English Dub Review: Demon Lord Retry! “Merciless Invasion”

Overview:

The caravan arrives at one of Luna’s villages.

Our Take:

I think I’ll just let my eyes glaze over every time a female character opens her mouth because it’s just going to be a disappointment. I’d be hard-pressed to think of a female character who isn’t in love with the main character and doesn’t lose her mind as a result. Aku is fine, she’s like 12 or something, and the eldest of the holy maidens has yet to fall for the main character, but everyone else is on thin ice. Maybe Kirino, because she’s less fetishy and more of a strategist this time around. The mage is just a disaster, this is what happens when you have otakus who have never met a trans person or someone who crossdresses: this happens. It’s so bad!

However, compared to the absolute disaster that is the female cast, the story this episode had some intrigue. They travel to a village that Luna owns, and see that for the most part, it’s pretty unworkable. The land is infertile and hardly anything can grow on it. To make things worse, the water has run out, which mean that they can’t water their crops either. This leads to an extremely poor harvest, which means that the village’s main investment, carrots, will be a total failure. What is already a struggling village will only become worse over time.

At the same time, the demon king is here. In Infinity Game, the main replenishing health supply is water, so his stock is filled with items that can make creating water an easy feat. Something that would have required a ton of time and money that a struggling village doesn’t have can be easily recreated because of the different value system. Infinity Game’s rules dictate that water is easy to find and readily obtainable, so the items that can be created from the game reflect this. Likewise, in the opposite direction, some of the artifacts in this world would be valuable in Infinity Game; it’s all a matter of perspective.

Water and fertilizer do incredibly help the village, and also helps establish Luna’s claim. They suspect that the church is manipulating Luna’s title as a Holy Maiden to dump undesirable property on her (knowing that she will not tend to it). Them taking the land back and making something of it is challenging the church, and possibly Luna’s sisters. It’s a plot that could go somewhere- but we’ll see.