The Great Jahy Will Not Be Defeated!

Episode 18

“Finally, some good food!” I jokingly shout at my laptop as we roll into episode 18, “Saurva Will Not Lose!” Looks like we're out of the Jahy Slump, largely thanks to the most unfortunate yet best demon girl getting some souped-up powers that allow her to finally take on Jahy. Though, for those of us in the know, we all know how exactly it's going to go down: Saurva is gonna have some tremendous flops, including not being remembered by our dear second strongest, the Great Jahy. (Well, that's actually not true: Jahy remembers Saurva as a hella depressed adult, which is even more hilarious than her remembering Saurva at all.)

What ensues is a series of gags about Saurva desperately trying to get demoness senpai to notice her. It's all for naught as it doesn't jog a single memory of the Dark Realm's third strongest. It's not even that Jahy doesn't care: it's just that she literally didn't spare a thought for Saurva. Even when they get into a hilariously dramatic fight that's pretty well-animated (and well-scripted), Saurva's still up a creek and just as unfortunate as before: the only thing she actually manages to do is fix Jahy's aching shoulders, get her blood flowing, and tickle her. It's so incredibly funny.

In the back half of the episode, we shift from the Dark Realm's third strongest to Jahy and Kokoro, who she reluctantly admits is her friend. It's the gateway into a tender vignette about Jahy actually becoming a nicer, more amicable person to the community that's formed around her. This counts twice over for Kokoro, who provides the “tension” for Jahy's problem: namely, Jahy hurt her friend and needs to figure out how to apologize and do better. Of course, this isn't quite the case, though it provides a good place to talk about how far this series has come.

When we started, Jahy was a prideful, cold, selfish young woman angry at being stuck in a mundane reality and a world where she had been effectively rendered useless. That formed the foundation for an upward crawl back to her former glory, which culminated in episode 10, which showed that Jahy actually had internalized a lot of her current world and had quietly decided it was time to grow and change. She's grown into a more sympathetic, empathetic young woman, albeit a still power-hungry one. But this is actually one of the most delightful aspects of the series: it's the duality of a fallen demoness who wants power… but also really loves her best friend and just wants to be a good person. That humanity is why I'll continue to stan Jahy well into 2022: it's what made her a much more complex character than I could have dreamed about her becoming in the premiere.

There's a lot else that happens outside of Jahy's emotional development: the episode ends on her dealing with a “ghost” that turns out to be the answer to episode 18's cliffhanger, and also brings the Dark Lord back into the series proper and leaves us spoiling for a fight in episode 19. Really, there's a lot of good stuff in this episode, and all of it feels like momentum as we go into the final five weeks with this series. It feels really good, and while not perfect – the pacing for some of the scenes is a bit rushed – the series feels like it's found its stride again, both as a slice of life and as a comedy.

All in all, episode 18 is really, really good, and it's not because of the gags. Rather, it's because Jahy continues to evolve into a thoughtful, caring character, and often, that growth just so happens to provide incredibly funny moments that bring a lot of levity to each week. Consider The Great Jahy Will Not Be Defeated!'s mini-slump said and done: while the show never stopped being funny, it's back to being really endearing and quite charming, promising a strong end to one of 2021's most delightful series.

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The Great Jahy Will Not Be Defeated! is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.

Mercedez is a JP-EN translation and localization Editor & Proofreader/QA, pop culture critic, and a journalist who, when not writing for ANN, writes for Anime Feminist, where she's a staff editor, and for But Why Tho?. She's also a frequent cohost on the Anime Feminist Podcast, Chatty AF. This season, she's devouring Restaurant to Another World bite by delicious bite. When she's not writing and reviewing, you can find her on her Twitter or on her Instagram where she's always up to something.