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The Misfit of Demon King Academy
Episode 11

by Richard Eisenbeis,

How would you rate episode 11 of
The Misfit of Demon King Academy ?
Community score: 4.6

“In which our heroes show just how strong they have become.”

This episode is our big action climax for the arc and it shows. The animation quality is leaps above what we've seen in past episodes and (almost) every one of our main characters gets their chance to shine—whether it's Sasha and Ley giving beatdowns to the reincarnations of Kanon, or the fan club girls showing that the love of eight loyal friends is more powerful than that of 10 million people tricked into a racist fervor.

But most interestingly, it's the short fight between Misha and Diego that turns out to be the most pivotal, because in that scene we are finally given the piece of the puzzle that lets us figure out much of what's been going on.

As Diego stabs Misha, she points out that there is no way to hide what he has done: He has broken the rules of the exam and even murdered a student of a different school. Yet, instead of being shocked at his actions or going into full-on panic, he announces that it's fine because none of them were ever going to leave alive anyway.

This information puts everything to happen so far into a new light. To start, Diego wasn't just egging his students on to cheat and humiliate the Demon King Academy students in order to reinforce their anti-demon indoctrination, he was having them toy with their prey before killing them. This makes him all the more despicable—and his fate all the more cathartic.

But more importantly, knowing that the Hero Academy intended to kill the visiting demon children from the start, we can extrapolate more than a bit about their overall plan and the motives behind it. Obviously, killing the Demon King Academy students would cause a war between the demons and humans—which the genocidal voice of “Kanon” that is brainwashing the humans clearly wants. However, you'd think there are many more advantageous ways to start a war—ways that could frame the demons as the aggressors, for example. Yet, there is one glaring reason why they would choose to start a war by killing 60 or so children: because of who those children are.

The interschool exam was a trap from the start—a trap that would play upon the demons' Achilles' heel: their pride. While the war is long over, the demons still believe themselves to be superior. So when offered the chance to prove it, it's obvious they would send their strongest students to compete. This would, of course, include the “Generation of Chaos”—i.e., the children most likely to be the reincarnation of the demon king.

And that's the key. The holy water in the lake, the sword that inflicts unhealable wounds, the badges that boost magic power, the gathering and training of the reincarnations of the hero, the indoctrination of the civilians to boost the power of the Asc spell, the room filled with holy magic—all this has been part of a plan to assassinate the demon king reborn while he or she is young and weak (supposedly at one-tenth his former power). After all, from the humans' viewpoint, the war should be an easy win for them with the demon king dead this time around.

It's a satisfying explanation for all that has been going on this arc while still leaving a few mysteries to be solved. Who or what is Elenore exactly? Who is the owner of the “Kanon” voice that's all but mind-controlling the humans, and how has he/she been doing so? With two episodes remaining in this series, it feels like we have just enough time to get the answers we need and see Anos being his badass self one last time.

Rating:

Random Thoughts:

• Best fight of the episode: Sasha's fight. She was still able to both out-think and overpower one of Kanon's reincarnations without even using the artifacts that Anos previously gave her.

• That said, part of me actually questions if these are truly Kanon's reincarnations. I mean, the staff/students of Hero Academy are hardly reliable when it comes to dishing out important information.

• I blame Ms. Menou for Misha getting stabbed. The last time we saw Diego she was literally by his side so I hold her responsible for letting the obviously evil man sneak away.

• Everyone gets something cool to do this episode—except for Misa. All she did was look surprised when everyone was starting to get mind-controlled (though it was nice to see that she was more or less unaffected.)

• I think Lay using two different holy swords is a pretty clear indication of where his soul comes from.

• The fan club's song was both the best and worst part of the episode for me. The background music out of nowhere annoyed me but the “nice guy”-crushing lyrics made me laugh my butt off.

The Misfit of Demon King Academy is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.

Richard is an anime and video game journalist with over a decade of experience living and working in Japan. For more of his writings, check out his Twitter and blog.


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