Oh, I’m SO glad that this show is going to be 24 episodes long. It really would not have worked at all with only 12 episodes. With this though, this show can actually build itself up well. This episode in particular would have been a waste of time for a short series (there is no way five episodes would be sufficient to wrap everything up right now!), but for a longer show it was a very good look at Shiemi and Izumo.
Also, in true shounen fashion, this episode introduced this series’ class and combat system. That’s not a bad thing, by the way. In fact, one of the things that I like about shounen series is their detailed looks into combat and superpowers. When done right it can make for a very interesting series. This episode for example: when the different powers were introduced they looked like a generic RPG system, and yet at the end of the episode the creators made me really interested in the summon class.
Oh, and this episode subverted the “useless female love interest”-trope. Yeah, she’s naive and all, but it’s good to see a token female who for once doesn’t want to be rescued all the time. I like the chemistry between her and Rin; despite their cliches they have this genuine charm to them.
So yeah, ideally you’d of course want every single episode of a series to kick ass, but as long as it pays off in the end I can understand the need for these school life episodes. I will bitch whenever they’re not interesting, though.
Rating: * (Good)
I wish they spawn scary demons like the one in the episode more often. It reminded me of Silent Hill XD
Game music!
School life episodes… my favorite part of Harry Potter is Hogwarts and the classes and forced interactions the characters incurred therein. This is no exception.
But let’s see Rin hook up with the eyebrow chick. That’d REALLY break the mold — so it won’t happen. 😉