Well, that escalated quickly.
Impression
This badass is alive after all! It’s good to see that he played an integral role in the events of the episode, and practically ensured the best possible outcome for them with his powers as a puppeteer – as suspected, he did cook up a plan with Basara to get him straight to Zolgia, and did so in exchange for something in return, which turned out to be revenge on Zolgia. I was hoping for a romantic motive like him secretly being in love with Maria’s mother, but it’s also fine that he was equally as enraged as Mio to learn that her foster parents had been killed – because they were his foster parents, too. Damn, Mio’s got a lot of adopted siblings.
It was pretty sad to learn that her parents were kind people, because in comparison Zolgia is an incorrigible penis. From the looks of it, he’s still not dead, but I do hope Takigawa ends up killing him sooner or later – and if not, then he should at least set him up somehow so the current Demon Lord finds out what he’s been doing. Zolgia spent the majority of the episode doing some cruel things, like showing Maria footage of her mother’s apparent death, and setting a massive monster loose in the human world. I assume that’s not something the demon species wants, by the way – regardless of what they think of humans, they’ve generally left them alone, and I don’t think many would approve of seeing them all killed and it being their fault. Oh, and he slapped around Basara a lot, too. I don’t know how I felt about that, because it means Basara hasn’t really gotten stronger – and with Mio having cleaned up after him this time, he’s again failed to get the power-up he desperately needs. They made it sound like the various foreplay sessions would power him up, but it’s seemed to only work on Mio – and meanwhile, Basara is still struggling against Takigawa. I was also hoping Mio and Yuki would do stuff other than scream his name while he was taking his beating.
Conveniently, everyone turned out to be sitting in the belly of a giant creature that can isolate dimensional space! Charming. Zest has no reason to lie, and I’m slightly more convinced that she might end up joining the harem, but the final battle against whatever monster lies waiting ahead in the core chamber will set us up nicely for the end of the season. And speaking of seasons, there’ll apparently be a second season of this airing in Fall 2015, which I’m reacting to with a mix of mild interest and bewilderment. It’ll be called Shinmai Maou no Testament BURST. It’s gotta be a split-cour, right? As in, it was planned beforehand. Unless… I mean, I guess the absurd censoring could have done something to the pre-order sales. But no-one’s that thirsty, right? Right?
Gah!! Takigawa, you totally missed your opportunity to make Basara pay for another BBQ meal along side with dealing the final blow. But yeah….this next season….If it does happen I’ll go into it with very-mild expectations. The average animation along with censoring doesn’t really appeal to me. But at least Takigawa will be in it so there’s that (literally….him, Maria, (and at times Yuki) are the only reasons I watch this show.
I’m hoping that they might do something about the censoring, but if it’s a split-cour with the same staff I sadly don’t see how the rules could change in between seasons. I watch this for Takigawa and Yuki, and I think I quite liked ‘awakened’ Mio as well, so it’s a shame she didn’t stick around.