This week puts two of our three ladies through the wringer, starting with Jeanne. While bound and burning at the stake as her defenders are slaughtered by the king’s soldiers, she has a vision of an angel who basically tells her they couldn’t care less about humans. Then she’s visited by the creepy red-eyed guy once more, and force-fed that suspicious potion he offered before.
This turns Jeanne into a 1980s rock star demon…a pretty damn badass-looking one, too. She summons her guitar Maltet, makes a stone dragon rise out of the ground, and takes off. That’s not good. Bacchus witnesses this and is mildly concerned, as does Rita, who managed to get out of that situation in the lab and flags the god down for some questions.
Meanwhile in Prudisia, Amira, Favaro and Kaisar are having a relatively uneventful journey when the damn ground shatters into bits and starts to rise into the air. Another huge demon beast/castle thing emerges, and dramatically transforms the environment…or lifts the illusory vail to reveal the real environment.
The creepy red-eyed dude who transformed Jeanne (and probably poisoned the kings mind so he’d get her where he wanted her) shows up here too. His name is Martinet, and he’s very evil. I don’t like him. Amira remembers him as her ‘teacher’, who told her she’d be able to find her mother in Helheim. And Helheim, not Prusidia, is where they actually are.
Rita hitches a ride with Bacchus and Hamsa’s carriage, which accientally runs over the fallen angel Azazel, who has apparently fallen again…out of favor with Lucifer, that is. The demonic doghouse, if you will.
Back in Helheim, Martinet reveals his master, Beelzebub, who for whatever reason wants to release Bahamut. We’ve been told Bahamut is nothing but pure destruction for gods and demons alike, but I guess Beels has a plan. Unfortunately, he and his sneering assistant are nowhere near as interesting as Azazel and Cerberus.
Getting back to that wringer our ladies go through: just when you thought Jeanne was having a bad day, Amira is shown her mother, an angel encased in ice, and once it shatters she’s kind of locked in a shocked expression. Amira was always told her mother could ‘take the key out of her’…but always thought that would be a good thing. It isn’t.
As it turns out, Amira is merely a vessel for the key, created when Beelzebub did something awful to her mother. Amira has been manipulated by false memories contained in her pendant compelling her to come to Helheim at the proper time. Overcome with emotions, Amira goes over hugs her mom, which is a bad idea, because that causes her mom to crumble into a cloud of dust.
Worse, those nice clothes Fava bought her are all burnt up, so now she’s motherless, rudderless, and nude. Her resulting scream of anguish is the trigger that transforms her into the key Beelzebub wants.
Bacchus and Rita are close enough to see the light of the spectacle. Knowing Bahamut is closer than ever to being revived, they know have to do something. That includes asking Azazel to help them out, which he agrees to do, if for no other reason than he doesn’t want to die either.
Kaisar? He remains encased in a crystal coffin. Favaro manages to escape when he begs the bad guys to let him come over to their side (That’s So Favaro) but it’s just a trick, which Martinet sees through instantly, and then turns Fava into a demon, just as he did Jeanne.
That means perhaps the only ones who can save the world from Bahamut may be a group consisting of a zombie necromancer, a fallen angel, a drunken god, and a duck. The world is so screwed. Or is it?
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Man, Martinet played the world like a fiddle. Everything went so perfectly to his plan, it’s like seeing evil Lelouch at work. Jeanne, the strongest of the humans, is no longer a ‘threat’ to their plans, Kaiser and Fava are pretty much NPCs at this point… Amira’s…gone. Unless Lucifer’s quick on the uptake, it looks like Beez has got everything neatly in the bag.
Make no mistake – demons are bad news and they’ll lie and cheat to get what they want.
But yeah, Dark Witch Jeanne is a complete hottie.
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On the contrary, Azazel is right now more valuable to Lucifer than anyone. He’s the only one possessing knowledge of Belzebuth’s true intentions and could expose him in front of other demons who, similarly to the angels are manipulated to gather in Abos with a war in mind, which is just a ploy to gather them all where it would be convenient for Bahamut to kill them. Lucifer is not the type to rush into conflict without a good reason, and even though distrustful of Belzebuth, he doesn’t have a valid reason yet. Azazel could provide it. He doesn’t really agree to help out RIta because he doesn’t want to die. He agrees to share some information with them because he can’t “afford” to die, not before he gives the information to Lucifer.
As for Jeanne, at first I thought Belzebuth simply wanted her out of the picture to make place for Amira as the one to control the Bahamut. But now it seems like he either wants her to fight the angels with the rest of the demons OR to be the legendary knight of his own and on his service. This might be his plan to control Bahamut, by using Jeanne.
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You wrote, ” Favaro manages to escape when he begs the bad guys to let him come over to their side (That’s So Favaro) but it’s just a trick, which Martinet sees through instantly, and then turns Fava into a demon”.
Favaro was already a demon. Amira turned him into one when she bound him to her in episode 1. I would love to hear Martinet say to Favaro, “now kneel to those who made you, demon!” – whereupon Favaro bows to Amira.
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Yes, I know about the tail. But was he made into a full demon when she gave him the tail? I’m not sure about that. All I know is, he’s a full demon now, thanks to Martinet.
Semantics aside, I knew Amira’s dream of meeting her mom in Helheim wasn’t going to be all peaches and ice cream, but the progression from “Hey everything’s fine” to “Shit hitting the fan” felt a bit rushed and clunky.
It also leaned too heavily on the unlikable (to me) Martinet, a thoroughly cliche ‘evil harlequin’ villain who came out of nowhere, simply standing there with that silly look on his face explaining all the Bad Stuff he’d done so far, then gloating.
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Well, he (Martinet) has been there since episode 6 -> https://rabujoi.files.wordpress.com/2014/11/bah62.jpg And the first thing he’s done was manipulating Azazel into raiding the castle. He knew no matter what Azazel does, Belzebuth will stand in his way. What he needed immediately though was to not let him meet Lucifer. At the time Azazel already knew who Amira is working for (He recognised the apparition as Belzebuth), thus filling his original instruction. And so Martinet + Belzebuth have been doing a really good job at preventing him meeting his boss and clock in ever since.
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This all makes sense, and thanks for clarifying. I must admit that like Amira, Favaro, and Kaisar, I was mostly in the dark about what all thes KISS rejects were truly up to until it was too late. So that’s some good conspiring!
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There’s a small narrative there which gets overlooked often but actions of those three are entwined. I find it hilarious that, with all that smooth operating, and after accomplishing practically every step of their plan, Azazel is the only part where Beelzebub and Martinet failed. They’ve been trying to dispose of him for roughly five episodes, and what they achieved is him on board of a suite carriage resistant to demon surveillance en route to Aboss. I hope this is going somewhere.
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