Beheneko: The Elf-Girl's Cat is Secretly an S-Ranked Monster!

Episode 10

The show was so close in getting me to genuinely feel something that it actually pissed me off. At first, the episode seemed to follow a similar structure to the ones revolving around the necromancer where it is playing the fantasy plot straight. We're hitting all of these beats like they matter, such as reuniting with previous characters that we saw in that one episode and now we're facing off against one of the big bad demon generals who had no buildup whatsoever. However, much like the necromancer episodes, there's no emotional connection to anything that is going on and when you combine that with the lackluster animation, I'm just waiting for the episode to end.

There are two things that grabbed my attention with this episode and the first has to do with Julius, who I genuinely thought was going to die in this episode. He had solid buildup last week, I liked the relationship that he seemed to build with the other characters, and they already established that he is severely weakened from the last great war, so I was expecting some kind of passing of the torch moment. We get the proper build up for that, but it feels like the show chickened out at the last minute because he's completely fine by the end of this episode. Then we start getting a dramatic build up to Stella's death as she tries her best to take a hit for Tama. I don't know how anyone can argue that Stella isn't the best character in this entire show, because she literally has everything a solid character needs. She is funny, she has a good backstory that is surprisingly not overdone in other fantasy shows, and her arc about learning what it means to not just be a wild animal that lives for themselves was actually handled well. Hell, even with all the Tama fucking jokes, she is the one that arguably has the best reason for wanting to do it with him. I'm not saying I like that or want to see it, I'm just saying that the show actually makes a case for why it makes sense for her to want that.

I knew the show wasn't going to actually kill her off, but when they started building up her dramatic sacrifice, I will admit I actually started to genuinely feel something. I didn't want Stella to die or get hurt because I actually cared about her as a character, which is a hell of a lot more than I can say about anybody else in this entire show. Yes, even Tama! It's not that he's a bad character per se, he's just not a very interesting one, and in all honesty, I kept wondering why he wasn't doing more throughout this episode before he decided to finally rip the band-aid off and just turn into a behemoth. But the show even ruined that build up because it looks like it doesn't really amount to anything dramatic, since everyone just mistakes him for another creature anyway. Combine that with the fact that Aria pretty much pulled an overpowered skill out of her butt to take out the two remaining monsters and what we are left with is me feeling incredibly empty by the time the episode ends. I really don't know how I'm going to feel during these last few episodes because I really just don't have confidence in the show's ability to elicit any type of strong emotional reaction. A lot of the pieces are there, as this episode demonstrated, but even when it's on the path of doing something well, the show just doesn't manage to stick the landing.

Rating: