Welcome to Demon School, Iruma-kun Season 3

Episode 20

Hold the phone – does the preview for the next episode mean that Purson is finally going to make an official appearance?! I've become way too invested in him being acknowledged by the story, so that's ridiculously exciting, as is the likelihood that Azz, Clara, and Iruma are going to get some quality friend time. It feels like Welcome to Demon School, Iruma-kun is trying to cram in all of the things it left out during the unending Harvest Festival arc – this week, Ameri and Opera. Next week, everything else.

It would be remiss of me not to mention how fun it is to watch Iruma and Lead just hang out this week, though. The two of them have really developed a nice friendship, and I like to think that it's because of Lead that Iruma is able to ask Sullivan for something he wants for the first time. Despite his nightmare older sister Shakky, Lead seems like a happy, well-adjusted guy, and unlike Asmodeus, Clara, and Ameri, he just treats Iruma like a regular friend. As Shakky points out, that's actually a pretty big step for him, since it looks like he needed some help breaking out of his disaffected teenager phase. That he and Iruma can now have a totally serious discussion about when they should switch pronouns from “boku” to “ore” and then have Iruma fend off girl talk feels like a true marker of their friendship. They're just normal guys together, and that's really nice.

Though did anyone catch Iruma's comment about liking girls with “big round horns?” Ameri may be in trouble, since, while she may have big round other things, horns are not one of them. Still, giving her the second half of the episode is a delightful display of how she and Iruma interact with each other. She may be desperately crushing on him, but that doesn't make things awkward for them; they both just enjoy spending time together. Opera may be rethinking this friendship, however, because the two of them seem set to outdo that one time my friend and I accidentally made “knife cookies.” We've seen plenty of terrible cooks in anime, but rarely have two teamed up to create the full-blown disaster that Iruma and Ameri concoct. Neither of them have a clue that they're an anathema to the art of cookery: Iruma's been cooking for himself for years, after all, and Ameri's dad told her that the “cake” she made was so good that it “made his heart burn,” which she took as a compliment. It also doesn't occur to Opera that they'd ask for a recipe and then not be able to follow it. Seriously, Opera deserves a Patient Parent of the Century award for not freaking out this week.

I have to say that this is one of the few disaster cooking scenes in an anime that I've laughed at in a long time. In part that's because both Ameri and Iruma are so bad at it – we're used to seeing the well-meaning love interest girl be a terrible cook, but we rarely get something like this. Iruma adding a teaspoon of sugar to a pound of butter is such a shock that it's hilarious, and Opera standing there in horror-stricken silence as he listens to them try to figure out which appliance is the oven is kind of amazing. But even better is the calm way they step in to fix the problem. They never yell at Iruma and Ameri, just speaking sternly and quietly as they force Iruma to throw out eggshells and coach Ameri through mixing. Sullivan may be the world's proudest grandpa, as his intro this week attests, but Opera provides an equally important and loving type of support. Grandpa will charge in and save Iruma, but Opera's always there, quietly backing him up. Neither of those are things that Iruma's ever had before, and if he's able to form bonds with Lead and Ameri, it's because Sullivan and Opera gave him the opportunity. It's easy to forget that in the raucous hilarity of the series, which makes it especially nice to see it this week in the aftermath of the Harvest Festival.

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Welcome to Demon School, Iruma-kun Season 3 is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.