Isekai Quartet 2

Episode 9

Last episode ended with the fairly ominous reactivation of the Destroyer, which was defeated at the end of the first season. However, whatever the writing might be doing with that is apparently going to wait for a later episode, as the events here are entirely unrelated. Instead it's time for a The Rising of The Shield Hero character – specifically Filo – to get the feature treatment.

This all comes about because apparently Class 1 is going to do a play for the upcoming school festival (because of course there has to be a school festival, right?) and Filo is sent around to gather ideas for what kind of story should be done. This is pretty much just an excuse for her to go around interacting with other various groups and look cute in the process, but she does that very well as she encounters a diverse collection of the weirdos who make up this school's population. Some of the reactions are wholly predictable, such as all of the Overlord underlings wanting to do something to glorify Ains, though the little touch of Shalltear and Albedo throwing hearts towards him, or how his calming effect kicked in the face of such over-the-top praise(1), was rather amusing. Other encounters are entertaining in a different way, such as how Tanya is observing Megumin's use of EXPLOSION and giving commentary on it from a military perspective. (Really, this is a scene which needed to happen at some point.) Tanya makes some good observations, as does Kazuma about how Megumin might theoretically be able to use her spell without an incantation; I don't think that point ever came up in their original series, but maybe I'm forgetting something?

Of other encounters, Emilia and Puck provide a gentle touch but are otherwise unremarkable, while the library encounter with Mare and Beatrice has an interesting follow-up, one where Beatrice comments about how nice it is for Mare to have the person he believes in right at hand. Beatrice's comment back when asked about that herself is, I presume, a reference to something that hasn't appeared in animation yet. The final sequence, involving some of the Pleaides and also later Tanya's male underlings, is loaded with all sorts of neat tidbits, including how Narbarel's hostility towards the soldiers exactly mirrors her behavior when she was accompanying Ains (as Momonga) in Overlord. The suggestion on which story to go with – “The Ugly Duckling” – is fitting on a lot of levels. In some senses it could almost refer to Filo, but it is a much more relevant reference to Felt and her situation in Re:Zero.(2)

Overall, this episode offers plenty of what anyone who's following this series came here to see.

1 – Presumably because he's an undead, Ains' stronger human emotional reactions are dampened, with the visual effect shown in this scene being an indicator that it's happening.
2 – She's basically being forced to be a candidate for the next ruler of the kingdom despite having grown up in the slums, all because a magical brooch affirms that she is a Dragon Priestess.

Rating:

Isekai Quartet 2 is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.