English Dub Review: How Not to Summon a Demon Lord Ω “Corrupt Ritual”

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

Lumachina reveals to Batutta that the Death Knell disease is actually a curse, but it turns out to be one caused by Batutta with help from the Fallen to take down Fanis, the busty city leader. He then tries to corrupt Lumachina to make her create more of the curse, but she and Rem are saved by Diablo and the rest. Meanwhile Fanis is visited by a Fallen, Varakness, who is about to attack the city with his army.

OUR TAKE

Well, this arc is certainly continuing. I don’t really have and major issue or see anything particularly wrong with it beyond what you would come to expect from a show like this, but it’s certainly not playing to this show’s strengths as seen in the first season. We aren’t getting a ton from Diablo’s gamer perspective aside from the stray bit of info regarding how he knows about the curse, we aren’t getting anything that plays on his lack of confidence hiding behind his demon lord persona, neither Rem or Shera have any apparent personal connection to the things going on here, and all the new characters are pretty underwhelming at the moment. I don’t know if this has anything to do with this second season switching out studios and directors, but it really feels like a good amount of the flavor and polish from last time is not present here. So far, we’ve got two new harem additions, neither with much of distinct personality that adds to the group dynamic, and another Fallen invasion coming this mostly unremarkable new location. I wasn’t super duper hyped for more of this show, but I was certainly hoping for something better than this.

Then again, we’re only about a third of the way through. It could be that this arc takes up the entirety of these ten episodes and we’re only building up to bigger turns and twists to come. It would certainly be welcome, as Batutta was not a very compelling villain. We only got to know him for a little bit before he revealed himself and his evil for evil’s sake plan just falls flat. Shera’s brother’s incest mind control plot was squicky to say the least but it cut to the heart of the bonds between her, Rem, and Diablo, as well as leading to a pretty good big monster fight and an even better human sized fight. Krebskul’s revival gave us insight into the divided mindsets and loyalties within the Fallen race and also lead to a damn cool monster fight, even if the monster having giant boobs was weird and distracting and her smaller form probably put me on a watchlist. Point is, we’ve had pretty dang good payoffs for these arcs before, so we could be heading to something on that level by the end of this, but I may be giving this season a bit too much benefit of the doubt.