much more impressive than the rest of the show, imo. It looks like a lot of resources went into it. The backgrounds looked especially good . Here my screenshot albums from the episode: Rozemyne Group scenes Ferdinand Backgrounds & Others EDIT. I added my screenshot albums.

For anyone who's never touched a frog in real life: they feel like touching a ball of snot. Once i was opening an outdoor umbrella and a frog had climbed up into it. It fell out, oozed across my hand, then hit the ground and jumped away. Another time my cat decided to bring me a live frog as a present. He brought it inside and dropped it on my bare foot while I was standing at the counter eating. Rosemyne and Brigitte have pretty normal reactions imo.