English Dub Review: Demon Lord, Retry! R “ReQuest”

Overview (Spoilers Below):

Kunai and Organ discuss their plans for their attack on Belphegor’s castle while Akane and Mink run off to make their own inroads.

Our Take:      

This mission has been quite aimless since Kunai first accepted this request from Organ.  Luna’s quest to find her friend diverted my attention from Kunai’s own journey, but at least it didn’t take a couple of episodes to accomplish it due to its lack of distractions.  Fortunately, this week’s episode is getting us back on track with dealing with Belphegor by infiltrating and destroying Organ’s father’s slave trading system.  Meanwhile, Princess Cake still plans on escaping from the market to reunite with Leon and seek revenge against the Queendom of Xenovia.  Additionally, the episode shows that Kunai’s encounters from the previous episodes weren’t pointless filler after all, as the Demon Lord requests the Monkeymen to assist him and Organ to attack one of the slave markets.  The Holy Priestess was also present in the episode, but she only sat on the sidelines with her children.

However, most of the episode was focused on Akane and Mink rescuing the enslaved people in the first market from its tormentor, Skewer.  If there’s one thing I would admit from watching this episode, it’s that it actually gave Akane a chance to shine regarding her fight against Skewer.  Sure, she’s still headstrong and overly joyful when not in combat mode, but her skills with a pair of tonfa and vast amounts of strength were anything except cheerful.  I also might be one of the few people who thinks Akane’s new battle outfit reminded me of Chun-Li from Street Fighter.  Akane’s duel with Skewer is practically the only highlight of the episode, which does enough to shift the season narrative’s focus to the real problem at hand.