KonoSuba 3 – 07 – Shadow of Destruction

Back in Axel, Kazuma and Aqua spend their 300 million Eris reward freely, constantly dining out at the finest restaurants. But while they try to put on the air of rich hoity-toity patrons, their less moneyed backgrounds rear their heads in the form of making remarks about their food that fall completely flat—complete with 10-second-long silences that again made me think the picture had frozen.

It’s unlikely they’re convincing anyone that they’re fancy, but the bottom line is they’re back home and having fun, and that’s fine with me! They also walk in on Megumin seemingly in the middle of a sexy torture sesh with Darkness and get the wrong idea. In truth, Darkness is training for the next annual Endurance competition, for which she is the reigning champion (no surprise there, as she’s turned on by punishment).

Fools and their money are soon parted, and Aqua spends a chunk on what appears to be an ordinary chicken egg. She was sold on its seller’s claims it was actually a dragon egg, and both his complimenting her beauty and her desire to raise a sacred white dragon led her to making a dubious purchase. Still, there’s a chance that it could be a dragon’s egg, isn’t there? I for one hope it is. Why should Chomusuke get to hoard the mascot role?

The gang stops by Wiz’s shop to collect their share of the stores sales as per their previous arrangement. Vanir throws in a fortune telling session for Darkness gratis, because he senses a “shadow of darkness” enveloping her. He asks her a bunch of questions she must answer honestly, leading to the others learning she’s now shredded, held up Megumin’s dress in a mirror to see how she’d look, and wears form-fitting armor knowing Kazuma will be looking at her.

But with all that silly stuff out of the way, Vanir does warn Darkness that disaster is about to befall her father and family. That’s probably why she’s so eager to undertake a super-high difficulty quest: defeating a Kowloon Hydra and claim the massive bounty. When calling him a hero and bashfully promising him a kiss on the cheek doesn’t work, Darkness bows before Kazuma and simply gives him her most pained, about-to-cry face.

Whether it’s genuine or not, it works, and the gang is back in the field. Aqua is the only one ho has to be dragged kicking and screaming; she’d rather stay with her “dragon” egg, which was left in Wiz and Vanir’s care. Megumin is excited to earn the title of Dragon Slayer. And Kazuma? I’m sure he figures he could always use more money, even as Vanir warns him he should spend what he has on developing new sources of income to avoid his own bad fortune.

We all know Kazuma cares about Darkness, just as he does the other three, and so he agrees to go on the quest. The plan is for Aqua to float around the lake, purifying the water until the Hydra that dwells beneath is roused, then Megumin will Explosion it to hell. KonoSu-Bing, KonoSu-Bang.

This plan wrecked when Aqua falls asleep in the middle of the lake and ends up on top of one of the Hydra’s many heads when it rises out of the water. Megumin can’t Explosion with Aqua there, so the gang’s in a bit of a pinch. But they’d dealt with tougher foes before. They just need to focus and trust in their talents!

Urusei Yatsura – 13 – Snack Wars

When the faculty arranges for a blanket crackdown on off-campus snacking, the students are ready to fight back, with Ataru and his boundless charisma leading the charge. Mendou joins the adults as part of the “Covert Civility Patrol”, but allows all the girls (and guys disguised as girls) to pass when they sweet-talk him.

A madcap game of guy in cat mascot costume-and-mouse around the nearby shopping district ensues, complete with dramatic music to punctuate the “snack wars”, with the store owners and employees helping out the students since they give them their business. Unfortunately for Ataru, he’s force-fed a chili-filled okonomiyaki by Lum when she sees him flirting with a server.

The battle ends in a stalemate, and the episode moves on to Lum, Shinobu, Sakura, and Ran at a café, taking turns feeding the adorable Ten while Ataru stews outside. When talk turns to Sakura’s fiance, Ten space mail-orders a “Lovey-Dovey Crystal Ball” which tells each of the girls who they’re destined to marry. A lot of bombshells drop: Ran with…Ataru? Lum with…Rei? Sakura with…Ataru and Mendou??

The kicker is when Shinobu reveals that she saw Sakura’s fiancé. Then the three guys come in and much relationship rancor ensues, as no one is happy with the prospective husband they saw in the crystal ball (except for Ataru and Mendou, of course). Ten learns that the ball actually shows you your worst match you should avoid at all costs, but gets the real Lovey-Dovey Crystal Ball too late to stem the chaos the first ball wrought.

Hachi-nan tte, Sore wa Nai deshou! – 01 (First Impressions) – A Slight Improvement

In this suddenly wintry economic climate filled with the fear of viral transmission, the prospect of nodding off in front of your self-quarantine dinner and waking up in a completely different world…doesn’t sound so bad?

Our protagonist doesn’t live in Coronaland (the first anime to reference is probably a couple seasons off), so his is a more general ennui towards his meager lot in life. But when he wakes up at a sumptuous wedding banquet in the body of a five-year-old boy named Wendelin, he rightly presumes that lot has improved greatly.

Alas, the extravagant banquet was only to keep up appearances for the noble guests of his noble family. In reality, they’re dirt poor, sad little lords of a backwater knightdom. Their grand manor is falling apart, and the next meal he has is dry brown bread and soup that’s mostly just water.

Not only that, he’s not the third son of the lord of these lands, but the eighth, when factoring in two half-brothers. Meaning despite technically being nobility, nothing of the very little his family has will ever come Wendelin’s way. And yet, this is still probably a better deal than his salaryman existence.

That’s because in this world our protagonist has mana, which means he’s able to perform magic, something only one in a thousand people in this world can do. Yet after reading a very brief note on how to use a crystal ball to measure his mana, his father’s library doesn’t have any other material on harnessing that mana. More to the point, his Dad can’t even read!

He heads out into the woods to try to figure things out on his own, hastily drawing a magic circle, striking poses, and calling out names of spells to no avail. That’s when he’s approached by Alfred Rainford, a former court magician who sensed Wendelin’s mana and is confident he’s bound for great things.

When Alfred accidentally drops a boulder on a giant wild boar, he helps Wendelin summon his wind power and unleash it on the charging boar. It doesn’t do much, but it’s pretty good for a very first try, and Alfred takes care of the boar with a much stronger and more focused wind spell. Still, he thinks Wendelin will surpass him one day.

Sure enough, this episode begins ten years after the MC arrives in this world. He’s a cool cocky teenager wearing the same magician’s robes as Aldred, and having tea with no fewer than four pretty ladies (who mercifully don’t fight over him). I’m not quite sure such a flash-forward prologue was necessary, but I guess the show didn’t want to keep us in the dark about whether Wendelin would make it in this world.

The 8th Son? Are You Kidding Me? is…fine? It borrows elements from Youjo Senki, except that the MC becomes a boy rather than a girl and is in a Renaissance-era world rather than WWI steampunk. It has some decent moments of levity. What it lacks in originality it makes up for in its spirit of escapism. But even with Re:Zero 2 pushed to the Summer, this show is likely to be supplanted by better isekai anime airing later this Spring.