Rating: 3 (of 5)

I was slightly in error last week. While this mini arc isn’t in the novels, it actually is not anime-original, either; it did appear in the manga adaptation (which I have not read beyond the first volume). That does not make this any less of a two-episode filler arc, but it does mean that it could have some minor impact or reference back to it going forward.

Unlike the beach arc, the threat here turns out to be a much more mundane one: wholly human thieves out stealing from farms in the vicinity of the Sasakis and a thoroughly normal bear who gets startled into charging Maou, Emi, and crew by said thieves. That leads to the first of two mildly amusing scenes, where Emi winds up pulling wrestling moves on the bear. The second comes later, after Maou and crew reason out what’s going on and come up with a plan to stop it, and that leads to the scene shown in the screenshot above, where Crestia stops the thieves’ SUV in its tracks while Emi rips the roof on them and goes nearly as demonic in her intimidation as Maou does; this may easily be Crestia’s best screen shot between both seasons. I also have to give the episode a little credit for linking Maou momentarily getting his powers and demonic form back to the Kappa museum introduced last episode and the way the Sasaki family just rolls with the clearly-abnormal capabilities of Maou and crew under the grandmother’s “being with power used to be born from time to time, but there’s no need to make a fuss about it” logic.

However, the thoroughly ordinary nature of what’s going on here is also thoroughly underwhelming. If this was a more ordinary series than this two episode sequence might have been passable, but the series has shown that it is capable on way more than this on all fronts. It does allow Maou to ruminate a bit more on matters in the Demon Realm which led to the invasion of Enta Isla, and this may be a replacement for some minor scenes skipped here and there to this point, but it does not allow the episode to escape feeling like it is just killing time in between story arcs. (Leaving Chiho completely on the sidelines in this whole affair also didn’t help.)

At least the epilogue seems to be ordering things back towards the main storyline, though I am a little curious what the production team is aiming to do with the last arc based on that epilogue scene. In the original novels, the revelation to Emi that an angel named Laila was her mother came at the end of the first novel, during the scene that happened at the end of episode 6 of the first season. But that was skipped over in the anime version, only to be delayed until now. The delay has not really had any impact on the story prior to this point, so this may be intended to combine with the scene at the end of episode 7 to be a lead-in to a major plot point in novel 5. If so, I am quite curious to see what else about novel 5 they are going to have to jury-rig to make this work, especially with only three episodes left. Guess we’ll find out next week.

Rating: B-

This episode represents a very odd decision in what has otherwise been a solid adaptation so far. While part of one of the episode’s early scenes – where the Devils return to their repaired home and Ashiya makes the comment about the faucet being fixed – is at the beginning of novel 5, the episode is in anime-original territory from the point where Maou and his minions get called on to help Chiho’s family. Since this looks like it is going to be a two-episode arc, presumably the intent here is to use this as filler and then adapt the important parts of novel 5 (which is about the same length as novel 4) into episodes 10-12. Given that what little is shown of Villa Rosa in this episode skips over a lot of dithering about moving furniture and belongings back into the apartments, this is feasible without rushing the plot too much, but I still have some concerns.

The scenario the production team chose to go with involves the devils taking another out-of-town side job while waiting for MgRonald’s to reopen, this time at the family farm operated by Chiho’s grandmother and uncle. Naturally Emilia ends up there, too, in part because Alas Ramus fusses when too far away from “daddy,” though Emilia also has misgivings about the devils working on a farm. This is quite understandable, as Emilia was originally raised on a farm herself and the loss of that farm was one of the major personal costs the rampage of the Devil King’s Armies had on her. Indeed, that results in a proper degree of awkwardness between the two when she has to explain to Maou the reasons for being so particular about harvesting vegetables.

However, there’s one significant problem with this scenario, one that should be utterly out of character for such a detail-conscious franchise as this: while Maou is temporarily unemployed, Emi isn’t. She is again taking off a couple of days from work after just having done so very shortly before. Perhaps the previous outing could be explained as a weekend excursion, but two trips like this so close together sounds problematic. But I suspect that this might not even be acknowledged when they get back to Tokyo.

And hey, the crew is out in nature, so of course they have to get menaced by a hungry bear! Bears have long been pests to farmers and hunters in Japan, with a couple of deaths and a several injuries typically being reported each year, so this isn’t at all an unbelievable incident. Will Maou be able to calm this one down like he did the alligators in season one? Time will tell, and this time I am left wondering every bit as much as anime-only viewers are.

Other Titles That I Am Following – Isekai Round-Up:

Engage Kiss eps 2-9: Essentially, this series is what you’d get if you took Strike the Blood and reversed the genders, down even to which gender is using the other to power up. For better or worse, it absolutely follows the model set down by the Raildex franchise, with the only minor variation being a more tragic undertone to the way the power-up works. The male MC in this one is also more than a bit of an ass at times, but I actually find that refreshing. On the downside, the tone is a mess and the writing can be extremely clunky at times. The series is hampered by an unwillingness to let loose and be as crazy-ridiculous as both its predecessors can be, and I didn’t fully appreciate how important that attitude was in the other series until I saw this one. Watchable if you liked either predecessor, but not a high-priority view.

Black Summoner episodes 2-9: Though I wouldn’t call this one a good series or must-see entertainment, either, it is at least making some attempts to do something interesting with its isekai reincarnation premise, and that includes a significant twist in the most recent episode. Worth watching if you appreciate the genre, but there isn’t enough here to generate a wider draw.

My Isekai Life episodes 2-10: This series gets too much of a pass because the slimes are endearingly cute. The series does have a certain amount of flair to it (especially in the way Yuji moves in casting scenes), but Yuji has no personality and the plot isn’t all that interesting. That is never really explains its set-up also bugs me.

Harem in the Labyrinth of Another World episodes 2-9: No isekai series I’ve ever seen is more of a one-trick pony than this one. It has the most frightfully dull dungeon-delving sequences imaginable, and even its featured Sexy Time regularly proves that being more explicit doesn’t necessarily make its fan service any sexier. The rare sparks it showed early on haven’t amounted to anything meaningful, either. At least, after nine episodes, the series might finally be to the point of introducing a third core character.

Uncle From Another World episodes 2-5: This is a series that I feel I should like less than I do, as some of its visual style points don’t work for me at all. Still, there’s something endearing about how matter-of-factly the uncle describes some really awful experiences and how tantalizingly close he came to having some really awesome ones. This one gets my highest recommendation.

Parallel World Pharmacy episodes 2-7: This one is very much in the vein of Ascendance of a Bookworm, which may be part of the reason why I appreciate it so much. It looks good, can even handle its rare action scenes well, and provides more thoughtful world-building than any other isekai title this season. Also a recommended title, especially if you want something less intensely-paced.

Overlord IV episodes 2-9: Not the strongest of the Overlord seasons, but it still keeps regularly delivering everything that has made it a fun series so far: powermongering, Ainz sometimes accidentally being competent, both his servants and others utterly misinterpreting him, and so forth. It’s more comfort food as isekai go than anything else at this point, though the very mecha suit-like adventurer who popped up in the most recent episode has some intriguing possibilities.

Rating: B

As expected, a crisis is afoot involving the demonic appearances, and as some of the characters started to suspect last episode, Olba is connected to it. In the end, though, resolving the demon part of this affair seemed anticlimatic compared to the indications at near the end of the episode about who and what Amane is.

That Amane isn’t exactly a normal human was implied at the end of last episode, and this one confirms that she is the one who controls the fog and gave the demons a good thrashing. She’s also strong enough and/or confident enough in her power not to be fazed by the Enta Islans or present any actual threat to them, even though she clearly could. She’s got her task, and as long as they don’t get in the way of her task, she’ll let them take care of their business. And that task, it seems, is serving as one of the guardians to a sacred place of cleansing for the spirits of the dead, which seems to be the real purpose of her shack. The bigger revelation is her admittance that she’s “the daughter of Earth’s Binah.” In the Jewish Kabbalah, Binah is one of the highest-positioned sephira, which in this series’ terms means that her father is an incarnation of one of Earth’s Sephira, which probably puts Amane on a power level in line with Alas Ramus. Since Mikitty is her aunt, that means that Mikitty is likely an incarnation of another of Earth’s Sephira, too, and thus one of the most powerful beings on Earth. No wonder she could single-handedly thrash those demons!

The reference to “find the Daath of your word and restore it to its true form” is also interesting and another Kabbalah reference. In the Jewish Kabbalah, Da’at is the unity of all of the sephira into one, where they all exist in their perfected state. That suggests that Enta Isla’s metaphysical issues run much, much deeper than any but the angels know and that whatever the angels are doing is interfering with the delicate balance of Enta Isla’s Tree of Life far more than just a Sephirot being shattered into fragments would indicate. In other words, these are significant pieces to the overall story’s Bigger Picture.

The more immediate concern, though, is dealing with a bunch of demons which have been fooled by Olba into coming to retrieve one of two sacred swords – i.e., Better Half. (But where is the other one, then?) Between the efforts of Emi and the Devils in empowered form, that matter gets resolved almost too easily, though Maou will no doubt have future consequences for implying that Emilia has fallen under his sway. That scene and a later one where Maou may or may not have intentionally made a double-entendre when he said he was going to “dominate” Emi recapture the cheekiness which made the first season so fun, as does the revelation that the short sword was actually Maou’s missing horn for his Devil King form, but I cannot help but feel that the episode, overall, lacks some punch, hence the reason I cannot give it a stronger grade.

This concludes the adaptation of novel 4. With episode 8 and a return to Sasazuka, the adaptation of novel 5 should begin.

Rating: B

That there would be major consequences for one wall of the “Devil’s Castle” getting blown out last episode stood to reason, as this series just doesn’t hand-wave details like that. Hence, that the devils and Suzuno would be temporarily evicted while landlord Mikitty had repairs done was to be expected. What wasn’t expect was that Maou missed another important detail while in his funk over thinking that he had lost Alas Ramus: that MgRonalds was also going to be temporarily closing for renovations, in a very Douglas Adams-esque twist of irony.* Suzuno can temporarily move in with Emi, but what are the devils supposed to do?

As it turns out, Mikitty isn’t as thoughtless as all that. The first season briefly showed that Mikitty was aware of way more than she should be about the Enta Islans, so there’s every possibility that her recommending them to help out her niece Amane Ohguro, who needs live-in seasonal workers for her beachfront shack, was as much part of a bigger scheme as just doing a solid for a relative. Indeed, Amane’s words at the end of the episode, her earlier tale about ghost fishermen, and the giant outline in the fog all suggest that something supernatural may be afoot out on the beach as well. Perhaps this will eventually lead to some clues about the first series’ biggest unresolved mystery: who and/or what Mikitty really is? More immediately important, though, is Emi manufacturing an excuse for her and Suzuno to travel to the same location to check up on Maou (and perhaps keep Alas Ramus from flipping out over not getting to see “daddy” for a long while) and Chiho finding her own reason to come as well.

This franchise being what it is, there is, of course, a ton of other minutiae to sort out first. In a welcome move, Chiho’s mother (who will appear periodically throughout the rest of the franchise) gets introduced here. Parents are something which all-too-often get pushed into the background or hand-waved in anime titles, but showing that there is a good and trusting relationship going both ways there (which puts her in stark contrast to everyone else in the series) adds an extra dimension to the characterizations. That and the way that she can serve as a bridge between Emi and Maou – as she is adored and trusted by both sides – is elevating her above just Wannabe-Girlfriend status and into Sensible Girl status as well. She’s becoming the glue that binds the two sides together as much as Alas Ramus is. By comparison, Sariel’s presence is little more than a cameo, but also perfectly in line with the series’ normal shtick.

On technical fronts, this novel begins the adaption of novel 4, but in very condensed fashion; anime-only viewers may be surprised to know that this episode covers a whopping 140+ pages, or about 60% of the novel. Knowing that, where the condensing is going on should be more obvious, as the novel goes into much more meticulous detail about everything which transpires in the episode, especially the montage scenes. Frankly, I think I actually prefer this version, as the storytelling here gets all of the crucial points across, including the travelogue-type spirit of the journey out to the beach, and the details being left out largely are not important. Amane’s character design is also a plus, as it makes for a perfect replication of her picture in the novel, and the huskier voice of Yuko Kaida (Flare in the recent The Executioner and Her Way of Life) fits the part well. On the downside, the visual quality seems off in this episode, as can be seen in the screenshot above. Thankfully, this is the most mundane part of this novel, so hopefully things will look better when the swimsuits roll out next episode.

Overall, this is a run-of-the-mill episode for the franchise, one which features the gang dealing with real-life problems while vaguely setting up for bigger events to come.

* – For those who don’t get this reference, it refers to a defining situation early in the The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, where co-protagonist Arthur Dent doesn’t find out until too late that his house is scheduled for demolition to make way for a new bypass (because the plans were in a place he didn’t know about), only to have that circumstance replicated onto the entire Earth when aliens come to demolish Earth to make way for a hyperspace bypass.