Hi everyone. Before we dive into today’s episode of Tensura, I wanted to give you a little bit of an update on how things are going. We are nearing the 7 year anniversary of this blog and I have some small changes in mind for when that time comes in about two weeks from now. But for now I’ve decided to keep things going kind of slow. There will not be a Hesitant Hero chapter next week – we are at chapter 30 after all so that was always the plan – but there might be a small update on the progress of the series. Besides that update, I only have 2 more posts planned for September. A recap of Chapter 20 of The Ancient Magus Bride and the final episode recap of Tensura season 4. Things will go back to normal in October with some added new plans, but I’ll get to that. I’ve been a little bit burned out again – which happens from time to time, if you’ve been here for a while you’ll know that – but with fall coming up and the exhaustion of the first few weeks back to teaching soon behind me, I hope to pick up the slack in October and November. But more on that later, for now, let’s focus on the subject of today’s post, and that is of course Tensura.

Of course we’re going to spend some time humanizing the villain in this episode. He is about to lose to Rimuru after all, so we need to at least feel a little bit bad for him. It looks like Maria was truly a good bean and Gran likely was a good bean up until things went south for the party and Maria died. Seeing the opening for the second half of this series again knowing everything that has happened so far makes me think they put a lot of very good thought into this one. The words and backgrounds we see surrounding all the important characters really fits the narrative arc we’ve seen our cast go through. I’m guessing today we get to see Razul and Shion fight, looking at the way the episode started and the things we’re missing from the opening.

Can I just say, I miss female Charys. Can we get her back instead of the male version? But Charys has the same plan as Rimuru. Get the magic suppressing mask onto Chronoa and dive into their souls to try and get Hinata and Chloe out of there. Meanwhile we get the fight between Razul and Shion, with a little help from Ranga. Razul is an insect from the underworld that was named by Gran. Razul has been following Gran faithfully ever since the day he was named, and that still holds true now until the very end. Even though Gran’s dream has become completely twisted, it’s still the goal. But with Shion going all out, I doubt even this monster of a creature can defeat her. She’s incredibly strong and has regenerative powers due to dying once. Although I am losing some faith in her as she’s simply being blocked over and over again. I’m going to be honest. This fight feels like it’s straight out of Fairy Tail. Shion is about to power up because of her feelings. I don’t hate that kind of stuff, but she’s simply hitting the guy over and over again until we all know it will eventually work. It is nice to see her talking through her trauma that she gained from dying though. She’s pretty stoic about her feelings normally so it’s good to hear her admit what she struggles with. It looks like the constant harassing of her blade on Razul’s exoskeleton has greeted a small cut that Shion can abuse now that she’s at full power. But it does look like her sword broke in the process. It’s a sacrifice worth making at least. 

And with that, Razul has died and his spirit is traveling somewhere. And that somewhere is back to Gran, who is absorbing his power and soul. Having let down both of his companions and taken their souls into himself, he still hasn’t learned his lesson. I’m guessing that this skill Sariel he’s gained from all of this is similar to Rimuru’s Raphael. Speaking of which, Rimuru seems to have managed to put the mask onto Chronoa while Leon and Veldora were keeping her busy. Fully powered up, Gran and Luminus face off and to my surprise it’s Gran that falls here. Either this is a fakeout of sorts and he’ll be back or this is simply Gran giving up to be with his friends in the afterlife? I’m a little bit confused. 

But let’s shrug off the confusion and instead have a look at a beloved character again. Inside of this dreamscape that Rimuru finds himself in, we meet Shizu-san once more. She seems to be here to guide Rimuru to Chronoa. Chronoa seems to immediately recover upon meeting Rimuru. Despite the much happier reunion than we expected, there are still some pretty big roadblocks. Chloe is still stuck in unlimited imprisonment inside of the hero and Hinata has already passed away. With how much we’ve been exploring Hinata’s past trauma and how many times she’s avoided death so far, I do hope this time it’s a more permanent solution. I initially predicted that Chronoa might become Hinata’s new body but I don’t think that prediction was correct. By now I think it’s more likely that she will be a combination of Chloe and Chronoa, with Hinata having unfortunately fully passed away. But as you all know, I’m very bad at predicting where this story is going. With the season soon coming to an end, we need to resolve a few things before we can truly move on from this arc. We need to resolve Leon’s plot in trying to find Chloe, we need to get a definitive answer to what has happened to Hinata and we need to resolve everything surrounding Chronoa. Also, I wonder if we get to see more of Guy Crimson. With everything looking like things are headed towards a confrontation with the Eastern Empire in the future, I think the Western Nations probably need to figure out all of their domestic demon lords first before we can go into an arc like that without it becoming far too messy. But sometimes messy can be good, so perhaps we’ll have a neutral or even antagonistic Guy while the east and west fight it out. For now, I’m going to stop making predictions because they’re probably wrong anyway. I hope you enjoyed this recap and my thought on the episode and as always, thanks for reading!