When The Ancient Magus’ Bride Season 2 Ep. 9 “Conscience does make cowards of us all. I” kicks the plot into gear, it kicks it into high gear indeed. Honestly, if the plot of season 2 was moving a bit slow for you, then this episode will change your mind faster than you can blink. It really makes all of season 2 look like a slow burn all the way to this very episode. How else do you explain the sudden attack of dark fantasy intrigue here, complete with action and murder?

The Ancient Magus’ Bride Season 2 Ep. 9 “Conscience does make cowards of us all. I”: Details

The Ancient Magus’ Bride Season 2 Ep. 9 “Conscience does make cowards of us all. I” is the latest episode (you can read reviews for Ep. 1, Ep. 2, Ep. 3, Ep. 4, Ep. 5, Ep. 6, Ep. 7, and Ep. 8 here) of season 2 of this dark urban fantasy supernatural mystery horror anime series. Said anime is the anime adaptation of the manga of the same name by Kore Yamazaki (Frau Faust). Studio Kafka is still the animation studio behind season 2.

Kazuaki Terasawa remains the director behind The Ancient Magus’ Bride season 2 in general, with Naokado Fujiyama, Takeharu Sengoku, and Kyouhei Shinfuku producing. Terasawa is also the writer, with Junichi Matsumoto returning from season 1 to compose the music once more.

Speaking of music: JUNNA returns to sing “Dear” as the opening theme music for The Ancient Magus’ Bride season 2. Meanwhile, “Mubansou” by edda is the ending theme music for the same.

Voice Cast

The Ancient Magus’ Bride Season 2 Ep. 9 “Conscience does make cowards of us all. I” features the voices of Atsumi Tanezaki (Dani Chambers in English dub) as Chise Hatori and Ryōta Takeuchi (Brian Mathis in English dub) as Elias Ainsworth. Other notable voices for this episode include Minami Tsuda (Sarah Roach in English dub) as Lucy Webster, Seiichiro Yamashita (Ricco Fajardo in English dub) as Rian Scrimgeour, Maki Kawase as Philomela Sergeant, and Daiki Kobayashi as Zoe Ivy.

Where to Watch

The Ancient Magus’ Bride Season 2 Ep. 9 “Conscience does make cowards of us all. I” premiered on June 1, 2023. You can watch this episode and all previous episodes of season 2 (as well as season 1) only on Crunchyroll for now.

Warning: spoilers for The Ancient Magus’ Bride Season 2 Ep. 9 “Conscience does make cowards of us all. I” below. If you want to watch the dark fantasy action for yourself, then stop here and come back once you’ve been just as surprised by the very sudden violence and death as I was.

The Ancient Magus’ Bride Season 2 Ep. 9 “Conscience does make cowards of us all. I”: Plot Summary

The Ancient Magus' Bride Season 2 Ep. 9 "Conscience does make cowards of us all. I" screenshot depicting Chise staring at Joseph's proffered hand.
No, Chise. Don’t take the hand of the immortal mass murderer.

The Ancient Magus’ Bride Season 2 Ep. 9 “Conscience does make cowards of us all. I” picks up just shortly after the events of the previous episode. That is, if you count a 10-day time skip as “shortly”. Apparently, Lucy has been in a coma that whole time, despite Chise giving her an infusion of magic energy to try to make up for the magic someone drained out of her.

As Chise waits for Lucy to wake up, though, she makes a visit to Joseph/Cartaphilus to try to understand what happened to her in that lake with the nuckelavee. Joseph appears to be trying to help at first, rationalizing that Chise was merely defending herself when that cursed arm took her over to kill it. Chise still leaves with doubts, though, and for good reason. When she’s out of sight, Joseph/Cartaphilus reveals himself to be pretty ecstatic that Chise is starting down a dark path by killing that nuckelavee.

Things do get better when Lucy’s older brother Seth (the guy who ran the auction house where Chise sold herself) comes in for a visit. They get a bit worse, though, when Chise accidentally peeks into Lucy’s dream, and discovers a bloody scene full of mutilated corpses, with a young Lucy demanding that someone “Give the spiders back”. Fortunately, it does result in Lucy waking up, so that’s good. Chise even meets up with Philomela afterward, and the 2 of them more or less agree to be friends. Philomela doesn’t want anyone to know about it, but she does want to get closer to Chise. Too bad an emergency interrupts this potential slice-of-life scene.

The College: Not as Secure as Everyone Thinks It Is?

The Ancient Magus' Bride Season 2 Ep. 9 "Conscience does make cowards of us all. I" screenshot depicting all the teachers at the College assembled for a meeting.
You know things are serious when a dark brooding council assembles.

Said emergency turns out to be a stolen book. Why would a mere stolen book provoke a meeting of all the teachers? As it turns out, said stolen book is a very dangerous forbidden text: that teaches the reader (among other things) how to bring the dead back to life and how to steal magic from humans. Yeah, this thief is definitely Lucy’s attacker. Even worse, said thief even ambushes one of the teachers after the meeting is over. Why? Unfortunately, we still don’t know.

Even more unfortunately, some werewolf-looking guys decide now’s the time to strike. They ambush and kill Seth’s driver without making a sound like assassins Ezio Auditore would be proud of. They then mention embarking on their own plan within the College. What do these werewolf guys want? Well, presumably, we’ll find out in the next episode of The Ancient Magus’ Bride Season 2.

The Ancient Magus’ Bride Season 2 Ep. 9 “Conscience does make cowards of us all. I”: The Good

The Ancient Magus' Bride Season 2 Ep. 9 "Conscience does make cowards of us all. I" screenshot depicting a closeup of Elias's human female form's face.
It’s always good to see Studio Kafka’s signature beautifully animated eyes.

It seems that the story of this season of The Ancient Magus’ Bride is on a roll. What with all the dark fantasy action horror going on and all. In fact, The Ancient Magus’ Bride Season 2 Ep. 9 “Conscience does make cowards of us all. I” takes it up a step further than even in the previous episode. Heck, the fact that we have a straight-up murder of Seth’s driver seriously raises the stakes in this story. The preview for the next episode right at the end only seems to confirm that we will get even more action next week.

Heck, there’s so much action and dark fantasy in The Ancient Magus’ Bride Season 2 Ep. 9 “Conscience does make cowards of us all. I” that there’s almost no room for the slice-of-life fun I love from this anime. And yet, we still do get bits of it. Elias’ banter with Narcisse was quite hilarious and was a welcome relief from the drama and dark fantasy. It was a very, very brief relief, but it did ease some of the tension nonetheless.

The Ancient Magus’ Bride Season 2 Ep. 9 “Conscience does make cowards of us all. I”: The Bad

The Ancient Magus' Bride Season 2 Ep. 9 "Conscience does make cowards of us all. I" screenshot depicting Joseph/Cartaphilus smiling VERY creepily.
It’s never a good thing when this guy is smiling at all, let alone like that.

I had zero complaints about the previous episode due to the combination of dark fantasy action and slice-of-life antics. I have even fewer complaints about this episode. This is definitely where the action kicks into high gear, after all. If you want the slice of life back, though, you’re probably going to have to wait a few episodes for that.