Nothing distracts a demon lord like an amusement park.
What They Say:
Lord En has been sent to the Human World by the Great Demon Lord to destroy humanity instead of Baby Beel, but before that he wants to experience all this world has to offer! Can Ishiyama Land survive a guest whose tears mean being bathed in a sea of fire?
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
The arrival of Lord En has certainly shaken things up a bit as it puts a focus back on the demon side and the actual, true and real reason Beel is there, which is to destroy humanity. It was certainly amusing to see their father lament that it hadn’t happened yet, which in turn had him sending En down there. Of course, En is the kind of guy that’s easily distracted as we’ve seen as games certainly entice him. So much so that he’s drawn into a game center and an amusement park and even starts to forget a little bit about the whole destroying humanity deal thing that he’s supposed to be working on.
After all that has happened, it’s amusing to see how well Aoi is handling everything and even Hilda comments on it to kind of reassure Oga a little. But they still have to get out and experience a bit of life and that means ending up at the same amusement park that everyone else is at. And when they do come across each other, it’s just not pretty since En is set off so easily. Beel himself has his moments, but he’s got a bit more restraint in some ways compared to En and isn’t quite so easily set off by everything. But having their encounter in an amusement park sets up for a lot of potentially bad situations, especially if the waterworks start going off as it could flood the whole place. But the maids are cute in that they know how to settle him down for the most part.
The first real challenge they have there though is priceless as they do a super, super high insane rollercoaster at En’s suggestion but once they get to the top and slow down, and the realization of it hits, he’s over the top in fear, panic and emotions that you really do want to see him absolutely explode. There’s a neat trick exercised with it which made me laugh quote a lot though as it’s definitely what these kinds of demons have to do in order to keep En relatively happy. Things kind of spiral in a few ways from there, but the show doesn’t really hold its momentum from the halfway mark and kind of sputters as one of the group goes missing and there’s some tension between the maids themselves after Hilda chastises them.
In Summary:
Beelzebub has some good moments here but it’s still trying to figure out what it wants to do with this particular arc. It has a plan in mind but it’s kind of wandering around a bit at this point rather than going forward with it. En’s not a bad character and he brings something different to the table, but there’s an unfocused feeling to all of it. And with this particular episode, it feels like the show is working through a gag that just went on too long and would have worked better at half the length. There’s some decent fun to be had but by and large I kept waiting for the really fun material to hit or something interesting to be dealt with when it comes to the characters.
Grade: C+
Streamed 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.
