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Interviews with Monster Girls
Episode 13

by Paul Jensen,

Interviews with Monster Girls is back, if only briefly, with a thirteenth episode. This self-contained story follows the characters as they spend an evening at a summer festival. Tetsuo gets the short end of the stick, stuck on “patrol duty” to make sure his students stay out of trouble. Sakie plans to join him, though the possibility of an actual date is hindered by her decision to borrow a mascot costume in order to suppress her aphrodisiac effect. The three demi-human girls team up to conquer all of the festival booths, while Himari gets a chance to hang out with her human friends. It's all fun and games until an impromptu ghost hunt descends into chaos.

This is more of a bonus epilogue than a proper continuation of the series, so it's essentially a standalone piece. The majority of the cast, including some minor characters, shows up for an extra dose of light humor and monster girl antics. The writing plays to the defining personality traits of each character, be it Hikari's boundless enthusiasm or Sakie's tendency to overthink everything she does. This leaves the episode feeling like a “greatest hits” compilation of all the show's running jokes, though it's been long enough since the season finale that this approach works just fine.

The demi-human characters' unique traits come into play during the ghost hunt, and they're put to good comedic use. This mostly involves accidentally terrifying their human friends: Machi's flame looks like a ghost when seen from a distance, Yuki's cold air sends literal chills down everyone's spines, and Hikari's vampire eyes reflect light in a suitably spooky manner. Along with the obligatory jokes about demi-humans looking for a ghost, these antics add up to a reasonably humorous storyline. While I wouldn't call it hilarious, it does a good job of highlighting the show's unique strengths.

Outside of the ghost hunt, the summer festival is largely par for the course. Characters play the usual variety of games with varying degrees of success, the female characters dress up in brightly colored yukatas, and the male characters fail spectacularly in their attempts to look cool in front of the girls. We don't see the type of emotional peak that often defined this show's strongest episodes, and most of what happens has little bearing on the overall narrative. The one exception is the brief introduction of a new demi-human character: an invisible girl who seems like she'll be transferring into the school at some point. She doesn't get much screen time beyond her “interview” with Tetsuo, but I imagine she's likely to appear in any sequel seasons that the series may eventually get.

At the end of the day, this is about what you might expect from a single extra episode. It's light, humorous, and entertaining, and it serves more as an encore to the first season than as a genuine continuation. Fans of the series will likely enjoy getting to see the characters again, and the introduction of a new demi-human offers some hope that we may not be done with this series just yet. That's as good a reason as any to revisit Interviews with Monster Girls.

Rating: B

Interviews with Monster Girls is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.


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