English Dub Review: An Archdemon’s Dilemma: How to Love Your Elf Bride “When An Archdemon Offers You Anything, You’re Better Off Saying No”

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

After having a pleasant night together (just sleeping), Zagan is offered the chance to join a council of Archdemons as their thirteenth member, but he only chooses it if he can gain the property of Nephy’s previous master, specifically the key to her collar. After freeing her from it, he tells her he no longer needs her and seemingly abandons her forever.

OUR TAKE

Oh boy, we finish off the first third of the series with the first big hurdle for this couple! Honestly, I didn’t expect him to be able to get rid of the collar this soon, since I’ve seen and even covered other shows where a romance is forming between a male demon-related character and a female elf character with a slave collar, and the collar is something they definitely plan to get rid of at some point but is just kinda put on the back burner while other plot stuff goes on. I mean, yeah, it’s pretty morally reprehensible to keep someone in a slave collar, let alone if you plan to be romantically involved with that person, but anime has had morally icky romantic dynamics like that in the past, so I kinda thought nothing of it. But it’s a pleasant surprise that they seem to be getting it out of the way early on, it just looks like it’s also accompanied by a blindingly obvious fake out where we are meant to think that Zagan has actually let her go or thought she would leave or is doing this to protect her from his new power and resources and blah blah blah blah.

So, it seems pretty clear that next episode will be at least partially about Nephy finding the courage to go back to Zagan and tell him “hey, I actually like you genuinely as a person so I’m staying”. I’m sure it’s not the most conducive media analysis to just outright spoil the plot for next week’s story (or at least what I’m pretty sure it will be) but it’s the most prominent think on my mind about all of this. But that’s just about the romance part, which is admittedly a major part of the show overall, the other part of the episode is about how Zagan gains this new status as part of a council of Archdemons. Apparently he was not an Archdemon BEFORE this which makes the title of the show a bit confusing but maybe it was just referring to him getting to this point. I guess him being involved with this will gain him more power and influence, but also put him at odds with the Holy Knight characters he engaged with before. Basically, there’s a lot of interesting plot developments to come as we move into the next phase of this show’s plot!