Rage of Bahamut: Virgin Soul

Episode 4

Oh no, the Horny Meter is broken again. And it took so long to fix after Yuri!!! on Ice!!!… And Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid… There's a lot of horny anime, now that I think of it. I can't imagine why.

When we last left our heroes, Charioce was on the verge of capturing Azazel. Fortunately for Azzie, Nina has gotten the heads-up from Kaisar to go help him. She rushes over and finds Azazel in a bad state. He tells her to run away with Mugaro, but Nina refuses to leave the demon boy to his death. Realizing that innocent demons will die if she stays out of this, Nina tells Azazel her secret and – with the help of a harried embrace – decides to bring the pain.

Nina's kitty dragon form proceeds to wreck Charioce's men. Charioce himself seems mostly intrigued by the beast in front of him, which might imply interesting things about his proclivities, if you catch my drift. Kaisar's behavior throughout the encounter also provokes suspicion. Of course, we already know that he's sympathetic to Azazel's cause, but Charioce himself is now keeping a close eye on Kaisar, probably so that he can bait out the demon resistance. This situation is an interesting reversal from the first season, where Azazel was revealed to have killed Kaisar's dad and caused pretty much all the misery in his life. I think this beef still stands between them, but good guy Kaisar also recognizes the demon's cause as righteous in its own way. Genesis had some good character writing, but Virgin Soul is a step up on most fronts so far, so it'd be great if they acknowledged the dissonance between Azazel's past as a wantonly violent asshole and what he's like now that adversity has forced him to develop some actual scruples.

After falling unconscious post-battle, Nina wakes up in Rita's clinic alongside Azazel. She explains her backstory – that she's a half-dragon, half-human hybrid from a hidden city of weredragons. When she was a kid, she could never transform, but that all changed one day when she saw a hot dude and exploded. Since then, her mom has warned her to stay away from hot dudes. Azazel's takeaway from this is the suggestion that they sleep together so she can turn into a dragon and free the demons for him. Nina, of course, runs out of the room screaming. This girl nearly died from a chaste hug, dude. I don't think you could make it a quarter of the way through coitus before you're crushed under two tons of scaly flesh.

In its last few minutes, the episode treats us to a big revelation in the form of Mugaro's mother: Jeanne d'Arc. Yup, she's back from the first season, but she's not really in a good state. Charioce has locked her in the dungeon as punishment for sneaking Mugaro away as a baby. Every once in a while, he'll come down to taunt her like the big jerk that he is. We haven't been told how Mugaro came to be, but I suspect that he was conceived when the Archangel Michael used the last of his power to soothe a demonized Jeanne at the end of the first season. This would explain the kid's holy powers and possibly make him a half-human, half-demon hybrid like Amira. While this entire situation is obviously a hard retcon, and I'd prefer that Jeanne – a powerful woman who was dealt a pretty bad hand throughout Genesis – take a more active role in this story, it's still an interesting setup for now. Jeanne may also be the reason why Kaisar hasn't already bailed on the knights despite the the demon genocide. The two of them are friends, so Kaisar may know about Mugaro.

Overall, this was a straightforward episode of plot development alongside some mild action. If I can wager a guess at this point, I think Nina/Azazel will be the endgame relationship, although it'll face a challenge when Charioce enters the fray for her affections. This show will be two cours, so there's plenty of time for all sorts of convoluted stuff to go down. Horny stuff. MAPPA knows what the people (read: me) want.

Grade: B+

Rage of Bahamut: Virgin Soul is currently streaming on Amazon's Anime Strike.

Gabriella Ekens studies film and literature at a US university. Follow her on twitter.