OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)
Rimiru encounters an arriving group of Tengus, among them Momiji, who is after Benimaru’s heart.
OUR OPINION
I guess we’re still going in circles with this whole festival thing and talking to a bunch of other parties to cement ties with other countries or something. As we finish the second third of the season, I can’t help but feel like the pacing and structure of both this story arc and the one before it really hurt it, but I can only hope that the remaining eight episodes can make up for that as things progress. Oh yeah, and we’ve got one more recap episode to go, something I thought we’d somehow managed to save ourselves from for the rest of it, but alas, we weren’t so lucky and will deal with that when the time comes. That doesn’t mean I can’t have fun every now and then, like in this episode, though. Having played through the first two seasons at such a breakneck pace, I admit that I didn’t really keep track of all the love dodecahedrons that undoubtedly cropped up for certain characters throughout the story, other than the fact that at least a few women (and men, including Diablo) are madly in love with Rimiru.
So, I’m actually quite glad that this episode focuses on Benimaru of all people, since he (and, frankly, many of the other supposed main cast members) tend to fade into the background until it’s time for a fight. I was similarly glad when Shuna got her own solo fight at the end of last season, because it gave her the spotlight for the first time in what feels like forever, and the same goes for what I hope will happen to Shion when we see her training the kids from last episode. With Benimaru, it seems to be because he himself has also built up quite a list of battle-hardened women who are pursuing him romantically, which understandably upsets him, especially when one of them is only fifteen. But there is at least a fun group discussion among those caught without virgins, which is quite a lot, although I really didn’t need another reminder of how completely bloated this show’s cast has become.
