My Status as an Assassin Obviously Exceeds the Hero's

Episode 11

Latty is an enigmatic character—though not for the usual reasons. Rather than her actions being mysterious or inconsistent, everything she does fits within the persona she portrays—i.e., the happy-go-lucky daughter of the Demon King going through the equivalent of teenage rebellion by acting as a hero to the non-demon races. What makes her “enigmatic” is two-fold.

Firstly, all the other demons we've seen have been as dishonorable as they are powerful. Even the Demon King, known for keeping peace between the Demons and other races, has gone back on that in spectacularly bloody fashion to try and capture Amelia. It's hard to trust Latty by association, although she's never acted against our heroes or their interests.

The second is that it feels like Latty is spouting platitudes she doesn't actually believe in. It's like she's committed to playing the role of a storybook hero—walking the walk and talking the talk—but doesn't have any noble intentions at her core, pushing her to do so.

To put it another way, she's hard to understand because we don't know her motivations—and thus can't guess how far she would go to keep up her heroic persona. Would she fight other demons to save humans or beastmen? Would she stand up to her father directly? Since we don't know her backstory, we can't measure her resolve, making her a wildcard despite her acting in line with Akira and Amelia's goals.

This episode adds to the sense of unease surrounding the character by reminding us just how much of a threat Latty would be if she stood against our heroes. After all, we've seen just how powerful third and second-rank demons are, but she's the literal daughter of the Demon King. She's able to not only prevent a man from standing up by lightly placing a hand on his shoulder, but also crumple his platemail armor simply by closing her fist. This all adds up to make her one of the show's more interesting characters.

The rest of the episode continues Akira's struggles with his impending first kill. For much of the episode, he's seeing things in a false dichotomy—either he's never killed anyone, or he's a murderer. But even in the real world, we know there's more nuance to it than that. It's good that he's hesitant to take a life, but doing so to protect your friends and loved ones is not the same as killing for fun and profit.

And to be frank, the more we learn about Gram, the more he feels like an active threat to those Akira cares about or feels responsible for. Gram's actions are not only evil in and of themselves, but they will also almost certainly be used as an excuse to start a major war when they are discovered by the neighboring kingdom—almost certainly putting Akira's brainwashed classmates on the front lines as a result.

So while Akira logically knows Gram needs a good killing, he still needs an emotional crutch to help him get over that last hump—which is why he exposes himself to and Amelia to Gram. He wants the excuse and anger that would come from Gram doing something overtly aggressive to Amelia to get himself motivated for the kill. Will it work? We'll just have to see next week.

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My Status as an Assassin Obviously Exceeds the Hero's is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.