Escalating conflicts against bondage-suit wearing nuns. More vengeance for a survivor of an abandoned experiment. Our main character waking up with two girls naked in his room. And all of this in one ep.
Honestly,most of this ep is mainly just building up on the issues brought out in ep 1. Kiba stays away from the group while Issei starts pondering his thoughts on the girls. We learn specific details of Kiba’s past and that there are several Holy Swords called Excalibur(the real one was destroyed, with it’s remnants being used to build the Holy Swords). Apparently several have been stolen by the Fallen Angels, and the two nuns from ep 1 are put in charge of getting them back. They prepare a truce with the devils to leave the fallen angels to them, but then they provoke Asia and her change to a devil, which gets Issei and Kiba ready to fight.
Even if the focus of the story is meant to be Kiba, much of this ep focused on Issei. Sure we learn about Kiba losing all his friends during the Holy Sword Experiment and how it’s very similar to Asia’s demise before becoming a devil. And yes, there’s a bit of Asia’s ordeal mentioned too, when the nuns call her a witch for betraying the saintly bonds with god.
But since Kiba only shows up in the beginning and end of this ep, most of what we see is background info by Rias(in a Sauna) and general thoughts by Issei. What’s the good point about this? Well it actually makes two memorable scenes in this ep. Well, other than some funny lines from Ddraig and an awkward renuinion with Irina the nun(childhood friend that WASN’T with the harem lead early on).
First is after Issei wakes up with both Asia and Rias in his bedroom. Despite him fully admitting that he’d love to just get them down on the bed and get dirty, he does a rare thing that I haven’t seen happen with alot of characters like him: he ponders on the consequences. He knows that getting it on with one will inevitably anger the other, and desperately keeps his urges in control(though this does bring the question why he doesn’t just get both; they seem fine with sharing his arms as pillows; maybe they can share something else?) 🙂
The second goes back to when Asia was being proclaimed a witch. We know how hot-headed Issei is from previous ep, but him rushing in front of Asia isn’t what’s surprising. What’s surprising is when Xenovia asks him “What are you to Asia Argento?”. If you’ve seen as much harems as I have, then you know just how many harem characters have no answer for this question whatsoever. But Issei, on the other hand, fully proclaims how important she is without losing a sweat, saying he’d face all of them if they did anything to her. That brazen honesty is a trait you almost never get in the harem genre.
I honestly think that they should’ve given a bit more focus on Kiba if this is meant to be his story. We get a good idea of how his past has been, but it still feels like we need to see more through his eyes to fully empathize with him. But that’s ok, since this ep proved that Issei is one of the few harem leads that fully deserves his ladies, even if his mind is mostly in the gutter.
Brave New Moe 