Weirdly, Heion Sedai no Idaten-Tachi has delivered relatively smart demons.
Last week I wondered what the villains of Heion Sedai no Idaten-Tachi would try next given they seemed to be a little smarter than the standard Sailor Moon villain of the week and those that watched their comrade get slaughtered last week are not eager to be the next one fed to Rin. And honestly, what they ultimately did, while still somewhat flawed, was actually pretty smart.
Rather than sending yet more minions or fighters to take on Rin they choose instead to target the younger Idaten. Also, they figure out pretty quickly that the Idaten must have taken the killed demon’s body and the only reason to do so would be research and they narrow down which human city they would go to for that. On the one hand, it is a convenient excuse to get a fight going without the all powerful Rin in the picture leading to some tension that perhaps the kids might be in a bit of trouble, on the other hand its some fairly decent writing.
Which might of course have worked in the demon’s favour except that they weren’t alone. Ysley has taken them to meet Prontea, a character mentioned previously in Heion Sedai no Idaten-Tachi but with very limited actual appearances so far.
And Prontea turns out to be a pretty fun character. Unlike Rin who uses her power for pretty much physical strength, he’s been learning a few little tricks such as shooting fire and making explosions. Which, when you consider Ysley’s theory that Idaten’s bodies are shaped by their experiences, there really isn’t any reason to believe that Rin’s training method and skills are the only ones they could develop.
It opens up some exciting future possibilities for the characters of Heion Sedai no Idaten-Tachi. Particularly Paula who I suspect will never be particularly great at combat.
But as much as Prontea seems to have things together as we meet him winning a remote control car race and greeting the younger Idaten, just the mention of Rin’s name unravels his calm in a most spectacular way. It almost reminds me of the reaction of characters in Love, Chunibyou and Other Delusions when someone brought up their former delusions.
It made me wonder whether Hayato is just particularly thick skinned given his own reaction to Rin is much calmer than any of the other characters or whether Rin has somehow softened since her training with Prontea.
Though, despite his own trauma, Prontea pretty gleefully takes to a training session with Hayato that very quickly demonstrates the sheer gap in their power. I’ll be curious to see what Hayato takes away from that, though the training session is interrupted when the demons finally track them down.
Now, as much as I praised the demons earlier for not being completely stupid, their plan here to only send one demon for each of the younger Idaten, isn’t great. Firstly, because they don’t know that their aren’t other Idaten around (and in this case their certainly is). And secondly, just because they think they are stronger one-on-one, why not send two to one odds and ensure success?
All of this is of course delivered in Heion Sedai no Idaten-Tachi’s usual brightly coloured visual spectacular that almost borders on painful but somehow fits the story perfectly.
I will admit, I am super keen to find out how Ysley deals with his current predicament as he is separated from the others when the attack finally comes. It’s also kind of good that Prontea isn’t just going to fix the problem the way Rin did last week as he’s left one of the attackers to Paula and Hayato.
Still, this episode of Heion Sedai no Idaten Tachi ends with all the match ups finalised and then of course we are left waiting until next week to see how any of them play out.
All of this passed by nearly in a blink of an eye as I just find these episodes so engaging. There’s always a sense of moving forward, the visuals are bright and distracting and there’s enough characters that we can move around a bit but not so many that I’m feeling confused. Basically, MAPPA are just getting this anime right and it is so far pretty fun to watch.
Images from: Heion Sedai no Idaten-Tachi. Dir. S Kidokoro. MAPPA. 2021
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Karandi James