English Dub Review: How Not to Summon a Demon Lord Ω “Personal Domain”

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

Diablo and his posse run into Fanis and are able to escape her fleet, though Diablo suspects she let them leave. They eventually find Diablo’s dungeon, which should help them in finding a way to undo the Death Knell curse, though they must first get through a shifting dungeon, a heated trivia contest, and an idol dance competition. Once that’s done, they enter a stage with a raging river and are confronted by Gewalt, the paladin that tried to kill Lumachina. Horn, the rabbit girl, tackles Gewalt but both fall in the river, with Diablo jumping in after her.

OUR TAKE

Well well well, it seems things are finally picking up here as the group has finally found Diablo’s dungeon. Also, side note that I probably should have asked before, but HOW did Diablo get to make a dungeon? I admittedly don’t really play that many MMOs, so there may in fact be a dungeon creation system, but I figured that was something only the people who worked on the game could do. As far as I’m aware, Diablo is just a really powerful player. So maybe being a really big player in the game gave him the opportunity to make a dungeon? Maybe this was explained in a previous episode, but I don’t think so, and I’m not willing to own up to my mistakes and check! Either way it does help with him knowing how to get the group through at least, but it seems more like just an excuse for wacky hijinks and fanservice. Fanservice that, compared to last season, is not really animated as good. But it’s there and that is most definitely a good portion of what people come to this series to see, so I guess it’s what we have to roll with.

But yeah, the dungeon crawling is pretty much the main plot development this time, along with the return of Gewalt from the first episode. I don’t know why we needed Gewalt to come back, since he’s not really a super memorable or threatening enemy, but he’s here in all his gay coded glory. I guess this is the closest that Lumachina has to a nemesis, which is not really looking good for her. She’s contributing to the group pretty well so far and is showing a lot of initiative in searching for how to undo the curse despite being discouraged to at every turn, though I oddly don’t think I know her very well. Now would be a good time to have some backstory about how she became a Priest. We’re also lacking much in the way of distinguishing characteristics for Horn the bunnygirl. I mean, being a bunnygirl is kinda unique here but we already have a catgirl and an elf, so strange ears are not really new. Oh and next episode we finally get to meet the maid character that we’ve already seen in the opening and ending. And by then we’ll already be halfway done with this whole thing!