Shingeki no Bahamut: Genesis – 02

This was one of those episodes that had a little bit of everything, and just kept getting better and better. I don’t care if this is based off a Pachinko game; it’s a blast. The cold open takes us to an Olympus-style heavenly realm, then down to a legendary battle between Jeanne D’arc’s army of knights and the forces of darkness. All with the titular Bahamut floating in the sky, dormant but ominous.

After an awesome OP with a healthy dose of metal, we return to the present and to Favaro’s latest predicament: in kissing him the previous night, the pink-haired maiden gave him a demon’s tail, which won’t go away until he tells her the way to Helheim as promised. Life’s tough in a world without Google Maps. The only thing that matters to Favaro is getting rid of that tail. But he probably lied about knowing where Helheim is. Probably, because when he looks the lady straight in the eye, it isn’t long before he has to smirk.

That’s beside the point, as after escaping once again from his noble nemesis Kaisar, Fav immediately considers simply murdering the woman in order to break the spell. That’s right, this guy shot Greedo first; he’s no saint, and he’s always looked out for one guy: Favaro. When he brings her along to a manor to slay a demon goat (ram?) mounted in the wall, he sees her demon power again and realizes killing her won’t be so easy. So he plays a longer game.

With the bounty Bacchus pays him for the work the lady mostly did, Favaro buys her some clothes (after trying on a good number of outfits), some food, and then some drink, which she’s apparently never had before, but enjoys quite a bit, to the point that when the music picks up, she joins Favaro for some stirring, sexy and very well-animated dancing, followed by a dip in a gorgeous starlit lake.

At this point, Favaro is thinking it’s the perfect time to stab her in the back, but then he learns her name—Amira—and why she wants to go to Helheim—to reunite with her mother—and he hesitates just long enough for Kaisar to burst out of the lake, having held his breath an untold amount of time. Kaisar, momentarily dazed by Amira’s beauty, gets drop-kicked by Favaro, and the two escape again. Between the goat in the wall, the fantastic dancing, and Kaisar, this episode is full of surprises.

Here’s another, though I shouldn’t have been surprised: the next day, Favaro sells Amira out to knights for what looks like pocket change. Can you believe this piece of work? Lucky for him, his own horse won’t sit back and let her get killed. And oh yeah, the knights, with all their bad-ass armor and magic circles, only manage to give Amira strange and oddly pleasant tingles, so she was never in much danger.

Still, now that he’s with Amira again, Favaro decides, for now at least, to stick with her. When they’re blocked on either side of a rope bridge over a massive waterfall, Fav shoots the bridge and they drop, Fugitive-style. I imagine a lot more thrilling predicaments and death-defying stunts are in store for this trouble-prone couple, as they now have a bounty out against them (which Kaisar takes up), while a collection of demon authorities watch the progress of Amira, who bears one of the two “God Keys” that can unlock Bahamut.

Even if Amira is your standard fish-out-of-water bishoujo with hidden powers, it’s a hell of a lot of fun whether she’s hanging out with Favaro having fun or showing off those frightening (and slick) powers. The cat-and-mouse between the roguish Favaro and Kaisar, stemming from some incident we don’t yet know about (but the details of which vary greatly between the two) is similarly amusing to watch unfold.