The further the series goes on, the sadder I feel for Furuichi who has become the punching bag of the cast.
What They Say:
Baby Beel comes down with a fever, and Oga’s link to him and his never-ending shocking comes to an end. Hilda and Baby Beel disappear, and when Oga goes looking for them he finds Baby Beel stuck on Tojo’s back! The battle with the top of the Ishiyama TKKH is here!
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
The teaser at the start of the episode again puts Furuichi in a bad place and I can’t help but to laugh at the way he gets drawn into things with our friendly dimensional traveling demon. Every time he starts to make inroads, or even catches the eye of a woman, he shows up out of nowhere and either sucks him away from his vacation and fun or makes him generally inaccessible. This one has him showing up while Furuichi is getting some drinks. A simple enough thing, but he’s on a large sized bed, looking all come hither at Furuichi, which certainly makes the girls giggle and laugh about how it takes all kinds and how cute they are together. Furuichi was largely underused for awhile, but the last few episodes have really made him a whole lot of fun to watch.
This episode focuses around Beel a bit as he’s come down with quite a fever and all attempts to get him better have left him only feeling worse in a lot of ways. It’sdefinitely cute to see him suffering as he does and then showing off while still very flushed and not well. What proves that he’s not right is that the connection with Oga is weakened as the tattooed mark on Oga has disappeared, so the link is at the moment nonexistent. While that’s bad for Beel and potentially explains things with regards to the fever, it’s a big plus for Oga who can get away from the constant shockings and actually get out on his own some. While Hilda gives him some dirty looks, Oga is able to fake things well enough to show concern but there’s a real sense of worry on Hilda’s face about Beels condition.
Where the show gets surprising is when Beel and Hilda end up disappearing and they end up coming across Tojo again along the river only to see that Beel is on his shoulder. He’s still flushed and not well, but it’s not something that either Furuichi or Oga expected to see. While Oga is playing it as you’d expected, glad to see that he’s done with Beel, his face says so much more about it. He’s wanted to be free, but he’s gotten close to him as well and the two have had a lot of very good times together. Furuichi is the strange voice of reason in all of this, which only adds to the surreal nature of it, but he is the one looking at this in a realistic way by trying to figure out exactly what’s hanged to allow this to happen. You can’t imagine it being this easy for Beel to shift from one master to another, especially without a fight happening to prove who is stronger.
In Summary:
Beelzebub has some fun moments in this episode, a lot of them coming from Beel and Furuichi. Beel’s actions when he tries to prove he’s not sick are entirely too adorable and he plays it up well in a way that’s really strange to watch because of his constantly naked nature. Furuichi continues to grow on me with every new episode in how he’s being abused and frustrated by it which makes me smile a whole heck of a lot. The core of this episode involving Oga, Tojo and Beel has a slightly off nature to it though as it feels like it’s not entirely focused scripting, instead meandering rather than mving in a way that makes sense. It does lead to a rather good fight scene with lots of heavy black lines around the characters to give it a bigger feel and sense of power, but I’m really craving an all out fight with a lot of fun to it. We’ve gotten some decent ones, but Beelzebub is making me want something big.
Grade: B-
Simulcast By: Crunchyroll
Review Equipment:
Sony KDS-R70XBR2 70″ LCoS 1080P HDTV, Dell 10.1 Netbook via HDMI set to 1080p, Onkyo TX-SR605 Receiver and Panasonic SB-TP20S Multi-Channel Speaker System With 100-Watt Subwoofer.
