High School DxD BorN

Episode 33

Can a show be faulted for stumbling a bit in an attempt to push well beyond what its genre is normally capable of? The answer to that question is, in large part, inversely related to the qualitative evaluation of episode 33, which makes the hardest and heaviest dramatic push that the franchise has yet seen – and given that this franchise has a flair for the dramatic almost as much as it has a flair for fan service, that's saying something.

The big difference here is that the series eschews its normal practice of getting dramatic in a more light-hearted, high-spirited fashion and instead opts for a fiercely serious approach. In a sense the series has been building towards this point all season with its recurring haunting of Issei by the spirit of Reynare, which is here suggested to be some kind of malevolent influence which has found its way into Issei rather than just his own head messing with him; this could have interesting consequences going forward, as there is now a mystery about what it is and why it was doing that. Regardless of why it is happening, though, the end result is the same: Issei absolutely loses it when a new demon, Shalba Beelzebub, appears, whacks Diadora for being a disappointment to his “old guard” cause, and claims that the beam of light at the end of the previous episode was him transporting Asia to certain doom. And pushing Issei to the point of losing it is apparently a really, really bad idea, because when he blows his top and engages something called Juggernaut Drive, he's not going to be beaten back like Xenovia was in her attempt to exact vengeance. In fact, at that point nothing short of Vali showing up and engaging his own Juggernaut Drive form is going to stop him enough for Rias's appeal to win through. And lo, he just happened to have been poking around in the area where Asia got teleported to and was able to save her, too! Meanwhile Sir Zechs shows another prominent devil from the “old guard” exactly why he's the current Devil King, a seeming young woman appears who wears nothing but black tape across her miniscule boobs and is the manifestation of Orphis (the Ouroborus Dragon and leader of the Chaos Brigade), and Vali reveals his true purpose: to eventually confront DD, aka the Dragon of Dragons, aka the Red Dragon God Emperor, who makes a brief appearance before everyone before flying on.

That the series continues to engage in all manner of fan service displays while doing this (expect the full normal quota of panty shots and exposed breasts) actually isn't the problem, as all of the nudity does not make even a dent in the overwhelmingly heavy tone; that may in part be due to it just being innocuously (at least by this franchise's standards) integrated into the events rather than featured. No, the two hindrances are (once again) an unreliable artistic effort and a somewhat choppy delivery. In the former case, the series continues to struggle with consistency problems and simply does not have an adequate animation budget to fully and gloriously portray the events to the extent that it wants. The latter results from the writing trying to juggle far more balls than it's used to at the same time and in too short a time frame; an extra couple of minutes here – perhaps gained by replacing the opener or closer with additional animation – probably would have made a big difference. That choppiness prevents the key dramatic moments from achieving the full gravitas that they aim for. Definitely not a problem is the musical score, which does everything it can to push the impact of the scenes through its use of full and dramatic orchestration.

It is nice to see a fan service-oriented harem series show ambition, as all too many do not. But there was a lot more potential here.

Rating: C+

High School DxD BorN is currently streaming on Funimation.