How Not To Summon A Demon Lord

I don’t know that I really had any expectations left going into this final episode. Do I suppose this season was called omega because they weren’t planning another? Though the end of this episode seemed to indicate the adventures continue. Anyway, I’m a little stuck with how to talk about this given the fight seemed to descend into lots of coloured lights and shouting with a miracle light thrown in. Anyway, how are you doing Irina?

I’m doing good. I hate to say but I am a little happy I get to spend my Thursday evenings doing something other than watching How Not To Summon a Demon Lord Ω. I don’t want to get too down on the show, it was by no means the worst thing I have ever seen but I wanted it to be better. I’m having a Tyra Banks moment. 

I was rooting for you! We were all rooting for you!

I’m not going to say this episode was actually bad, because realistically it is on par with everything that came before it this season. It also more or less rounded out the adventure of Diablo helping Lumachima and restoring the church so even though the villain never got any kind of presence or a sense that he even mattered as anything more than an excuse for a fight sequence and Lumachima’s growth, while specifically mentioned by the characters, seems pretty minimal (though at least she’s acknowledging not everyone is sweet and honest now) the story did get resolved. 

We got closure. That’s something. There’s tons of blatantly abandoned plot threads just lying around and it seems as they started the main plot in episode 7 of a 10 episode season so structurally it’s not the best, but at the same time lost of shows just don’t get any proper conclusion so I’ll give it that. 

It’s too bad that it wasn’t all that interesting. 

And honestly, I’m not sure what could have made it better when I wasn’t invested in the fight with Vishos and Lumachima hasn’t exactly won me over either. Horn all but disappeared from the story until the end where she suddenly decides to leave the party (probably because whoever wrote her character realised she was just clutter) and Rem and Shera both get very tokenistic one off moments just to pretend like those characters still matter.

It feels like Diablo has outgrown his support cast from season one and could have gone on this journey with Lumachima and that could have been an interesting story, but the writer was unwilling to cast off the other characters and instead they get dragged along through a plot they serve no purpose in.

Then again, it isn’t as though newly introduced characters fare any better. Rose and Horn are both very much introduced, left kind of floating around outside of some poor fan-service and humour and ultimately got pushed out of the way of the finale. Rose gets even less spotlight than Horn did last week. At least Horn got half-an-episode before they were unceremoniously cut down in order for Diablo to feel the need to avenge them. Rose got about two lines of dialogue and then was broken to pieces in a single hit.

And that red head pseudo antagonist that has a fairly good presence in the OP didn’t even have a part. She ended up a non character even though the early season was building her up as if she was one of the main supporting cast. It’s odd how much time How Not To Summon a Demon Lord Ω wasted on setting up events that either never happened or ended trivial and introducing characters that had no real bearing. 

When you consider this was a 10 episode season, if you take out all the meandering elements they ended up not really using, you sort of end up with a 3 to 5 episode season. And maybe that’s what they should have gone for. I understand that these are based on light novels and that most of the season did take place in the source material. But this is where it becomes clear that you have the make sure stories like this still work in adaptation. And to be blunt, I’m not so sure it worked in the light novel either. Although I suspect the ecchi scenes were more exciting and engaging when you get to use your imagination a bit more.

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About the only other thing I really noticed was how long the ‘epilogue’ seemed to go. The fight is over, they part ways with Lumachima and then we just keep going. It was like the anime had to remind us of every person Diablo had crossed paths with while trying to set up some new adventure the core group would go on even while I was mostly just happy the season was done. Anyway, by the time we finally got through the end credits it felt like this episode was much longer than twenty minutes.

Am I the only one that completely loses interest in harems the minute marriage (or some fantasy marriage analogy) comes into the picture. This probably says something about me. Something not terribly great. But I can’t help it. I feel like so much of the harem appeal is in the balancing act of multiple partners and in the chase. Once everyone has settled down those elements aren’t really all that relevant.

You know I say that but I bet a show that was honestly exploring the intricacies of multiple marriages would actually be rather interesting. And unusual. 

I guess all I’m really saying was that the ring bit didn’t appeal to me.

Anyway, Irina I’m glad I reviewed this show this you week to week. I possibly would have given up at the mid-way point on my own or mostly just thrown rocks at it. Still, I kind of feel this season has been a let down for a lot of viewers who were pretty keen to see the demon lord back in action. Maybe another season could turn things around but honestly I’m kind of feeling like this is the end of How Not To Summon a Demon Lord in anime form. But, it seems other people feel differently with plenty of speculation already about a third season. How about you?

Oh yea, the reviewing part became my favourite thing about the show at some point. But no offence, I’m sort of glad we can stop it. This said, it’s good to have this sort of show once in a while. A show I just don’t like but that doesn’t make me suffer either. It made the other anime I was watching so much more enjoyable by comparison without draining me. So all in all, good job Demon Lord?

Images from: How Not To Summon a Demon Lord Season 2. Dir. S. Kuwahara. Tezuka Productions and Okuruto Noboru. 2021.

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Irina and Karandi

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You know, I just finished watching Mars Red where the overall plan seems to be kind of falling apart and then I jump into How Not To Summon a Demon Lord where the high priest’s plan consists of walking up to the people who tried to kill her and all of their followers and to accuse them of their crimes before asking them nicely to leave. What kind of a plan is that? And Diablo just kind of indulgently says, sure.

Okay, that’s more or less jumping to the end of this mess of an episode that seemed to exist just to have each girl go through their own innuendo filled scenario before we get to that insanity but hey Irina, how are you this week?

I sprained my ankle yesterday but I think it’s actually not that bad. The pain is already getting better and I’m sort of happy for the excuse to not run around for a few days.

Ouch. Hope it gets better quickly.

So let’s look at the episode somewhat logically. They get to the capital after Rem’s ridiculous demonstration of motion sickness and are almost immediately threatened and attacked. But then crazy end the mortal races girl shows up and the soldiers all just stand down. Then they get a nice hotel room, over-eat, Shera get’s her moment of ‘kill me now’ before crazy girl more or less throws herself at Diablo and we also get a robot recharging sequence. None of which does anything for the plot and isn’t particularly amusing. It just kind of happens. I’m wondering if it even qualifies as good fan-service but given I’m not the audience for it I’m not really in the place to judge.

I thought it was ok fanservice but since it was so divorced from anything else it was the type of scene that made me wonder if this is the type of show made for prudes. OK, hear me out. I understand why echhi exists and I think that incorporating erotic elements can sometimes elevate a story and give a better experience to the viewer. Moreover, keeping it at “everything but” is a way to avoid some harsher regulations.

However, when the erotic elements seem to be the only or at least the most important element that the production wants to bring across, then doing these sort of silly exercises to avoid specifically stating what’s happening, I think limits severely what the production can do. And I’ve almost never seen it elevate the material.

So my head canon is that it’s made for horny people who think actualy sex is gross! Yuck! They must exist.

That is a very distinct viewing category you’ve just created.

Honestly, this episode didn’t do much for me. I mean it does transition us nicely to a point where Diablo could now dismantle the church but I somehow think that head-priest girl isn’t going to let him. Compared to summoning a demon-lord through Rem and the amazing finale that lead to, season two really doesn’t have anything. Even if we do get a fight with the church, I’m kind of indifferent to the outcome at this point. And throwing in a lame twist of the priests actually being ruled by another demon-lord would more or less fall flat at this point because it just seems way too trite. What do you think, Irina? Is there any saving this season at this point?

I actually sort of forgot why they were doing any of it. Not a great sign. Like I understood what was happening moment for moment but if someone asked me the greater rational of it all, I would be at a loss. It’s sort of very meandering and superficial. It kind of reminds me of my issues with Grancrest actually. Maybe they need to have a recap episode next week?

No! Not the recap episode.

But hey, at least we get to listen to the cool opening each week.

Images from: How Not To Summon a Demon Lord Season 2. Dir. S. Kuwahara. Tezuka Productions and Okuruto Noboru. 2021.

Thanks for Reading From
Irina and Karandi

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Hey Irina, welcome to week 6 of How Not To Summon a Demon Lord Ω and now I think we’re going to call this How Not To Animate A Battle Sequence because this one was really bad. I was kind of reminded of some of the worst animation moments in Records of Grancrest War while watching this episode and I didn’t think Demon Lord would ever look quite that bad. But I kind of skipped ahead. How was your week?

Better than that battle! Kind of rough this week. Went through the ringer a couple of times and I didn’t have time for much of anything aside from work. But I made it through and I am hoping the next few weeks will be better.

I actually had an okayish week and got some stuff done. Admittedly, a lot of last weekend got consumed with this whole rating anime OP project and that ended up taking a lot more time than I’d anticipated. It was fun and I’m going to write about it at some point but I feel like I’m a little behind with some post writing.

It took me forever. After about 4 hours or so everything just started sounding the same. I should have spread it out but I didn’t have any other free time in the week. I have to plan better if I ever do something like that again. 

So, back to Demon Lord and this week Diablo is all upset because some guy is claiming to be the army of the demon lord and basically slaughtering all the soldiers we saw at the end of the last episode on their little sand-ships. I’d care a bit more if they’d put any effort into this but basically we only really ever see the main ship and any of the actual action of the slaughter is more or less a still with some shaky-cam work happening so and some over-the-top screams or groans. It really didn’t do much for me or make me particularly care about the nameless soldiers in the generic silver hats. What about you?

I didn’t care much about what was happening and I wasn’t sad but was I supposed to dislike Diablo? Like was that what they were going for? I guess it is black humour that he saw some guy being more popular with the ladies and that’s what set him off and not the carnage. So he just killed all the ladies… I dunno the joke didn’t land for me and it sort of sucked a lot of the charm out of the character. 

Diablo was always a loveable harmless pervert. Actually not even much of a pervert, just getting thrown into pervy situations as one does. But this week they made him out to be this bitter blame the world type and I’m not sure why. Seems like a bit of a downgrade. And if I don’t want to see Diablo succeed then there’s not much point in watching. At least for me.

I was wondering how Diablo got to the battle site given it apparently took three days to get to the dungeon but we pull out a magical plot device (sorry, feather) which lets the group instantly teleport back to a place they had been and fortunately the battle took place on one of their approaches or departures from the city rather than a totally different direction they’d never travelled. We then get to see our heroes kill the mob monsters in a series of barely animated shots where each of the girls gets to do one specific thing and make a witty comment before we turn the slaughter over to Diablo.

It definitely made me wonder if Rem and Shera would ever be relevant again. Diablo could have easily just fought this battle on his own without their tiny contributions and ultimately they don’t really matter here. There was a brief moment where I wondered if the fallen guy would go after one of them after Diablo had attacked his harem but nothing came of it. 

I think not Ram contributed more than Rem. And I have to say, I’m not into Rem’s new costume at all. The construction of it just doesn’t suit her. Or maybe it’s the materials? In any case, I think they were going for sexy and just added more skin. There’s more of an art to it than that. You have to make your assets look their best and hide your faults. It’s a delicate balance. Ok, I’m going off on something that doesn’t matter. I don’t have much to say about the episode.

It really doesn’t feel like anything here matters or has weight. Which would have been fine last season where How Not To Summon a Demon Lord was either consistently funny or charming when it wasn’t being a bit more serious and giving us moments that made us feel the other characters might be in peril. Season 2 hasn’t presented any serious threat but it also isn’t anywhere near as charming and the end result is something that is pretty flat viewing. Am I being harsh?

I keep wondering what exactly changed. Because I genuinely enjoyed the first season a lot. And I’m having a hard time. Certainly the tone and gaze got more aggressive but it’s not just that. The characters sound more or less like themselves but a shallow version. The action is strewn together in a careless way and for me, it seems to have lost a lot of its sense of fun. The season feels much more business-like and goal oriented. It has to make sure it gets the genre across or hits the right tropes. Something like that. 

On absolute speculation, to me it feels like either a studio or if it’s the same issue in the novels an editor/publisher saw the profit potential and pushed for a product packed with marketability instead or just goofy antics. And I’m a goofy antics sort of girl!

I don’t really have much more to add other than I found this episode to be pretty meh. A villain that had potential to be more than a one-note character didn’t amount to much, gun-girl got one good line and shot before she was reduced to girl in need of Diablo’s rescue, and the battle was pretty dull. Even the victory meal after didn’t lay on any charm. We’re at the half-way mark and so far How Not To Summon a Demon Lord Ω has yet to really impress.

Sadly, I have to agree.

Images from: How Not To Summon a Demon Lord Season 2. Dir. S. Kuwahara. Tezuka Productions and Okuruto Noboru. 2021.

Thanks for Reading From
Irina and Karandi

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Hey Irina, how has your week been? Again, I’ve been busy and had some travel (and been reminded why I don’t fly very often after getting quite travel-sick on the short flight). That said I am glad it is now the weekend and I can catch up on the latest episode of How Not To Summon a Demon Lord.

The renovations at my place are almost complete. I finished up some of the lectrics yesterday and I’m just getting a new door today and we are done! My living room looks enormous without a bathtub in the middle of it. It takes some getting used to. And not a moment too early. Next two weeks are going to be intense at work. I’m probably going to pull a couple of 70h weeks but I hope to take a few days off once they’re done! Those are going to be awesome days off!

I think episode 4 was a better episode than the previous one in that we focused more on the core group and they were back to adventuring. Also I loved Rem and Shera’s comment that the designer of the dungeon may have had god-like power but was a bit childish. That comment was a nice summation of Diablo’s character in general though they didn’t know they were describing Diablo, and it definitely cut him deeply (which he kind of deserved after making both of them cry earlier in the episode).

It really reminded me how much fun this core group could be in season one and that’s something we haven’t really seen in the previous three episodes as Diablo has either been with someone new or Rem and Shera have just kind of been standing around doing very little.

I have to admit that I didn’t really see much difference with the previous episodes of the season. Well except at the end there. I guess we’ll get to that eventually. But I still thought that Rem and Shera felt like hollow versions of themselves. The indirect kiss scene was just weird. It wasn’t ridiculous enough to be funny and it made little sense for Diablo to be freaking out considering everything that’s happened in the past 2 seasons. I guess that was the joke but it didn’t land for me.

I have nothing against the two new characters but I just don’t know them well enough to have form any connection yet. To be honest I saw the episode a few days ago and I only remembered the bunny boy because I looked at the screencaps.

It also seemed kind of interesting that the magi-gun lady didn’t take a shot at them while they ran away. It seems they do intend to actually give her some kind of character and motivation outside of being a hindrance and I’m looking forward to learning her story. Less wonderful was the return of the crazy church guy from episode one and his silly worm summons.

I just kind of wish that the villains in this story would end up being more than ridiculous caricatures.

“For the sake of my expensive cosmetics, please die!” 

I’m kind of feeling that line is going to stick with me well after I’ve forgotten the rest of this season of How Not To Summon a DemonLord. 

It’s a good line. Red head girl is going to be part of the harem, right? I guess they don’t want her to be too antagonistic. The queer coded villain was a bit plain. Not exactly plain but just such a standard character archetype. We’ve seen this exact type of villain so much. They could still do something really interesting with him. However, so far I think that demon guy has been my favourite bad guy of the season. 

I also just realized that season 2 of How Not to Summon a Demon Lord is really turning into a Monster of the Week sort of show. We’ve had four episodes and 4 completely different villains for each. There’s something very nostalgic and almost comforting in that. I mean I grew up on Sailor Moon and this brings me back to those carefree days! I don’t hate it at all but I do wish a few of those villains were a bit more memorable or just more fun.

The idol concert kind of caught me off guard. As much as I know this is a comedy and they done a few odd things before this one felt really left-field. It worked and seeing Rem and Shera get to be in the spot-light for a bit was awesome, but it did feel a little out of place. Maybe commentary on forced cross-overs or maybe the writers really just wanted to see Rem and Shera do an idol dance.

Then of course, the episode ended with a cliff-hanger, which this story hasn’t really done all that much previously. It actually worked better because I wasn’t expecting it to remain unresolved before the end so the end credits caught me off guard.

For those of you out there not too familiar with our collabs, you should know that Karandi and I tend to have very different tastes. And nowhere is that more true than with the extremes of comedy and tragedy. In short, I’m very picky with drama and it gets on my nerves easily. On the other hand I love comedy and give it a lot of credit. I do believe Karandi is the other way around.

I adored the idol show. When it started I thought it was just a closing credits montage but when I realized it was an active part of the episode I was thrilled. I actually said to myself, now this is the nonsense I’m here for! I was all in and excited to watch How Not to Summon a Demon Lord once more. I even thought the cheap cliffhanger was hilarious. The entire sequence made up for the rest of the episode as far as I’m concerned. 

Yes, it was out of place in the season, but that’s because the season has felt like a different show! I’m gonna argue that this was the most How Not to Summon a Demon Lord moment omega has had so far!

In my experience, general opinion is usually way closer to K’s but I’m standing by it. Hourry for idol show for yetis! 

Before we wrap up though, I just want to ask if at any point it has been made clear how many magic spells Diablo can use. The earth shaking spell this week was very cool but seemed to come out of nowhere given if he could do that there were a number of places in season one where he should have. While it is very cool to see Diablo pull out super powerful spells that leave his companions and enemies speechless it is starting to feel like Diablo can just do whatever the plot needs him to.

Oh, looking for a consistent internal magic system seems way too ambitious for How Not to Summon a Demon Lord. A lot of very respected classical fantasy fiction struggles with that. I’m sort of happy to just go with wizard did it explanations as long as the plot doesn’t require me to be worried about the outcome of fights or get emotionally invested in the action. If all I need to do is laugh at the goofy moments and go aww at the sweet ones, I can easily accept unknowable magic I think. 

And to be clear, there are some fantastic shows that just require impressions. The internal logic of Pretty Boy Detective Club is completely bonkers and tough to follow at best. But it’s a great show.

Images from: How Not To Summon a Demon Lord Season 2. Dir. S. Kuwahara. Tezuka Productions and Okuruto Noboru. 2021.

Thanks for Reading From
Irina and Karandi

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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. 

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. 

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!

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.

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. 

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. 

Yeah… the bath scene… I’m trying to figure out if the fan-service was this full on last season and I was distracted enough by actual plot that it didn’t stand out so much, or whether season 2 has actually gone out of its way to push further.

I’ll also agree that Rem and Shera’s characters have so far taken a hit. With all the new characters and plots being introduced they’ve really just become background. Shera exists to complain or jump up and down and make her boobs jiggle and Rem really has zero purpose so far this season. Kind of hoping they fix that.

Finally “magi gunner” is really fun to say. Go ahead, try it. Don’t forget the G in magi is hard, like Maggie. 

I really want this season to pull itself together. There’s some really interesting directions they could take these new characters and plots but I think they are going to have to slow down and actually develop some of them if this season is going to really have any impact other than being another fan-servicey isekai story.

Images from: How Not To Summon a Demon Lord Season 2. Dir. S. Kuwahara. Tezuka Productions and Okuruto Noboru. 2021.

Thanks for Reading From
Irina and Karandi

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