How Not to Summon a Demon Lord Ω Ep 2

Hi everyone, Karandi here, and Irina and I are back reviewing How Not To Summon a Demon Lord Ω Episode 2. I’ll be red and bold and Irina will be blue and… not bold? Anyway, if you missed our review of episode one, be sure to hop over to Irina’s blog and check out the post: How Not to Summon a Demon Lord Ω Ep 1 – God and Demon Lord. This week Irina got the jump on me with watching the episode so she’ll kick us off.

This week’s actually Karandi’s turn to host but I figured I would get the ball rolling as I seemed to have gotten here first. Man, I hope we’re not both writing an outline at the same time. We live on opposite sides of the world guys, coordination can get tricky!

In any case, we are all here to talk about episode 2 of How Not to Summon a Demon Lord season 2. And I have a feeling this might be a bit of a challenge because this episode was all over the place on just about every level.

Demon Lord S2 Ep2 1 — *^{Part of me wishes we’d gotten to see the journey.}*

Coordination is a little bit tricky sometimes and I often have to remember when posting that most of my readers are on the other side of the planet. My blog’s busiest time is 4am my time which isn’t exactly favourable for conversations (plus new episodes tend to come out while I’m sleeping and then I have to find some time either before work to watch them or wait until I’m done for the day). Anyway, I’m going to agree that this episode was literally all over the place and while I finished it feeling mostly positive even if there were a few eye-brow raising moments.

First let me just say, I was wrong last week. The art definitely took a hit this season. I know Karandi never thought the show was much to look at but I always found the character designs really nice. There were a couple of scenes this week where they looked pretty rough. You still get some good close-ups but the consistency ain’t what it used to be.

Demon Lord S2 Ep2 6 — *^{Shiny but not particularly detailed.}*

Oh yes. The art. I would never have said season one looked great but there were a few scenes this week that really looked… well not bad but certainly not polished. I particularly noticed it during the various bits of action or magic in the episode but really the only part of this episode that looked reasonable was the fan-service ending in the tub with Diablo and Shera.

I’m not going to go over the plot of this week’s episode. If Karandi wants to try, I wish her the best!

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It’s not like it didn’t make any sense really. It’s just that events seemed kind of strewn together with no real connective tissue. Not that How Not to Summon a Demon Lord was going to be a masterpiece but I seem to remember it being a touch more coherent and just more fun.

I feel part of the problem here is they are really trying to establish this new story arc and they are cramming a lot of character introductions as well as world building into this episode. We’ve changed locations, got new factions involved as well as a brief attempt to introduce the new cute girl that looks like she’ll be hanging around. All of this made the episode feel really crammed and as you said, it is really just kind of throwing bits at us so that we get the basic lay of the land but it isn’t done in a particularly cohesive way and the end result is the episode doesn’t flow.

Demon Lord S2 Ep2 7 — *^{You do that… even though the audience had no clue what that meant until you did it.}*

Don’t get me wrong though, I think there’s potential in this set up. We’ve got the church structure to unpack and figure out where the corruption is and how this can be fixed with all the layers of power within it, we’ve got the town lord who is going to be a right pain in the neck based on her intro, and there’s also the side-plot of Diablo wanting to explore his dungeon and the new cute girl conveniently offered to guide him there. So much that can be done with this but basically this episode rushed to dump all the ground work so that they can move on and it is really kind of lazy. The assumption is we’re into this show enough to just deal with it (and unfortunately they are kind of right).

This second episode wasn’t bad. But it wasn’t great either. At least in my opinion. Once again we got introduced to an antagonist that felt rather flat. Better than the last though. And the OP sort of spoiled how things are going to go with her.

The church seems to show a bit more promise since there is some complexity there.

Demon Lord S2 Ep2 4 — *^{Another church goon with little to offer except being an antagonist.}*

My fingers are crossed that one of the people in the church has some nuance because so far they haven’t really impressed as antagonists but there’s potential. I kind of feel that may end up being my word for the season here. There was potential.

Talking about the OP though, I absolutely loved it. That and the ED. Both are really just fun to listen to.

I just finished the episode so it’s hard to put aside that bathtub scene. But I don’t actually have anything to say about it either.

I have noticed that Rem and Shera don’t seem to have been reduced to boob rack and the other one so far this season. I think that’s a shame. I quite like both the characters, especially Shera. And although she was always a fanservice character her soft and yet surprisingly sturdy personality made her a lot more fun to watch. At least for me.