Tsukimichi: Moonlit Fantasy – S2 18 – Time to Make an Impression

After seeing to the safety of the nobles, Tomoe and Root have an interesting conversation, dragon-to-dragon. Dragons seem to be the most informed in this world, to the point Tomoe reports to Root that at this point Kuzunoha is approaching the peak of his potential, and need only choose his role in this world. Upon learning even he wouldn’t be a match against him, Root internally considers that Kuzunoha could one day defeat the Goddess herself.

After that macro, high-level conversation, we return to the nitty-gritty of the city-wide chaos. Even though his students are still riled up by the battle, having killed their first fellow hyuman, Makoto insists they evacuate to a safe location. Powerful they may be, they’re still students, and they’re under no obligation to fight the mutant monsters. Shiki heals Abelia, and he and Mio take the students to a safe location.

Unburdened by dependents, Makoto explores the city, where dozens of monsters are running rampant. His shop has been reduced to a pile of rubble, and while it while emptied of any merchandise (even the sign was taken down), it’s still an emotional blow. He’ll simply have to rebuild. The screams of women lead him to a brothel, where he meets and rescues the former adventurer Estelle and her co-workers (also regular Kuzunoha customers) from a monster, earning her gratitude and friendship.

After seeing the kids to safety, Mio splits off from Shiki to take care of unfinished business: specifically, she alone can sense that Ilumgand, or what’s left of him, isn’t quite dead yet. He’s an unsightly blob of flesh with eyes and a mouth, and retains most of his memories, but all of his anger and bloodlust has evaporated. Even so, Mio cannot forgive him for what he did to her master, and settles on taking his life for amends. She also assumes the Hero Hibiki Ilum idolized isn’t the same Hibiki she met and befriended.

That night in the slums where an evacuation center has been set up, Makoto’s underlings give their reports. Other nations are headed this way to eliminate the monsters and offer relief, so the time for the Kuzunoha organization to distinguish itself and gain indelible renown is now. They are right in the thick of it, but while Makoto is confident they can deal with this crisis, the demons’ specific motivations and ultimate goal eludes him.

In his capacity as temporary instructor, Makoto is reamed out by the headmaster for not doing enough, but both Sairitsu and Princess Lily plead for him to cease his reprimands out of respect for them. Lily informs Makoto that the Hero of Gritonia is on his way. For now, Makoto is ordered to deal with the mutants in the northeastern district, which happens to be where the merchant’s guild is headquartered. It’s time to make himself indispensable to the elites of the academy city.

Tsukimichi: Moonlit Fantasy – S2 17 – Making Lemonade

When Ilumgand goes berserk, transforms into a giant monster and eats his teammates, the battle between him and Makoto’s students would normally happen immediately. But thanks to a little creative license, it’s placed “on hold” so that Makoto can fully assess the situation and his options.

Fifty other monsters have turned up around the city, making this a full-blown crisis. While Mio thinks this is a perfect opportunity for some of their commercial and political rivals to be culled, Tomoe suggest they take the high road and serve as heroes of the city, earning the gratitude of many important figures.

All those figures happen to be in one place: in the royal box of the arena, essentially trapped. They include Limia’s king and prince (who is actually a princess in disguise as Makoto learns); the king’s right-hand man and Ilumgand’s father; Princess Lily, Root (AKA False), Sairitsu of Laurel, and the biship of the temple.

Makoto comes to the box with Tomoe and announces his intention to help. Tomoe uses her penchant for showmanship to explain that her magic sword enables her to transport everyone to safety. Root gives them an assist by serving as a guinea pig, and everyone but the king, prince, Ilum’s dad, and Makoto teleport away.

Makoto teleports the king closer to Ilum so that he and Ilum’s dad can try to talk sense into the monster, to no avail. When a monster from the city shows up, Makoto dispatches it with non-elemental magic, saving the prince without revealing his mana matter.

Down in the arena, Mio and Shiki issue instructions and encouragement to the students, who have their real weapons back. It’s a tough battle, but Abelia distinguishes herself by asking Sif to enchant her arrows with her explosion magic.

Abelia flies up in to the air in order to aim the fire arrow at the monster’s head, and while she is wounded by the monster tossing its severed hand at her like a Frisbee, she holds her “ground” in mid-air and maintains her aim, knowing her comrades are all with her down below.

Her arrow finds its target and blasts the monster that was Ilumgand to smithereens. She falls to the ground, but she’s soon surrounded by her friends. It’s such a lovely moment I doubt even a perpetual hyuman skeptic like Mio wouldn’t be touched.

Ilum would appear to be dead, but Shiki did mention that restoring him isn’t impossible, just extremely difficult. That leaves open the possibility he’ll be back. Meanwhile, Makoto has surely gained the favor of those Tomoe safely evacuated. Makoto also made a deal with Eva and Luria to retake their homeland of Kaleneon. We’ll see how Makoto and his pals deal with the other monsters roaming the city.

Tsukimichi: Moonlit Fantasy – S2 16 – Dirty Tricks

While visiting Luria’s land of Aensland in Kaleneon, a young Ilumgard Hopleys makes a promise to fight with her someday. Here, in the present, he’s using real weaponry, heavy plate armor, magical medicine, and some kind of mysterious amulet. The fix is in, so the ref allows all this as Jin, Yuno, and Izumo are the three of Makoto’s students to win rock-paper-scissors and fight in the team final.

Ilum also trained with and befriended Hibiki, which makes sense as he’s part of the nobility of Limia and as Limia’s Hero, she is the personification of his ideals. But when fate brings Ilum and Luria back together in Rotsgard, his attempt to reconnect is ruined when his toadies castigate her for abandoning her lands to invasion, and then Kuzunoha intervenes.

It’s interesting watching this scene unfold from Ilum’s perspective, because it fills in a lot of blanks about his character, who had kinda been floating on the periphery. If it wasn’t for the OP and ED, I’d probably think he was just some background character.

I also had no doubt that even with everything stacked against them, Jin, Yuno, and Izumo would have no problem dispatching Ilum and his team of nobodies with ease and style. This may be deadly serious business for Ilum, but they’re just having a fun time showing their teacher how much they’ve progressed under his tutelage.

Ilum hates Kuzunoha, and blames him both for his inability to reconcile properly with Luria and prevent him from fulfilling his promise to Hibiki. While I can’t speak to the perceptive qualities of demons in this show, I can say with relaive confidence that Rona had been watching this guy closely as a candidate for treachery. She supplied him with ability enhancing drugs, and gave him an amulet she claimed boosts magical resistance.

I’ll refer to Frieren’s rules about demons, which is that every single word they say is meant to deceive humans. Rona may not be a Frieren demon, but she’s just as crafty and duplicitous. Just like Zara did in the merchant’s arena, Rona would seem to have exploited Makoto’s naïveté.

He thought he could form an alliance with the demons, but there’s every indication that alliance would only last as long as Rona needed it to to achieve her goals, which have something to do with the amulet mutating Ilum into, well, I dunno … some kind of hyuman-demon hybrid boss that threatens all of Rotsgard?

Makoto had it all planned out: After congratulating his victorious students, he’d shove off to Kaleneon to help Eva and Luria win back their lands. He, in turn, would be able to run his trading company outside the guild’s jurisdiction. That’s all on hold now that there’s the more immediate threat of Demon Ilum.

Tsukimichi: Moonlit Fantasy – S2 10 – Saved by Bananas

As Makoto prepares to wrap up the investigation of the Organization experimenting on demihumans, Shiki, Eris, Aqua express their dislike and distrust of Rona. During a one-on-one lunch, Rona warns Makoto about Shiki, Eris, and Aqua, as she once fought both with and against the lich and doesn’t know Makoto knows full well that they’re forest ogres.

Rona has fulfilled her mission in Rotsgard, so she’s headed back to the Demon’s Army. However, she gives Makoto what amounts to her LINE ID, so he can contact her telepathically should he ever require her aid. Always good to have one of the Demon Lord’s top generals!

After dealing with Professor Bright personally (and admitting he and the Org at least see eye-to-eye on the Goddess sucking), he continues teaching lessons to his students, now missing “Karen Force” but gaining the Rembrandt sisters.

Not only do they take every ass-kicking in stride, but they come to Makoto with a united voice, asking if he can keep teaching him during summer break. He agrees to weekly lessons after Shiki fails to make up a scheduling conflict, but insists the sisters return home for the second half of the break.

Just when the seven students, who through their trials-by-fire have become quite a tight-knit and cohesive group of friends, think they have a strategy to defeat the Blue Lizard, Makoto makes them fight two of them, albeit separately.

When the second lizard Zwei is called a jerk, she unleashes a can of extra whoop-ass on the kids, and Makoto apologizes, telling them that she’s a female and didn’t take kindly to the insult. The kids regroup and ask if they can go one more round.

After their training, Makoto takes the students out to dinner, and Shiki informs him he’s told them about the place where they can fight monsters and efficiently level up (they’re all members of the Adventurer’s Guild after all). But Makoto is still worried that they might face dangers if he’s not always present.

His solution, since he’s got ample bananas (for now), is to have Eris keep an eye on them on their training camp. When they pick a fight with a demi-dragon for whom they’re all twenty levels too weak (they’re all in the 70s), Eris traps it in roots and tosses it into the lake, deeply impressing and inspiring the bright-eyed novices. It is indeed going to be a summer to remember for all of them.

Tsukimichi: Moonlit Fantasy – S2 08 – New Students

Makoto leaves the Demiplane to head back to Rotsgard, and while Tomoe is eager to determine the precise ways mist gates have affected the weather, Mio is simply sad to see the Young Master leave again so soon. But teachers have class, and he’s got three new students: Sif and Yuno Rembrandt, who he saved last season with judo and ambrosia, and the more mysterious Karen Force.

He has one of his blue lizardman friends fight his existing students (urging him not to use his breath and fight at no more than 20 percent), and they get trampled, but surely learn valuable lessons through their failure. Meantime, he has the three new students come at him at once with everything they’ve got, instructing them to adjust their tactics on the fly.

After the battles, the existing students are surprised the infamous Rembrandt sisters are so … nice. Makoto is more concerned with Karen Force, and takes her aside after class to learn more. Because she’s far more powerful than the real Karen should be, he suspects, and is quite correct, that she’s an imposter. Shiki confirms she’s actually Rona, a general in the Demon’s Army who specializes in … seduction.

Naturally, neither her magical nor feminine charms have much effect on our young heartbreaker, who is already more than neck-deep in lovely ladies to whom he doesn’t give the time of day. Over lunch, he makes it clear he and Shiki are netural and have no immediate quarrel with Karen/Rona as long as she doesn’t disrupt his business. Karen, in turn, tells him the purpose of her disguise: she’s investigating rumors of demi-human trafficking in Rotsgard.

Makoto pays the Rembrandt sisters a visit at their palatial dorm, and they receive him in lovely Renaissance-style dresses bearing their family crest. They express their heartfelt gratitude for him saving them, but he assures them he didn’t free them from their curses so they could live their lives indebted to him. Like his other students, he has high hopes for them.

After bribing the ogres with bananas, Eris and Aqua are all too eager to assist Lime Latte, now Tomoe’s spy and apprentice, in the investigation Karen/Rona mentioned. We later see Lime taking the initiative, roughing up people until he finds signs of trafficking on a still under-construction part of the academy. There, he puts his sword to the throat of someone wearing instructor’s robes. Looks like the darker corners of the academy are as rotten as Mio’s potatoes.