Basara to the rescue!
Impression
Hold up, hold up. Is Takigawa actually dead? He was one of my favourite characters in this! So despite being a fellow demon, he wasn’t as chummy with Zolgia as I’d initially thought. That might have been something to do with how he wasn’t bound by a Master-Servant pact to Zolgia, and wasn’t obligated to follow his orders at all despite having (presumably) cooperated with him thus far. Takigawa’s proposal to swap Mio for Basara would have put Zolgia on the right side of the current Demon Lord once again, but at the cost of his own ambitions – which involve stealing Mio’s latent magic powers and usurping said current Demon Lord. Ahh, what a bummer. He wasn’t a bad person in the end. It’s a pity he was ultimately done in by Zest as well, given that her loyalty towards Zolgia has been faltering – allegedly because Basara can show Yuki and Mio a better time then Zolgia can show her. It would have been rightful karma had Zolgia successfully killed Zest, but I did entertain the thought that she could have joined Basara’s growing harem. It’d feel weird to have an outright enemy suddenly come live with him in his house, but hey.
I envisaged Basara saving Maria with the power of friendship and kindness (i.e. taking a relentless beating while guilt-tripping her into switching sides) but who knew Maria had that sort of power-up! It’s strong, yes -to the point that it’s apparently a match for Zolgia- but I don’t think I prefer it to her normal loli form. It feels like just her body matured, while her face didn’t really develop and stayed childish – which makes it all seem slightly mismatched. There wasn’t really a major change in her design like I’d hoped apart from growing up in general, which makes it disappointing. I’d like to think that it was done to make the ecchi scene a little more socially acceptable, but I distinctly remember loli Maria rubbing her chest shamelessly all over Basara in the bath before, so that can’t be it. I knew they’d find some way to stick in a couple of lewd scenes even amidst all this havoc though, and I’m just glad it wasn’t something comparatively icky like Zolgia with Mio. And he’d better not touch Yuki, either.
The Light Novel illustration of non-loli Maria looks a lot better than the anime version. I agree with you….it’s really mismatched.
Even her mother is fairly petite, and she presumably represents a standard adult of whatever species of loli succubus they are. It’s like a forced ageing, except not done quite right unlike in Nanoha ViVid.