The dirty little secret of Mairimashita! Iruma-kun is that, while it’s very funny and usually quite whimsical and goofy, it’s actually really smart and sort of deep.  Take the whole “evil cycle” thing, as it relates to Iruma or just generally. I have no idea if the mangaka means any of this in the allegorical sense, but one could extrapolate some interesting hypotheses. Like that good Iruma is a quintessential Japanese, too polite and deferential to actually get shit done, and being “evil” is really just overcoming his cultural hangups. Or the transition to the evil cycle being child to adolescent. And maybe taking some of the “evil” assertiveness with him when he reverts, which would be adolescence to adulthood.

Cue this week’s episode, which indeed sees Iruma revert back to cinnamon roll form (eventually).  The most obvious manifestation of how smart this show is comes in the fact that it’s built around a central conceit that drives everything that happens – being good gets you ahead in life.  It sounds so straightforward, but in manga and anime terms that’s actually quite a subversive ideology.  Think hard – how many series truly adopt that philosophy, and stick to it?

Iruma’s most memorable line of this episode, certainly, was “Fools are indeed naive, but they can move the hearts of the masses”.  The truth is Iruma-kun is selling himself short here, because he’s anything but a fool.  He’s extremely smart, resourceful, and determined.  Too deferential, too conflict-averse, maybe.  But Iruma’s niceness is his superpower.  Remember, Iruma started out trying to do everything he could to avoid attracting attention to himself (and thus, being eaten).  But he does the exact opposite – simply through the power of being extremely nice and being good at stuff.

This is where the whole Evil Iruma thing is really clever, and indeed Kallego-sensei (no fool himself) cuts right to the heart of the matter.  “Your goal was to get the other students to notice you, right?”  And Iruma doesn’t try to deny it.  This is something Iruma Mark I would never do – indeed, it’s the most un-Japanese thing one can imagine.  The nail that sticks up gets hammered down, after all.  This isn’t about Iruma turning evil – it’s about him embracing what he was clearly born to be, whether he likes it or not.  Iruma always got noticed – the only thing that changed was that this time he did it on purpose.

Of course even here, “evil” Iruma is still being good.  He mostly did all this not for himself, but for his fellow students, who generally didn’t share in the adoration Iruma basked uncomfortably in.  The unfairness of that galled him, so he acted.  That’s not to say Iruma didn’t look suspiciously natural sitting on the big chair in the Royal One.  Or that he didn’t enjoy it.  Surely one of those repressed parts of his nature that Mark II loosed was a sense of pride in what he’s been able to accomplish.  Iruma may be the ultimate good boy but he’s still a teenaged male, and strutting for a bit was surely something a part of him always wanted to do.

In the end, you know, Kallego-sensei did outsmart Evil Iruma.  But Good Iruma saved his bacon, because all of the good will that Mark I has accumulated through his relentless decency was paid back with interest.  These are not mutually exclusive personas but two facets of the same jewel, and the fact that Iruma remembered everything that had happened (just as Ameri did) pretty much confirms that this experience will change him.  As for Royal One, yeah, it’s extremely posh – way more posh than these kids really need, truth be told.  But there’s a deeper reason why Iruma had to move to that classroom, surely.

And thus ends the reign of “terror” of Evil Iruma – for now.  Even Ali-san was a bit aghast at how powerful what he unleashed was, and how long it lasted.  Iruma-kun tries to apologize to everyone in sight, but truthfully, they had a blast.  Even Sullivan and Opera admit (silently) that both Irumas are pretty boss.  As for Kallego, I don’t know if he’ll be as pleased as you might think to see the return of Mark I – I think both Irumas irritate him, but Mark II at least for reasons he can understand.  Speaking of Kallego, this is the first time as far as I know that anyone but Clara has been on “Su-ki-ma” duty.  Is this the start of a new trend or a one-week aberration?