I want to feed Elma!
Impression
I really like Elma. Not as much as Tooru, maybe, but I think she’s a good addition to the cast. I love her short hair and the way she wears her clothes like it’s meant to be a raiment or something, although it just ends up looking a little bit lewd instead. Other than Shouta, we haven’t had any new recurring characters introduced for quite a while (or at all since Kanna, if you count the fact that we heard Lucoa and Fafnir over the phone at the start of the season) so it’s nice to see a new face around. Especially as she looks like she’s perfect for bullying. You know, the kind who is a stickler for rules, is a little clumsy and has her priorities in the wrong order, but means well. Sort of like Yunyun. I bet she’d make the cutest noises of teary-eyed protest if I dangled some food right out of her reach. And for some reason she never got to go to the beach despite being sea dragon. Being Elma is suffering. I wonder if her strangely long horn is inconvenient for her?
Even though it was meant to be an Elma episode, somehow it ended up being more than that. In that regard, it was actually very similar to last week’s alleged ‘fanservice’ episode. Today was indeed about Elma, but it felt like the spotlight was still very much on Tooru, as it always is. And to me, that’s Maid Dragon at its best. It’s always consistently brilliant, almost surprisingly so, but I’m sure you can tell by now that the thoughtful Tooru moments are my favourite segments. It was almost like Elma’s introduction was used as a platform from which Tooru and Kobayashi could develop some relationship issues and work through them, with Tooru being super jealous and trying to win over an oblivious Kobayashi. And I do get where Tooru’s coming from. I have a good idea of her thought process, actually. I imagine it would go something like this. She loves Kobayashi lots, but has to part with her for five days a week whilst Kobayashi goes to work. And that can’t be helped, because Kobayashi needs to earn money and live her life as a human. But suddenly, a homewrecker like Elma joins Kobayashi’s company out of nowhere, and gets to be with her all day long and hang around her. Meanwhile, Tooru has to sit alone at home all day (without even Kanna, who is at school) and endure the suffering of having Kobayashi come back every day smelling like some sluttily-dressed harmony dragon who has now pestered her all the way into a different world. Something along those lines.
I thought that latter segment was much more of a ‘fight’ than the competition they had over Kanna’s lunch box. I just saw it as a banterous contest that escalated a little too much, but for some reason Fafnir didn’t seem to take it too well. I still can’t really tell whether Fafnir approves of Kobayashi (he must do to an extent if he’s accepted Tooru’s decision and he can see that two different dragons have accepted her) but it was almost as if he thought a fight was pointless, as instead of solving or working through the problems they had with each other, or competing, Tooru could just eat her and that would be that. I’m not sure, I’m not certain on why he didn’t seem too happy. But it’d be a very Fafnir-like thing to think.
Two more things. First, are we able to infer which factions the other dragons that haven’t been explicitly classified are in? Fafnir is clearly a chaos dragon. Lucoa feels like an uninvolved spectator given that she wasn’t originally (and technically might still not be) a dragon. What’s Kanna? Is she too young to have a faction? Will she pick one in the future, or is it genetic or based on sub-species of dragon? Although really, she should be a chaos dragon given how violent she is to small innocent creatures she likes staring at before she eats. I’m surprised that Tooru is all about chaos. Well, I’m not, given how casually she’s talked of genocide and wiping out humanity, but she’s so cute! And her tail is the squishiest. Everything about her is perfect.
That brings me on to the second thing. I’d like to advertise this genuine, authentic Tooru tail! It’s technically a dakimakura I think, as it’s a big plush that’s large enough to hug, but it’s the cutest and I’m seriously tempted to buy one. It looks a little creepy as well, especially if you stare at the cross-section of the tail where you can see its insides and the tail bone, but overall I think it’s adorable. I don’t have much anime merch, and certainly no bed decorations other than a giant stuffed Rensouhou I picked up a few years ago, but the issue with getting this is that it’d be really difficult to explain. It’s literally a giant severed green tail, no matter how you look at it.
So long waiting for Elma to arrive and when it finally appears kyo-ani makes me lol explode with the title of the episode xD
I’ve been waiting for her as well! She sure took her time. Maybe she could have even gone to the beach as well if she’d been introduced earlier. I hear Lucoa wasn’t originally in those scenes but was added in anyway.