Isekai Quartet 2

Episode 6

One of the interesting things about watching anime as an American is seeing the different cultural aspects in play. Sometimes, however, the differences that anime reveals are incomprehensible. For instance, concerning this episode: who in their right mind puts mayonnaise on wings? Or ketchup, for that matter? (Salt and pepper I can at least kind of understand.) I even surveyed coworkers from diverse cultural backgrounds on this and they all thought that was weird.

Regardless, few things other than politics and religion are more universally divisive than food taste preferences, and that conflict has now come to this setting. Class 2 breaks down into three not-quite-even camps over whether salt and pepper, ketchup, or mayo make better wing toppings, with all four of the series' rosters widely split over the issue; even some of Ains' hyper-loyalists regret that they don't necessarily agree with Ains on the matter. (That, of course, raises the question of how undead can actually appreciate wings, but who needs details like that anyway?) Even The Rising of The Shield Hero's cast, in their first full appearance in a while, gets dragged into the fray to help even out the teams for the only proper way to settle the dispute: dodge ball.

This whole scenario seems ripe with about 10,000 different ways that it could possibly go wrong given the people involved, so to my surprise I was slightly underwhelmed by the result. Oh, there were unquestionably a few neat moments; you couldn't have a dodge ball game without Darkness willingly taking a shot and enjoying being hit, for instance. Ram and Rem doing a combo move with Cocytus, and then that attempting to be matched by Overlord's siblings Aura and Mare working with Weiss, was a good use of all four series, Kazuma using his Steal skill on the ball was amusing, and of course the bewildered Naofumi was going to take things seriously enough that he broke out his rage shield. I don't recall seeing Albedo Wall of Jericho before in the anime, so maybe I'm missing something, and Tanya went straight to prayer for maximum power output.(1) The cat-like creatures also get involved, as does Beatrice.(2) The other little tidbit there is the Mohawk-adorned “butcher,” who's a minor character named Ruffian from KONOSUBA and now seems to be the stand-in for all shopkeepers(3), providing the color commentary for Viktoriya's play-by-play.

The match does a good job of getting a lot of characters involved, and even has Megumin and Ains teaming up for a massive EXPLOSION-type launch of the ball, so I'm not sure why I find it a little disappointing; maybe I expected a bit sharper wit to it all, I guess, or perhaps the not-so-impressive musical choices? At the least the match ended the only way it could (with the ball breaking!) before the argument shifts to croquettes – which should be eaten plain, damn it!

1 – In her series, Tanya has to offer a prayer to get the maximum power from her computation jewel, due to the shenanigans of Being X in trying to get her to acknowledge God.
2 – This may be a reference to one of the iterations of the “Roswaal Manor” time loop in Re:Zero, where Beatrice made a contract with Kazuma to protect him.
3 – He was listed at one point as being an “artisan weaver” by occupation, so this may be a vague in-joke.

Rating:

Isekai Quartet 2 is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.