Diablo arrives at Zircon Tower City with his adventuring party and finds a corrupt city official harassing the local Church and its faithful.
Episode 2 – “Head Paladin”
Hmm.
How NOT to Summon a Demon Lord isn’t a deep and serious story, but that doesn’t mean its story elements need to be shallow. When Head Priest Lumachina first arrived in Zircon Tower City, she saw the lord of the city, Fanis Laminitus, putting her believers through harsh treatment and the Head Paladin trying to cope with high taxes and serving the congregation at the same time. The episode superficially ignored two glaring issues with these circumstances.
The first is not addressing when this started. How NOT to Summon a Demon Lord can forgo the question of why the Church tolerated a city leader closing a church for the time being because Lumachina is on the run from the Church for questioning corruption and embezzling. Head Paladin Butatta puts forth the image that he needed to make do with hard solutions to difficult circumstances as if he became cut off from the wider resources of the Church, but that doesn’t pass the sniff test. I’m glad that Lumachina wanted to have a conversation with him that night to get answers about the disturbing things she saw.
The second issue is why a strong character like Butatta would allow an equally strong character like Fanis to push him around. The way Butatta talked with Fanis about her attempts at testing his and Lumachina’s faith in God made it clear that he’s not personally suffering mentally, spiritually, or physically. Yet he needed to hire rough mercenaries and the Church’s faithful suffered class division and inequality. How NOT to Summon a Demon Lord efficiently presented the evidence of hypocrisy and collusion between the two great power centers within Zircon Tower City. Diablo should be warier of Butatta, but that’s an issue for real-life Takuma’s naivety. The next episode should teach him a lesson about that.
Heh.
Aw. Rem the cat girl has motion sickness. Zircon Tower City has many sad people sitting around. Isekai Maou makes sure Diablo keeps a bunny girl around. She’s entrepreneurial! Horn is the rogue who’s missing from Diablo’s balanced adventuring party. She describes the newly discovered dungeon exactly as Diablo remembers his personal one from the video game.
Uh oh. Lumachina already found trouble. Somebody claiming to be a paladin somehow doesn’t recognize his pope. Lumachina hasn’t heard of a church requiring “donations” before a priest heals an adherent. Horn explains that the guy is a mercenary hired by the Paladins. Rem is protective of fellow cat people. Cat women aren’t always as flat as Rem is in How NOT to Summon a Demon Lord. Good to know. Lumachina can make a healing miracle happen right in the middle of the street. No church visit necessary.
Lumachina made an impression so now it’s Shera’s turn. Oh, it’s not. Her boob shaking means it’s that time in Isekai Maou for Diablo to impress people and draw the attention of the powerful. Ha! Sand Whale! Why not? There all these magical sand sailing vessels everywhere to cross the desert, so that makes sense. Let’s see what crazy immense magic spell he uses on this huge monster. Oh, this is good. Takuma psyched himself up and used his Diablo voice inside his mind to buoy his confidence.
Diablo’s spell stopped the Sand Whale, but it’s taking a while to defeat it. Here we go. The Head Paladin and a saucy redheaded wench added the finishing blows. Shera gave Diablo his reward. How is he not accustomed to boob pressure by now? Let’s meet the new How NOT to Summon a Demon Lord players. Head Paladin Batutta has powerful martial arts attacks. Ha! Batutta smacked the same guy whom Diablo hit. Don’t disrespect the pope, er, Head Priest in front of the Head Paladin.
Here’s the saucy wench with the nice-looking gun. Fanis Laminitus claims to be the lord of Zircon Tower City and calls the Head Paladin “swindler.” I know I’m watching anime, but Isekai Maou makes this lady into a pure cartoon villain. Her ruling over the city appears to be a recent occurrence, otherwise, the people, the Church, and the Head Paladin wouldn’t be in such a compromised state. I’ll just accept that Fanis can close the church and the local priests and paladins can allow that. There’s obviously some underlying plot between Batutta, Fanis, and the mercenary brigade that Diablo needs to untangle.
Fanis makes juvenile atheist arguments against the existence of God. In Isekai Maou, God protects Lumachina by dropping a Demon Lord on an evil mushroom and having the Head Paladin standing nearby. Nice. Batutta knows sophistry when he sees it. Oh, come on now. Both Batutta and Fanis came to the docks to find the “sorcerer” who attacked the Sand Whale, and they both act like they don’t know it’s Diablo. Oh well. It was a stalemate anyway, with Batutta, Fanis, and the unknown sorcerer standing in front of the pope.
Let’s hear Batutta’s version of why the Church’s faithful are listless, the rich jump the line for healing, and why the paladins hired mercenaries. It’s not clear why healing takes so long if the priests can’t do it inside their church. We also don’t know why Fanis closed the church, but her low-level atheist objections point to some recent personal animosity. In Isekai Maou’s fantasy world where holy magic works and Demon Lords pop up to oppose God, atheism is willfully irrational.
Takuma is such a Japanese otaku. He’s so excited over curry rice. Well, it’s a nice reminder of home. Here we go! We had the action scene, but now it’s time for the ACTION scene. Shera is here for all of Diablo’s soapland play needs. We can reinterpret Shera’s lines to refer to some other stiff part of Diablo’s anatomy besides his stiff back muscles. Poor dude carries so much stress in his hard… back muscles. Ah! She wants to wash his front too! Oh no. What horny thing is Shera stroking? Of course. It’s his horn! What a tease Isekai Maou can be. Diablo is one horny dude!
Lumachina meets Butatta for the cliffhanger. Does he have a battle maid with him?
The end credits show you what the Isekai Maou nendoroids will look like. Next time, we see that battle maid likes dominatrix play!
Artist Itou Life puts Shera into the magical tentacle situation from the seventh episode of the first season. Naughty!
How NOT to Summon a Demon Lord Ω streams on Crunchyroll and VRV.
