Isekai Quartet 3

Episode 6

Rather than a one-off episode as the last few have been, this episode focuses on setting up the season's overarching threats—both the real one and the imagined one.

The real threat ties together these past few, seemingly irrelevant, episodes. The monstrous morning glories grown by Mare have been moved to the wooded area of the school grounds—right next to where Wiz has buried all the zombie pasta monsters. I think it's pretty obvious our heroes will be facing off against some kind of zombie pasta-fed morning glory monster abomination in the season finale.

However, far more interesting is the imagined threat. For Class 2, this is Shadow. Having someone as all-powerful and enigmatic as Shadow running free in the background has our heroes worried. However, they've long since learned the best course of action in this world is to talk things through whenever able—so that's exactly what Tanya does.

Unsurprisingly, Tanya and Alpha get on well as the unquestioned leaders of their respective groups. Likewise, Alpha and Raphtalia also see eye-to-eye since both women long to be more useful to the men they love.

There's also a hidden joke in this scene, which also explains why CZ2128 Delta is present. Alpha, Raphtalia, and CZ2128 Delta are all played by the same voice actress, Asami Seto. So this scene is largely just Aoi Yūki (Tanya) and Rina Hidaka (Filo) watching Asami Seto talk to herself. That must have been a fun day in the recording booth.

On a side note, if you've wondered why Tanya's squad member, Grantz, gets so many lines in this anime despite being a relatively unimportant side character in his own show, it's because he's also played by Subaru's voice actor, Yūsuke Kobayashi. Likewise, if you've ever noticed that pairs like Emilia and Megumin (Rie Takahashi), Rem and Beta (Inori Minase), and Mare and Puck (Yumi Uchiyama) seem to always have speaking lines in the same episodes, now you know why.

Anyway, once Tanya leaves and Pandora's Actor pops in to mention Tanya's nickname, Alpha concludes that Class 2 must be part of the Cult of Diablos. Of course, this is far from the first time something like this has happened. Back in the ninth episode of the first season, Tanya came to the conclusion that Aqua, as a god, must be Being X and almost attacked her. This just goes to show that, try as they might, these characters are affected by the plot structures of their own respective worlds on a subconscious level. After all, in The Eminence in Shadow world, Alpha would likely be correct with her hunch.

The problem is, unlike Class 2, Shadow Garden hasn't yet learned that they need to question their instincts and assumptions as this school world plays by entirely different rules than what they're used to. Thus, the episode ends with Shadow Garden getting ready for the impending battle with Class 2—unable to see that Cid's prophetic words (i.e., random mumblings that sound cool) are actually foreshadowing the zombie plant monster.

And to put a final capstone on things, we get a nice little moment showing off the unique relationship between Cid and Delta. Delta is the only member of Shadow Garden who sees Cid for who he truly is—an incredibly powerful kid just playing out his own fantasies. The thing is, she doesn't care—and isn't smart enough to understand the implications. To her, all that matters is that Cid is the strongest (which he legitimately is) and that they get to “hunt” together (which they do). And because of her low intelligence and inability to do “improv scenes” with him like the rest of the girls, she is the one person he readily drops his mask in front of. After all, in his heart, he is grateful to Delta and the others for continuing to indulge him from time to time with their long-running Shadow Garden game of pretend. If he has to break character to make sure Delta can enjoy the game too, he's more than willing.

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Isekai Quartet 3 is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.