“Thinking too much is bad for you”
Summary: The Fall season has arrive since Hero’s departure and Female Knight has moved to the villa to teach swordsmanship to the Crimson Scholar’s students. A member of the Alliance, Young Merchant, pays a visit to Scholar and she introduces to him another crop, corn, which will help boost mankind’s food production even further if the Alliance helps her fund farming the crop. Despite learning the Scholar’s goal is to see the war end peacefully which might be seen as treacherous and heresy to the Human kingdoms and the Church, Young Merchant accepts her proposition. Before leaving, he proposes to Crimson Scholar much to her embarrassment. In the Winter Kingdom, the Winter Prince boasts about the Scholar with his Butler, who is actually Archer, on how her crops and ideas have helped the South which will lead to economic independence from Central. While it has been six months since Hero left to the Demon Realm which he has gain some demon allies, the Queen’s anxiety increases, unaware that he has made use of his teleportation skill to return regularly to the villa behind her back, a fact only known by Chief Maid, to whom he confesses that he refrains to meet her out of his drive to become useful to her. Meanwhile, the southern nations are ordered by Central to assemble a huge naval fleet to recapture Aurora Island, the only territory in the human world under control of the Demons.
Note: I live in England. Maoyuu Maou Yuusha isn’t available in England (on Crunchyroll, that is), therefore I won’t be able to upload an abundance of images into the gallery… sorry?
Let’s begin. Actually before we begin I’d just like to make my opinion of the opening (music) known, it is awesome. I love it. That is all.
Episode 4 begins with all of the maids measuring the Demon Queen up for a dress fitting. I the last two episodes both the Older Sister Maid and the Younger Sister Maid have grown a great deal, as evidence by episodes 3 and 4. The Younger Sister Maid no longer hides behind her sisters skirts and instead is now a boisterous, smiling bundle of joy, who’s cuteness astounds me. The Older Sister Maid has seemingly become contemplative and placid, just like the Head Maid and I that it’s awesome that both characters are getting such great character development. I can’t wait to see their characters develop further!
It seems as though the Female Knight had come to stay and well… the Hero is not here. I absolutely loved watching her reaction to finding out about the Hero’s absence. I’m not sure if he should be worried by her compulsive need to be near him or the fact that she throws tantrums when she’s not… either way I’m glad that we’re going to be seeing more Female Knight! Her character will add 1. a nice romantic rivalry between the Demon Queen and herself to the show, 2. an increased chance to see more action (I’ll get back to this later) and 3. more boobs.
Now let’s discuss boobs. Now I don’t mean ‘Let’s discuss the anatomy of boobs in great detail’ or anything even remotely similar to that, but, what I do mean is, let’s discuss the noticeable abundance of boobs in this show and their importance. Boobs are great. We all know that right? But what is it about boobs with this show! Maoyuu absolutely LOVES giving the viewer cleavage shots, it likes commenting on boobs, it likes depicting massive cow girl boobs (not the kind of boobs your thinking of!) and it loves giving the Demon Queen’s boobs a lot of screen time. It’s ridiculous! Whilst I was taking down notes for this episode- actually no, let me tell you what I wrote. Firstly, I wrote ‘BOOBS! Ugly useless flesh…” to remind myself to mention them and then about ten minutes later I found myself writing ‘BOOBS! what is it about boobs?!” out of shock from an overload of boobs. I’m lovin’ the boobs and I know you are too but can we have at least one minute where there aren’t any boobs… rant over…
Now let’s get down to business. The Merchant arrives at the manor/mansion/not so humble abode in search of a great business deal, assassins at the ready and is shocked to find the beautiful Miss Demon Queen standing in the way of his quest for world domination. She brings out ‘The Magic Box’ and reveals… Corn! Now originally I thought that the corn was weird/disfigured/inbred but (after doing some research) I later found out that this is actually ‘genetically diverse’ corn… something to do with selective breeding? Anyway the negotiations go well and the Merchant proposes… Wait what? I did not see that coming… I don’t think it will go anywhere but I found it hilarious watching the cool and composed Demon Queen break down into an embarrassed and blushing mess. Smooth moves Young Merchant!
Going back to the meeting though, it got pretty tense for a moment there. I was on the edge of my seat waiting in anticipation for the Merchant to crack and the assassins to come crashing in through the windows and that’s what I love about Maoyuu Maou Yuusha. It’s the amazing way that they take slow paced shows such as this one and ‘Spice and Wolf’ and add tense, clever and detailed moments to keep the viewer interested. Yes, comedy plays a big part in ‘keeping the viewer interested’, but for me one of the main reasons I like Maoyuu so much is because of how different it is. We don’t see many ‘clever’ anime these days…
Got off topic again… The meeting! The meeting was a battle of wits and the winner would be whoever could gain the upper hand in their desperate struggle for survival a profit. I’m actually quite surprised that the Demon Queen revealed her plan straight away to the Merchant, I mean, we all saw his reaction to the ‘end the war’ scheme. I was surprised that she’d play him like that but I guess it was all part of her performance. The Demon Queen of course won the battle of wits and intelligence by ‘revealing’ to the Merchant’s nature (his one track mind (for profit) to himself and ultimately making him… laugh. Yes.
One quick paragraph before we move on… does the Head Maid not see the hypocrisy in her statement that ‘Thinking too much is bad for you’? Such blatant hypocrisy cannot go unpunished!
The Hero is… back and black (his armor is black!). I was actually caught off guard when the Head Maid announced that the Hero was inside the seat. I was all like ‘What are you doing in there? Go forth to you well endowed woman!’. But of course the Hero has his reasons, he has a common case of the ‘uselessness complex’ that many a hero before him has come to suffer. The Hero feels like the Demon Queen doesn’t need him, or, that she doesn’t ‘need’ him but instead wants him by her side at all times which makes him unable to do the only thing he is good at, fighting. I loved the music in this scene because it fit the mood perfectly, it was melancholic and mellow which made the scene all the more stirring when watching. I’m not going to go to much further into it but I feel as though the Hero should just get passed it and move on. I don’t mean to be a douche but this whole ‘I’m only good at one thing and I’m not allowed to do it’ thing is kinda ridiculous. Your running around the world meeting beautiful women/fairies/demon women, what they hell do YOU have to complain about? Just saying…
I’m going to finished off here by addressing the Older Sister’s final comment of ‘Am I human?’. I feel as though this plot point is going to be used a lot in this anime when dealing with anyone other than the ‘well off’ humans and anyone with power. I think that the Older Sister Maid is making reference to the Head Maid’s comment about her and her sister being bugs but I’m not entirely sure. Cultural and societal diversity play a BIG part in Maoyuu Maou Yuusha, in fact, pretty much all of the plot in technically do with the divide between humans and demons and how they aren’t as different as the make themselves out to be (on the inside). It’s all about prejudice and I LOVE it when an anime deals with a seriously subject such as this one. Can’t wait to see how they develop it!