Well, kinda disappointed with the menator fight. Feels a bit of a downgrade in comparison to the manga. If anything, it might as well be a new anime XD, a lot of things are being skipped and changed. Its the little things in this work that made it good, but the anime isn't even bothering about it. Truly sad!!
As much as I am happy this series is having an anime after reading the manga and LN, I still feel like it's not really showing the actual thing this work deserves.
[REDACTED]
Manga:

He took the girl to floor 69. What a cultured man.
Still loving the 90s vibes I'm getting from the character designs and the directing but the plot is still pretty lacking. Like he uncovered the shady shit the princess was doing with the curses and instead of doing something about it he just revealed his face and bailed. He shouldn't have done at least one of those things.
I had spoiled myself after Ep1 and looked into what would've been Ep2. And yeah.... HARD agree that they skipped some parts that would've painted a much better and clearer picture. The whole concept of shadow magic + the divine light was such a cool synergy combo. Akira just being able to "spawn" shadow magic out of the blue when in the manga they specifically explain in which conditions/how it works best, was for sure a "huh wtf" moment.
I'm just happy that Sakupi finally showed up and her character had some lines. I'm looking forward to hearing more from her and finding out what her character was doing in that dungeon.
I haven't read the source material, but I find this very enjoyable.
The drawing and animation quality are pretty good and consistent through a whole episode, I enjoy the graphical style and I didn't felt bored one second. So the pacing and the story are good enough for me.
The fact that the end credit song is by Bonnie Pink is like a nostalgic cherry on top.
Once again feels like we skipped loads of content, and losing the master didn't really have any meaning when it's episode 2. Also ngl even though they were under a curse the other classmates are being pretty valid when they point out he only turns up and joins them when he wants to train lol.
Also ah the typical isekai thing of Western fantasy world and the most powerful sword in it is a katana made by a Japanese guy lmao, well gotta please the home audience i suppose.
I mean it's not made up that Japanese steel is some of the best quality you can possibly get. Next to Germany and South Korea. So, of course their katanas are going to be great
Might true for modern day, but historical Japanese steel was nothing special, the 'folded 1000 times' meme isn't due to them making them extra strong, but necessity due to having to smith the metal longer to work out imperfections as they lacked the modern methods the West had until relatively recently.
Also this sword would have been made it whatever ore was available in the isekai world, not Japanese ore lol
It's not like I'm really complaining, it's just kinda amusing that fantasy anime love having the one Japanese style sword being the best (and again understandable given the target audience)
And there's the plot catalyst I was talking about in my comment on episode 1. But ugh, why did it have to be Saran, he was cool ;_;
Looks like I spoke too soon on the "working with classmates"/"no antagonism between them" thing too, but it still feels different from the other times I've seen it. It's not that they hated him from the start, the curse influenced their feelings to turn them into resentment/hate.
I'm invested in this already, and will probably check out the manga at some point too. (But probably not until after the season finishes.) Especially if there's even more nuance that's being skipped over here.
Also why do people keep using Discord for image hosting, the images disappear from the thread after, like, a few hours.
Now this got interested, the Elf character made me not want to drop this at the third episode, at least I hope they keep this interesting up until then. The commander death caught me off-guard, I actually thought he was plotting something and was eventually gonna betray the MC, this cannot happen now, at least if his death wasn't fake or anything.
Oh my, what a twist, nobody could have seen that coming. I definitely did not see this happening since episode 1. Now withot Commander Saran to invent Saran wrap, now all our food will spoil.
Anyway, another episode of cramming 2-3 eps worth of content it.
The MC revealing himself to the princess is an obvious rookie mistake. But this mistake is to demonstrate that our MC is not a "Kirito" that is has plot armour and impervious to screw-ups. But if this is a one-time thing, then it's not really good character growth or progression. Also, finally another Isekai MC where the goal is "I want to go home."
Judging by how the King is turning the heroes into pawns, I'm hoping this is not going to be another, the villian was infront of you this whole time, type of thing. Quite cliche. I found Frieren's, they are bad and always bad quite refreshing, honestly. But sure, let's hope it gets more interesting.
The show is still in the midst of setting up a bunch of mysteries after all to be resolved later.
Also, busty elf companion who is also a princess. Yay, Fanservice. Also fanservice ED with a banger song.