Shinmai Maou no Testament Episode 3

Don’t get your hopes up.

Impression

Hey, this might be deeper than I thought it was. Or at least, there seems to be a decent amount of plot to keep me interested. Also Yuki is cute. That sort of thing is important in a show like this. They’ve never told us outright what went on with the hero clan five years ago, or exactly why Basara and his father had to leave – but it seems like he was responsible for the deaths of a lot of his clan. I’m going to hazard a guess that whatever the reason was, it was a necessary evil – which is why they were merely exiled instead of condemned to death for treachery or something. Perhaps surprisingly, it was him that did the killing – usually with these backstories, it’s an older brother or future antagonist that killed the clan or family. But anyway, we know that it’s weighed heavily on Basara’s mind, and it may or may not have been the cause of his drop in power level. It’s why Yuki is so adamant against Basara choosing to fight for Mio, although the fact that Mio is the Demon Lord successor probably had a part to play too. And it sort of makes sense. What I didn’t really get was, again, Basara’s motive for protecting Mio and Maria – I understand the bit about him wanting to protect her after seeing how hard she was persevering, but he also said it’s supposedly his role to do so, if the hero clan couldn’t do it. Really? Are the hero clan supposed to protect innocent future Demon Lords?

There was no indication that Basara and Mio had been fighting low-class demons every night – it was nice finding out at the same time that Mio did. The dubious mask guy is almost certainly Takigawa though, and in hindsight it’s not all that surprising. The entire school is supposed to hate Basara for having both Mio and Yuki to himself, and yet there’s this one guy showing up trying to befriend him out of nowhere. And if one faction is willing and able to send an observer to keep Mio in check, it’d make sense for another faction -presumably the anti-Demon Lord one this time- to do the same. The school nurse is probably similar – although she doesn’t seem too hostile for now, whatever faction she’s part of.

Finally, the fanservice turned out to be decent! I saw boobs! And Yuki’s panties! All is right with the world.

Actually, it could have been far better, but at least they aren’t being as conservative as before. I was initially dreading the bath scene purely because it had the potential to be a good few minutes of a white screen of death, but it was quite good in the end. The cake icing felt a bit convenient, but at least we could see it being licked up. Guess as long as it’s not actually real, it’ll pass through. I have hopes for the shampoo bottle scene now.