English Dub Review: The Misfit of Demon King Academy “With a Pinch of Courage”

Overview (Spoilers Below):

Emilia and her students take on the dragon-slaying and binding spell called “De Jelias.”  However, Emilia and her students failed because they couldn’t cooperate with Laos and others.  It was then that she caught a glimpse of their helplessness…. Meanwhile, Ley, who was invited as a hero, has an audience with Lysius, King of Gairadite.  He is asked to save the ailing royal family.  But as he is shown around, what he encounters is…!

Our Take:

Following our little trek into the gods’ home world underneath the ground, we have returned to our regularly scheduled dragon training with the Hero Academy.  Unsurprisingly, things still haven’t improved for Emilia, especially when her students are still not taking her lessons seriously.  While performing a binding spell called “De Jelias”, Emilia can hear her students’ heinous thoughts about her, sending her closer to her breaking point.  Fortunately, Anos, disguised as the transfer student, comforted her once more before departing with the rest of the class to the East Desert.  The episode also has Ley and Misa investigating a sickness that infected Lysius’ royal family, only to discover that it was a trick to lure out the hero Kaden.

However, we might not know how that’ll play out until later because the Hero Academy is invaded by a red variant dragon, a rare breed more formidable than the others.  Before you ask, yes, the CGI for the dragons still looked crappy, especially the one dragon Lysius kept underneath his castle.  Seriously, did they even put some effort into rendering the dragons to avoid looking uncanny?  I know that an anime mixing 2D and CGI is nothing new, but I’ve seen some that looked more tolerable than what Misfit of Demon King Academy delivered.  Besides that, the episode finally offered Emilia some luck when she was willing to sacrifice herself to the red variant dragon, only for the students to see the good inside her.  The execution for that emotional moment was flat, but at the very least, Emilia gained the respect and peace she’d been looking for since being reincarnated as a half-demon.