Slower episode this week with lots of dialog. This series is all about having tons of different plot threads going at one time. This time, they have brought a lot of them together in one place; the school tournament. Everybody is interested in Kuzunoha for various reasons.

I almost feel bad for Princess Lily. She is a ruthless schemer, yes…but she has also been paired, through no fault of her own, with one of the worst humans alive, Tomoki. She has to somehow try to keep Tomoki happy and fighting for her while at the same time gathering military power to continue the war against demons. I think she demonstrates her practical way of thinking when she seems to abandon the idea of pursuing Kuzunoha further after Root’s warning, trusting that he is giving her a warning for her own good.

As for another power player that is present, I don’t remember how this exactly played out in the WN, but I got the feeling watching it now that Laurel gave up its pursuit of Kuzunoha too easily. He is clearly lying to them and they know it…but I guess they might not want to press the point and end up offending him. I am guessing that we won’t get into the Laurel arc of the story this season, but it would probably be a future season 3. This is kind of laying some of the initial groundwork.

Coming up, looks like we are going to dive into the tournament. I hope they don’t draw out the tournament too much, but if they really go hard with the animation it could be worth it. Time will tell!

My candidate screenshot this week is here (@rikka@ani.social):