Not too much happens this episode except some explanation of the McGuffins they're searching for. I think the most interesting thing is that Hizuki's Heterochromia seems to have some kind of effect on her. Like with voices and pain.

@rikka@ani.social

And then, in true Demon Lord 2099 fashion, we get blindsided by a silly joke at the end.

spoiler

Oh! That makes sense so....

Green obviously has to be the forest elf.

Pink will be the Kingdom's princess.

Yellow will be a beastman catgirl.

And Blue... a fairy!

What.... what was in the 4th chapter?

What a freaking cool episode. We got more insight into the test and it seems that I was correct in that Noel was pulling the strings for the test requirements behind the scenes. That also explains the penalty of having to disband the party if they fail the challenge, which would be overly harsh and seemingly not in line with the guild's values. I suspect Noel is planning to recruit Leon afterwards to be Blue Beyond's tank.

I predicted Blue Beyond would hang back at the start of the test, but this was pretty well executed:

@rikka@ani.social

We KNOW that Noel is going to be devious and sneaky, so of course he's not going to race in to fight the boss. But the way Noel handled things was absolutely brilliant. I kept expecting some kind of trick or shady business to be revealed, but nothing of the sort happened. Instead, Noel predicted that the Winged Knights would not be able to beat the monster on their own and that Leon would betray his party by trying to do the "right" thing.

Then Blue Beyond shows up an hour later and basically starts wiping the floor with the monster. Leveled up Alma is ready to slaughter a monkey

I mean... only in the same sense that Beastars is all about furry porn.

Popular girl ends up liking nerdy guy but is terrible at expressing her feelings so she ends up bullying him, but it's not like he gets off on the mistreatment or anything. Still, not surprising that it draws in that sort of crowd.

What a cool episode. We get the final battle between Rust and Sunraku. And I was TOTALLY right this time! Sunraku DID get end up getting SLF information from Nephilim Hollow and Rust was an SLF player! I thought it was funny that Rust quit SLF because she couldn't find robots in it though, haha.

On top of the great robot on robot action, we got quite a bit of SLF lore too. And three new SLF characters! Rust, Mold, and the teaser of Akitsuakane!

or My Dress-Up Darling

or Maid Sama!

or Komi Can't Communicate

or Kubo Won't Let Me Be Invisible

or Don't Toy With Me, Miss Nagatoro

or Bottom-Tier Character Tomozaki

or Our Dating Story: The Experienced You and the Inexperienced Me

or Shikimori's Not Just a Cutie

or...

But yeah, seems like a overly basic plot, right?

However, if that was the case, wouldn’t it have influenced Duke and the handful of others that don’t seem affected by it by now?

Right? We've seen Henry get broken out of it. Maybe Alicia has some kind of cheat skill too since she's a reincarnation.

The confrontations with Liz are going to be epic. And yes, that push to Ms. Freckles so Alicia could whisper to Liz... amazing.

Recalling Subaru’s arguably lowest point right before the speech was brilliant

I liked that too. I feel like Julius was saying, "you talked a bunch of shit but then actually made it happen."

Glad to see Hikaru has some new bodyguards, but they don’t seem all that more helpful than what he already had in terms of… anything tbh.

His new bodyguards are comical. I found it funny when the leader of ARMS was like, "I can't have you helping... you're a civilian." And I was just like, "And how are all these other misfits any different?"

I hadn’t really thought about it, but if the Mecha-ude can’t normally move without a human it’s extremely unclear how they ever lasted in their own world.

Not that the story makes much sense at all, but the best interpretation I have for this is that Arbitrium (or whatever it's called) existed naturally on their world but the Mecha-Ude eventually consumed it all and were unable to make more. Humans produce their own Arbitrium in excess so they're able to give it to Mecha-Ude that derize with them.

But then Alma comes along and breaks all that by being able to make his own Arbitrium somehow.

Oh yeah, the pharmacy one. Also the candy chef. Background mob. What else is there...?

I love the spider one. The misdirect in the anime was well done. It gave enough hints without spelling it out.