Maou’s battles in the fast food business only get more epic with each passing day.
What They Say:
Insisting that Emi and Suzuno need an impartial third party to resolve their dispute, Rika goes with them to meet Maou. Meanwhile, Maou tries to handle the loss of business caused by the opening of a new restaurant. It’s a busy day at the local amusement park, with crowded restaurants, animals on the loose, scary ghosts, and a much-needed swimwear intervention.
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
For some reason FUNimation’s simulcast page never showed episode 9 as being available for me, so when I saw episode 10 there today, I just went to the show page and it was there. So as a result, this review will be a twofer.
Honestly, there’s not much to say about these two episodes, even combined. They’re mostly just the same stuff we’ve been getting from the previous eight episodes of the series, ending with a hint that the coming episodes will have something a little different for us. And that’s great. The plot rears its head for maybe one out of every few episodes in any significant capacity, and it’s all just the same silly sitcom business otherwise, but it continues to be so perfectly executed in every way, especially impressive in just how hilarious it always is, that nothing seems overdone yet. It’s the same format for the most part, sure, but every moment offers something a little different to keep it fun and fresh. It’s all so subtle and seemingly unimportant, especially in the face of any sort of plot, but the overall experience that this achieves is easy to appreciate after you finish a couple of episodes and realize how much fun it was.
Plot irrelevance aside, there is the occasional gag that doesn’t hit quite right. The joke of Chiho’s… endowments may be hit-or-miss, depending on one’s opinion of such humor. I generally think it’s not the most hilarious, and this doesn’t do much to change my opinion for this instance. The use of the burgers as symbols is similar to a lot of clever connections the show makes use of to add a little extra flavor to much of its humor, but it still didn’t quite work for me. Bathroom humor is also pretty dumb, and while the episode doesn’t go too far into it, with Ashiya simply being sick from overeating, it repeats itself past the point of getting funnier and falls a little flat as a result. Although it’s not entirely for comedy, the scene of Chiho following her “burger” display, in which she shows them off to Maou for his opinion, he acts completely clueless about her feelings, which contradicts with his previous statement that he’d take them seriously from now on. Of course, this is all going on in a busy line that he’s trying to get through as quickly as possible, so it’s really not the time. In fact, I would’ve almost expected this show to step up with some gag about the people in line telling them to have their lover’s squabble some other time and take their orders already, but instead they remain lifeless statues while this all goes down, and that’s a little disappointing.
Other than that, the comedy is pretty perfect all the way through. Unless you count Chiho’s brief failed attempt to get to Maou some more, there’s not much development on the romantic side, although Emi’s friend Rika amusingly loves to believe there is before being talked out of it by Ashiya and unexpectedly finding herself the lovesick one. Being much less of a major character than the rest, I wonder if she’ll be of much relevance after this point. If not, at least she was a fun character while she lasted.
And again, we get a look into the future of the probable final battle as the episodes close out, and the culprit is completely unsurprising considering his role in both the first of these two episodes and the one before them. Since we’ve already seen how this show handles these matters, I’m not too worried, and it may even be a nice change of pace to have some more really nice action and animation to check out in addition to the constant onslaught of excellent humor.
In Summary:
Even with two episodes this time, I don’t have much more to say about the show than what I already have. Neither does anything too different from the norm or makes any major developments, whether for the plot or the romantic angle. However, it’s still presented quite masterfully, and for the most part the humor continues to be as destructively hilarious for all the right reasons. There are some missteps for sure, and the somewhat serious side of the romance we had gotten to before is slightly undermined in favor of more comedy, but otherwise it’s still gold.
Grade: B+
Streamed By: FUNimation
Review Equipment:
Custom-Built PC, 27” 1080p HDTV.