「迫撃乱舞」 (Hakugeki Ranbu)
“Point-Blank War Dance”
It’s a race against the clock.
Once again, for an isekai series featuring an overpowered protagonist, Isekai Maou is doing a good job of imbuing its conflicts with actual tension. Here, the question is not whether Diablo has the power to defeat the Fallen; as he showed when he cracked out the Grand Magic, he most definitely does. The question was whether he could do it quickly enough, whether Return Magic would work, and whether he would be able to do all of this with enough MP in the tank save everyone. In short, he wasn’t struggling against his opponents’ powers. He was contending with time and resource allocation. He had the tools, but if they weren’t allocated quickly and effectively, people would still die.
Well, they did anyway. But named characters outside of the whiny antagonist would die, which is another level up in storytelling severity.
Of course, he managed it, and Edelgard is definitely a lock for the Maou’s harem now. His “True Demon Lord” bit definitely did the trick, along with the drubbing he gave her and her forces, to convince her that he’s the right horse to back. Which’ll be devastating when it happens, because she’s Lv 80 and the only one who’s been able to damage him so far, which either means she’ll be a delightfully dangerous element to add into his daily life, or will up the requirements of all future challenges accordingly. Which, given he just defeated an invasion by this world’s boogie men, might be hard? We’ll see how it goes.
Definitely a lot of harem hijinks this episode, though for my money the killer moment is when Diablo shrugs off his saving Rem because of the collar, which means she’s his possession—and she clearly doesn’t want that collar off no more, does she? Ditto for Shera. No judgment here, if they wanna do master/slave play that’s their prerogative, I don’t wanna yuck nobody’s yum. It definitely backfired on Diablo, though. In delicious, fantastic ways. Mhm. That’s some yummy fanservice right there, yes siree.
Ending was great too. “Just stop a war, kthkz?” It goes to show that, once again, the challenge will not be power vs power. It’ll be politics. How can Diablo (and Rem, and Shera, and new characters) find the third option that staves off war without surrendering Shera? We’ll find out more next time.
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