Isekai Quartet 3

Episode 5

Yunyun is, without a doubt, the nicest person in KONOSUBA—which makes her the butt of all too many jokes. So, for all the crap she gets in both KONOSUBA and this show, it's great to see her hit her breaking point and give Motoyasu (the least likable of the four heroes in Shield Hero) a well-deserved slap to the face.

In fact, this episode is basically just an excuse to give Motoyasu the punishment he deserves. Due to the events of Shield Hero, he sees all women as nothing more than bad-smelling, anthropomorphized talking pigs. So, of course, he encounters nothing but the various female characters of Isekai Quartet (who are none too happy to be called pigs).

The best thing about this gag is that, like many of the extended jokes in Isekai Quartet, it goes beyond the surface layer and, in the process, gets a bit deeper into what's going on with the character. For example, when Motoyasu runs into Aura, he sees her as a pig—despite her male-presenting attire. As he has no way of knowing Aura is female from her appearance alone, this implies that there is a magical component to how he sees women in addition to any psychological hangups. Meanwhile, he sees Hamsuke as the giant hamster she is, despite her gender—meaning his affliction only applies to humanoid females.

And then we get the final joke of the episode. Thanks to Filo's attempts to console Motoyasu after Malty's betrayal, he sees filoials alone as women and puts them on an idealized pedestal. This overwrites whatever magical effects his weapon curse has on his psyche to make him see all humanoid females as pigs. However, as filoials are basically humans when transformed, he assumes that any woman with wings and an ahoge (like Filo's) must be a filoial. This means, in his eyes, that Albedo must be a filoial—and Tanya, as her ahoge-sporting companion, must also be one (though with wings magically hidden).

It's a great gag that really plays into the lore of what's going on. Though I'd love to see how he sees Tanya without the filoial connection. After all, if he can tell that Aura is a man at a glance, I wonder if he could see that Tanya was a man's soul in a young girl's body in the same way.

Alongside Motoyasu's story, we also get a fair amount of Re:Zero focus. It's revealed that Rem isn't as unaffected by the events in the Re:Zero world as we have been led to believe—and rather than feeling worse, she's starting to feel better. But whether this is because of upcoming events in Re:Zero or the effects of Isekai Quartet remains unknown.

We also get a few scenes of Wilhelm, no doubt thinking about his troubled relationship with his own son and grandson, when seeing Motoyasu talk about Naofumi. However, unlike the Re:Zero world, Wilhelm and Reinhard have an actual chance to repair their relationship as Heinkel isn't around to throw a wrench into things. Hopefully, the events of this episode will get Wilhelm to reach out.

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Isekai Quartet 3 is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.