Alright! Falin’s back! Mission accomplished! Everybody lived happily ever after, right? Right???

One of the things I find interesting about how this season has played out is that this episode feels like a pretty satisfying conclusion. If this was a typical 12-episode single-cour anime, this would feel like a perfectly natural point to end the season. It would have given the casual viewer a relatively satisfying conclusion and the more interested viewer with some really interesting plot hooks to move some manga sales. I don’t really know if I have a point with this, but just found it was interesting how neatly the story lined up with a typical seasonal anime’s pace. In any case, we are going to dive straight into part 2 next week. I will be sad to see one of my favorite EDs disappear, but alas…

Welp, now that we have Falin back, there is something different about her… There are two things that I think are pretty non-typical about Falin’s resurrection:

1. The “Dark Magic” ritual that Marcille uses
2. The flesh used for the ritual came from a dungeon monster rather than livestock that is typically used

I suspect that both of these are going to be important in unraveling what is different about her (I don’t have much to speculate about #1 yet). We have had a couple breadcrumbs already about how magic flows and works in a dungeon, a topic that Falin was an expert in per the school flashback. I suspect that her new proficiency with magic like not needing to chant, is due to her body having been constructed from dungeon monster meat. This also ties into the whole cooking conceit of the show. A recurring theme this whole time is how novel and unusual it is to consume monster meat. Now, Falin has taken this to the next level by having a body constructed using monster meat, perhaps letting her channel the magic in the dungeon much easier.

The other side of this coin, I suspect, was hinted at this episode. When they were preparing the ritual, Laios asked about whether the ritual would revive the monsters as well and Marcy helpfully explains that monsters aren’t cursed in the same way humans are, so they can’t/won’t be revived. I am guessing now that Falin is made from monster stuff, that her soul might not be bound to her body in the same way it was before.

Finally, I am curious where the gang goes from here. Do they actually backtrack their whole way through the dungeon to the surface? Do they go hang with the orcs again? Maybe help Senshi be the janitor of that other floor for a while? Not sure what the plan is going forward, but I am sure we will find out next week.