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

Episode 9

For another plot-focused episode, this was handled much better than the last one. One of the worst episodes of the season was the one that tried to take things so seriously and focus on an incredibly straightforward and bland fantasy plot. This episode seeks to do the same thing, but the overall tone and direction are much more in line with some of the more positive elements of the show. For one thing, it doesn't take itself too seriously, and there are plenty of fun moments in between all of the fantasy plot beats. Probably my favorite joke in the whole show was Tama bonding with the knight in the bathhouse who constantly asks Tama if he wants to go with the girls.

There are some legitimate payoffs in this episode, like Aria reuniting with the woman who saved her village and actually getting the opportunity to be trained under her. Plus, we finally figure out what Vulcan's whole deal was with her actually being a well-regarded blacksmith who was allowed to open a little shop as a reward for all of her efforts during the last major battle. That explains why she turned down the rank upgrade and why she seemed so secretive when it came to talking about her position, it's implied she just wanted to live a normal fun life. It adds a lot of layers to the character even though I'm pretty sure the show is done with doing anything with her.

There are even hints that this is secretly an isekai plot in disguise with a lot of foreshadowing for the country's grand mage being from Japan. We don't see him in this episode, but it's really funny to imagine that there is or was a genuine Isekai plot in this world. Now, we're just focusing on a bunch of random characters adjacent to it. I wonder if we'll get a payoff to that setup before the show is over?

Some things about this episode leave me with a couple of question marks. I don't know why there aren't more heroes being trained to battle this massive calamity. It feels like Aria and her party are the only adventures capable of tackling this major threat. While we know how strong our main cast is, it feels weird that we're just randomly putting the fate of the country on their shoulders just because they took down one big monster. Also, I still have no idea why Lily and Feri are there. They didn't exactly contribute to taking down the skull dragon in the previous episodes. They were the catalyst for why that happened in the first place. It feels like they were just brought along and the show retroactively justified them being there by revealing their potential. You could take these two characters out of the show and nothing would change.

I'm not sitting here brimming with excitement about what's to come, but compared to the rest of the series, this was probably the episode with the least to complain about. Character interactions were fun, the payoffs were nice and the humor was solid. This show's biggest problem is that even when it does everything right, it's not better than any standard fantasy story. It still feels like we're just checking off boxes without doing anything interesting. Still, if we can keep this quality until the end, maybe things will be alright.

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