Multiple animes that get far less reviews and worse overall ratings end up with multiple seasons. Release That Witch is the anime with the most potential right now. Don't they realize that?! It would be the new Attack on Titan. Studios, ya listening? 👀
With Tapas shutting down, I don’t want to lose the web comic of Release that Witch. Seven Seas has a monthly survey to suggest titles for them to license and publish in print. If we all request Release that Witch, we have a good chance of it getting published.
To understand why paper money showed up historically, we have to go back. Early paper notes were basically contracts with a bank: the bank promised to redeem them for a fixed amount of gold (or silver). Later systems dropped the metal peg, but that’s a separate issue.
What matters here is that the Graycastle Yuan is, in pure value terms, just a piece of paper. Er Mu never shows us an exchange rate, never clarifies whether it’s tied to any gold standard, and never builds the foundation that would make the paper mean something.
Public trust is a different conversation. Right now I’m pointing out the more basic problem: there is no underlying gold (or silver) standard established first.
In my opinion it would have been better to start by standardizing the coin form of the currency. That’s what people would actually use day-to-day. By fixing weight, purity, and form of the precious metal, you define what one unit is actually worth. Only then can you issue credible paper contracts against it. Without that standard you can’t create a fixed-value paper note, and you also open the door to currency fraud.
Someone will say: “But Odesa, there already is a gold standard — the Royals!”
That’s exactly where the earlier point applies. Royals are a medieval system. They’re not standardized the way a modern currency is. If you try to use them as the peg for the Yuan, the value won’t be precise because the underlying standard itself isn’t precise — the technology and practices of the time simply don’t allow it.
If you first turn the Yuan into a properly standardized modern-style coin (fixed weight and purity), then you can reliably wire paper notes to a fixed value. That gives you a real, well-defined 100 Yuan instead of an arbitrary piece of paper.
Edit No. 1:
I’ve already laid out the historical reality of medieval coinage and why pegging Yuan to an unstandardised gold royal doesn’t create a stable standard. Not going to keep restating it.
Overall I really enjoyed this story. I first watched the anime, but when that got axed, I picked up the novel where it left off. As an engineer myself, I enjoyed the technology creation and weapons aspect of the novel. The characters were quite good too. Plot-wise, I liked it more when it was simple Humans vs. demons- and when they brought in the god and >!custodian!< stuff, it became a bit convoluted for me. I did not read the side story, as I heard that it ruins the story, but even though the ending was meh, I won't let the 1 or 2 bad parts of the novel take away from the 80% good parts. Overall, I rate it a solid 7 to 8/10.