I drink and watch anime

The Devil is a Part-Timer! 2 Episode 12 – That’s That

Irina

I seriously almost forgot I was still watching this show. Forgetting about a show at the last episode is almost impressive. Admittedly, it’s a very busy period at work lately and I haven’t been getting all that much sleep so part of it is on me. Still, I would like to put some of the blame on the show as well. Mind you, I have at times watched shows I disliked so much I wished I could forget about them. So this is a step up from that. Silver linings!

For this last episode, I took notes and everything. Like a real blogger!

Let me just get this out of the way. Although all the characters suffer to some degree with inconsistent art, I have a feeling the animators just really dislike Emilia’s character. I mean look at this:

Who is that even supposed to be? Gabriel does look pretty derpy later on in the episode as well but Emilia is the main character of the season. Why is she always the one who ends up looking like an unlicensed carnival prize knock-off version of herself? And I’m not even comparing her to last season, where everyone looked better. I’m comparing her to herself in other scenes of the same episode. I was so distracted by it that I had to replay the start of the episode because I actually didn’t read any of the subtitles. I was just staring at Emi wondering what went wrong.

Once I got my ish together though, I did remember what was actually happening in this show and.. Ok let’s start at the beginning, the subway scene was good. It was just a second but Maou and Alciel very seriously saying they will set off for the other tower only to meekly get on a train was a great bit of classic comedy and the timing was spot on. I laughed at that. It was my favourite part of the episode.

Gabriel confronting Emilia left me a bit conflicted. This whole reveal that Emilia being the daughter of an Angel and a Human threatens heaven as it reveals that angels are much closer to men than one could believe. Well, I actually like that as a setup. It’s not a bad idea for a conflict. It creates reasonable motivation for the angels to want Emilia quietly disappeared and makes you wonder what else heaven is hiding. In another show, I could get behind this concept.

The problem is that in this show, there’s a citation needed. What I mean is that there is nothing in two seasons that would make us think humans would lose their awe of Angels just because they have biological affinities with humans. Most people from Ente know Emilia the Hero’s parentage and that hasn’t changed their devotion to heaven so what makes Gabriel think they would suddenly do a 180. As for the people of the earth, most of them don’t completely believe in angels already, if anything having tangible proof of their existence would boost their popularity. So Gabriel’s view doesn’t really fit into the world the show has created so far and we would need a lot more world-building to make it work.

Also, you’re introducing a new conflict halfway through the last episode… It’s kinda meaningless. And it was, nothing happened of it this episode. Then he told Emilia her dad is alive and for some reason that bummed her out. Fortunately, the episode took a break in the middle of the action to have Alas be Alas and it cheered Emilia right up but bummed me out. Can’t please everyone.

Meanwhile, Satan and Alciel meet up with new villain Raguel who turned out to be nothing. He really did nothing all episodes. On the other hand, Gabriel who has been beaten many times during the season was handily managing to outdo both powered-up Satan, Alciel and Emilia together, but the possessed Chio showed up and the antagonists just left. Oh yeah, people can get possessed by angels now it seems. Because I say so!

All and all, an lt of things felt out of the blue in this episode. Like they were making it up as they went along. At least to me. And that’s not great for the last episode. I mean it’s never the best but in early episodes, it can be set up that going to make sense later and get fleshed out. When you’re 12 episodes in though, it’s a bad sign. And of course, some of it is simply because I stopped enjoying the show a while back so I,m probably not the best audience for it but I think some of it was objectively disjointed writing and bad pacing.

A season 3 has been announced. From the key visuals, it seems they’re keeping the new art style and there’s going to be a teenage Alas Ramus. I don’t know if I’ll be watching it. I’m leaning towards no but a little part of me wants to find out where it’s all going.

Previous Posts

Exit mobile version