English Dub Review: Ishura “Shiki, Enemy of All”

Overview (Spoilers Below):

Twenty-one years ago, the First Party confronted the True Demon King.  Why did they fail?

Our Take:

The second season of Ishura has introduced us to many new Shuras that may or may not play a role in the series’s future.  However, some of these stories come with a risk of slowing down the season’s main plot.  Fortunately, this week’s season finale forgoes this formula to reunite viewers with old and new characters from both seasons, ranging from Soujiro the Willow Sword to Hiroto the Paradox.  After briefly appearing in “Mele the Horizon’s Roar”, Soujiro gave us one final appearance until his hopefully larger role in the upcoming third season.  What’s even better is that his small cameo didn’t feel phoned in, as we found out that the Demon King had destroyed Soujiro’s world.  Additionally, Yuno the Distant Talon finally appears in the episode after sitting on the sidelines throughout the entire season, and yes, she’s still setting her sights on finding the one person capable of killing Soujiro.

Along with its plot progression, the episode finally reveals the true identity of the late Demon King, who has been heavily teased since the series’s beginning.  However, it’s not who you thought they would be.  The Demon King was in the shape of a teenage girl known as “Shiki, Enemy of All”, whose mysterious power overwhelmed and killed the First Party years before the series’s events.  Unsurprisingly, the sequence is as disturbing as “Linaris the Obsidian” due to its grim animation style and direction.  That scene alone was enough to excuse the season’s episodic structure and admire its closure to yet another entertaining yet flawed season.  There’s no word on a third season as of now, but if it were to happen, it would center on the series’s “Royal Games” arc, which has been mentioned since the start of the season.  Hopefully, that would mean it’ll focus more on its story progression than its usual anthology-based structure.  Until then, I would consider this season a suitable continuation of the dark fantasy series whose presentation and world-building mostly compensate for its repetition.