In today’s episode we finally learn a little bit more about Maribel and her family. I had my suspicions about her – being so powerful at such a young child – but she is indeed someone who has reincarnated from another world, just like Rimuru, Yuuki, Masayuuki, Shizu, Hinata and all the others we’ve encountered so far. I kind of like that so many people get transported or reincarnated here, it makes the fact that Rimuru is beyond overpowered a little less boring, because there are other forces at work in this world as well. I am going to call this super early, but Leon is also someone from the modern world and whatever it is he is trying to do has something to do with bringing someone else – perhaps a lover – into the world of Tensura. I’m probably very wrong about this, but sometimes it’s fun to throw out crackpot theories.
Either way, we learn that Maribel was a powerful noblewoman in Europe in her previous life who had it all and died of old age, happy and rich. Due to how she was in her previous life, she’s become the epitome of greed in her new life, quickly using her newfound powers to control people by making use of their inherent greed. She then teams up with her grandfather – who is apparently over a millennium old? – and they want to create a world where all humans are equal but under the rule of the Rozzo family. And it probably shouldn’t be lost on us that it said humans instead of people, and if my Japanese is right they also used the word for “humanity” here, which very clearly excludes a whole group of people that this story happens to be centered around. After this lengthy introduction, the opening theme plays.
We return to the dungeon and the newly formed Avatar Team which is of course the avatars of Ramiris, Milim, Veldora and Rimuru. As we saw at the end of last week’s episode, they are not very good at working with their avatars yet. They need to learn to work as a team, but first they’re going to Kurobe to get some gear. They then go on a training arc on the first few floors of the dungeon and weak avatars or not, it feels a bit unfair to have three demon lords and the storm dragon gang up on a bunch of beginners in the dungeon that they themselves are charging money to enter. With team Green Fury about to enter the 50th floor, Rimuru and friends need to be ready at a moment’s notice. And by fully cheating, they manage to defeat team Green Fury. Are we the bad guys?
So we move back to the Rozzo’s and it’s now Maribel and Yuuki – the sponsors of team Green Fury – talking about how to take out Rimuru. I suddenly feel a lot less bad about how team Green Fury was treated in Tempest, knowing who’s backing them. We talked about the opening already in the first post and how I thought Maribel might be possessing Yuuki, but at this point I’m not certain that’s true. There was a glow to his eyes though and although the wet nurse we saw with Maribel earlier this episode had that glow too, according to her grandfather both of Maribel’s parents were also taken by her power, but they didn’t have the glow in their eyes. Perhaps Yuuki is already under her control and working with her for that reason, but she hasn’t unleashed a more full control over him because there has been no need? I’m probably getting ahead of myself again.
This is one of the big downsides – or upsides depending on how you look at it – of writing large parts of this post while watching the episode for the first time. Of course I will regularly go back and adjust things when I’m wrong or when there’s a change in how certain information is presented, but it also turns into me explaining a power right before the show explains it. Here we learn that Maribel’s power does indeed have two effects. She can basically charm a person into working with her, or force her will upon them. The reason she’s taking her time with Yuuki and hasn’t immediately cast her magic on Rimuru is because if someone strong catches on to the power, they can negate it. And of course she’s fully gotten Yuuki under her control. I somehow doubt it’s that easy, and I think this is just Yuuki playing pretend with a back-up plan so he can fight Rimuru and then claim he had no choice later on. Finally, before we end the episode, the nobleman at the end of season 3 – the one that tried to get Rimuru indebted – gets assassinated by Maribel’s agents before Souei can get to him. Not only that, Souei couldn’t spot the assassin which makes them quite the threat. With that we are now three episodes in and things are already speeding up. A friendly reminder that with 5 cours, we still have over 50 episodes to go before we’re at the end of what’s been promised, so lots of things could still happen. Thanks for reading and I hope to see you all here again next week!
Opal Kaharis 