Well, nothing was ever going to come of the Rias and Issei bout, Issei wouldn’t hurt his S&M Master. The inner drama that Loki pulled to the surface was Rias’ doubt about whether or not Issei liked her as much as the rest of his harem members. She’s pretty clingy; sometimes we think of worst case scenarios as it is more exciting for the mind to wander. She’s not self-assured as a princess of the Underworld.
Rias won’t get mad at Issei anymore because on a subconscious level, her soul remembers the conversation they had on the beach after their fight. The subconscious memory of that seemed to quell her self-doubt, and jealously for the time being. She will let him have his harem, because that’s his dream. She would never harm her precious Issei.
However, a salient point to be addressed is her lack of communication. As the king, the leader, the princess of the underworld, she is supposed to get her message across by communicating the importance of every action during a game, a meeting, or a formal gathering... Yet, when it comes to addressing the topic of Issei being less formal around her, it takes a gigantic cliché among clichés, then Issei mentioning that something was bothering her to motivate her communication. Très high school, oh wait... Issei should just be king, he’s a straight arrow, likes to talk from the heart. Heck even his parents told the random priest girl that she is their kid.
Even though the fight was essentially fodder, I enjoyed a most of it, had they let her waste one of the party members, it would have been even better. I didn’t like the Rias turning on everyone without a consequence, I could foreshadow her snapping from her jealousy, but the result was inconsequential, and rendered the whole fight into a lovers’ quibble. I wouldn’t call it a quarrel because it was one-sided with Issei remembering Rias like he was at her wake or something.
Then came the replication of Issei’s doubt in the form of a doppelgänger. This scene was symbolic in that it showed Issei conquering his doubt after the self-assuredness of having Asia being cared for by his friends and having been saved by his counterpart, and Issei having saved Rias himself. Remember, our doubt is given more power over us when there is no self-assurance.
The logic being that if he had either not saved Rias from herself in time, or had Asia perished, I doubt he would have been able to dispense of the doubting Dave as swiftly as he did. Remember the doppelgänger is just a copy of Issei’s doubt during the Loki battle, before things settled down, and he was happy again for a brief moment. He did not have doubt any lingering doubt the moment he saved Rias, and thus starved the copy of his former feeling from powering up, or conquering him with his fear of not being able to save anyone.
Had the copy of doubt attacked Issei while he was trying to tame the crimson flame, things might have turned out a bit different.
As for how he one-shot the replicant. This can be explained by the fact that he either starved it from negative thoughts that it usually feeds on, or he got a Zenkai boost from a near death experience. C’mon there’s a ‘hell’ of a lot of Dragon Ball references in this series. The third option is obviously time constraints and/or shitty writing but I don’t wanna believe it.
I’m pretty sure Rias’ brother could have knocked the ball out of the field, but it was best for Issei to develop his skills anyhow. After all the buildup and spoilers regarding the Oppai song, I was fairly disappointed with how it was introduced. They should have had Issei on the front of a cereal box with cereal shaped as いっぱいおっぱい、standing with the kids like Tony the Tiger in his LimitBreaker suit.
Negative:
Listen, the action sequences need more animated frames, usually when the camera pans over, somebody has already kicked the baddies and it shows for half a second and then you see them flying across the room, sometimes the baddies are already flying with no contact. I have to pause the damn video and go back to see if I’ve missed anything.
The fast paced fighting needs more frames.
Other than that, the show is great, looking forward to watching many more seasons of awesome sauce!
9/10 |