Mercuri

Seems universally agreed that the animation this episode was tragic. Like, forget the dragon mouth flapping like it's a wind-up toy, they didn't even bother to spend more than 10 minutes drawing it here:

Almost all the Dragon's movements were super janky. The special effects helped bandage the situation but definitely were not enough. Still I imagine it's an issue with the medium moving from LN to animation and the studio just not being able to handle anything more grandiose with the time and budget they had.

Marcus's last words were appreciably pathetic. "You're going to do the same evil thing you got mad at me for?" "Duh, I'm the Demon Lord." The moments of reflection with Machina at the end were descent enough. The love confession didn't even feel forced!

One thing I did really enjoy this episode though was the audio production. The music is great. And the epilogue during the credits felt REALLY good all-around. Makes me interested to see where they go now that Marcus is defeated.

Oh fun, we get to see the race's conclusion! All the racing finishes up after about 8-1/2 minutes. It feels a little quick given the pacing of the last few episodes but it was still very satisfying.

I expected Kanata to get 4th. There wasn't much plot about which girl he was going to pick and without that you knew it wouldn't come up. Still with all the drama they added you really didn't know which way his battle with the Ferrari would go until the very end.

Aiba's battle with Yudai reminded me of an old episode of Initial D where a racer drops behind Takahashi's RX7 because he chickened out from racing side-by-side.

The race "epilogue" was fun to watch as well. All the girls clamoring for Kanata was great. So there's Ren, Mami, and Nozomi all vying for Kanata. And that's just the ones in the immediate MFG sphere. Here's Mami not-so-subtlety showing her butt to Kanata.

@rikka@ani.social

Too bad Kanata's pockets are near useless for keeping girl's socials. Aiba getting mad that #7 kissed Sawatori was very in-character. Sawatori's aloof nature handled that exchange expertly. Aiba's expression was priceless. "What do you mean she's a highschooler?!"

I knew Ogata was going to suggest switching cars after he talked about wanting to see Kanata in a better car in an earlier episode. But I also know the whole premise of the show is "underpowered car goes fast!" so Kanata was not going to have it. Sounds like they're going to Turbo it up to 300HP so it'll still be "underpowered", which makes sense. To get to 400-500HP you'd need a very large turbo with a long spool-up time and that's not optimal for MFG races. Huh, this sounds almost exactly like a plot-line from Initial D!

We finally get to see the GR Supra rival now! It's going to be a clash of Toyotas.

Oh man, what a cool action episode. It's explodes right off the bat with Sunraku vs Rust which has the entire Nephilim Hollow community going wild.

@rikka@ani.social

Sunraku understandably loses. After all, he hasn't played this game in months and was fighting the #1 undefeated ranker! Rust is pissed at Sunraku for losing and we get some more of Rust's backstory. Seems she's on a quest for someone to reach her level. She wants a real rival, and I get the impression she was thinking of quitting the game right before Sunraku came back. Sunraku, the only person ever to come close to beating her. Rust really becomes a full-fledged character instead of some background NPC. Who knows, maybe Rust will end up playing SLF too!

Anyway, Sunraku tells Rust to give him a day to shake off the cobwebs and build a new Crimson Twinblade killing mecha. And of course Sunraku builds something completely ridiculous by the standards of the current meta. And it seems to work!

We were kind of spoiled this episode. We got two good fights, although the second one hasn't quite reached its conclusion. Twinblade seems like it's still capable of fighting and Rust doesn't seem like the type of person that would give up just because they lost an arm. Also, we've yet to figure out the full secret to Sunraku's sneak attack, and that one scissor claw can't be the only weapon Crab mecha has!

On a side note, I was really impressed with the animation this episode. The mecha movements felt very fluid, the background city was detailed enough to feel like background without being distracting, and the overall feel resonated "This is a video game" in my mind. I could even imagine it running on a different game engine than SLF. Just a lot of great nuances and artistic direction to really nail the look and feel of a video game.

During that whole planning sequence, everyone seems to have forgotten about Gluttony.

Gluttony eating his own name so they forget he exists.... clearly XD

Wow, you REALLY have to turn your brain off for this episode and just enjoy the mayhem.

"We won't fail" "Oh no, we failed!"

The fact that Jun's Brother seems to expect Ordela to go out of control makes me a LITTLE bit hopefully for some semblance of plot forming in the next episodes.

Some of the jokes were silly but enjoyable. Hikaru basically asking the bad guy to wait. Doc Glasses being slightly less useless. We even get more of the Chunibyo with a Chaingun! But the fights are the real reason this show exists at all.

How nice of Ordela to stop rampaging for all this other stuff to happen though, right?

I don't know what you're talking about. I'm still a super young and fresh 90s kid... cries in middle-aged

Oh yeah, Sasaki and Peeps was good. Definitely enjoyed that series.

I love this series! I've convinced so many people to watch it. It's just so good! And when Maomao goes cat mode... just perfection.

Giving me Ossan Newbie Adventurer vibes. Or my Daughter Left the Nest and returned an S rank adventurer. Will have to check it out.

Wow, what an episode. It feels like nothing happens and yet SO MUCH happens at the same time. A lot planning and setup and yet there's still a lot going on. Subaru seemingly absorbs the dragon blood from Crusch.

Dragon blood is crazy stuff. It's interesting that Subaru seems to have an affinity for it as it actually seems to benefit him but cripples Crusch. I'm guessing it has something to do with Subaru's Witch Factor.

Wilhelm reveals the identity of the two sword cultists, one of which is his deceased wife! Otto proving once again why he's best man. And lets not forget Priscilla joins the team!

Reinhard casually getting a new divine protection on demand was funny. And last but not least, we get confirmation that Liliana has a divine protection.

The final moments of this episode are perfect too. Emilia confronting Greed really shows how much she's grown. I can't imagine pre-Sanctuary Emilia doing that. Finally, Subaru and Reinhard bust in with the stereotypical wedding objection. I bet Subaru had always wanted to do that.

@rikka@ani.social

However, if that was the case, wouldn’t it have influenced Duke and the handful of others that don’t seem affected by it by now?

Right? We've seen Henry get broken out of it. Maybe Alicia has some kind of cheat skill too since she's a reincarnation.

The confrontations with Liz are going to be epic. And yes, that push to Ms. Freckles so Alicia could whisper to Liz... amazing.

ALICIA IS BACK! And the first thing she does is give her eye away. Guess she really wants a reason to wear that eyepatch. And boy does it make her look like such a villainess

@rikka@ani.social

Still, I found it weird that she gave it away basically for nothing. That wasn't very villainessy of her. We get confirmation that her magic is now at least at level 91, since she needed that level of magic to give away her eye. Whether or not her magic is at 100 or not remains to be seen. I still think it's possible she went straight to 100, but considering she was so excited about giving her eye away she did it immediately after leaving the cottage I have my doubts now.

And the confrontation with Liz. That was so fierce!

This exchange seems a bit more straightforward in answering some lingering questions. It appears that Liz doesn't have knowledge of the game. Rather, she is aware that no matter what she does things always work out for her. She basically has plot armor as the protagonist. It could be that her brainwashing is just a side-effect of this phenomena and she's completely unaware she's even doing it. If that's the case, it makes me wonder how Alicia is able to counteract it. I do love how Alicia basically reprimands Liz for not trying to min-max her cheat ability.

Prince Duke shows up to be creepy again. Yes Duke, tell the girl you've been watching her constantly without her knowledge.

But in a surprise twist, Alicia screws up. She ends up chastising Duke and pushing him away. Wait, isn't that a perfectly normal thing to do when someone basically admits to stalking you? Well, considering that Alicia internally says she didn't want to say those things, it makes me wonder if the game phenomenon isn't trying to force Alicia back towards her intended path. Or maybe she was just caught off-guard and genuinely screwed up since she wasn't expecting Duke to be angry with her.

At the very end we finally get a good look at Mel

This is the glimpse we got of Mel last week:

Considering that Duke tasks her with finding out the secrets of Liz's ability to brainwash people, how she seems to talk in an omnipresent voice to Duke, and how Mel calls Alicia a "villainess," I'm guessing she's some kind of supernatural entity. She might even have some insight to the workings of the game.

Just wow, what a lot to unpack this episode.