Say whatever else you want to say about Heion Sedai no Idaten-tachi, but it’s sure as hell not generic.  I get that mangaka Coolkyoushinja is hotter than a four-dollar stove (three adaptations in one season) but under normal circumstances it’s hard to imagine this series ever being produced in the first place.  As would any anime fan with a shred of decency I have serious problems with MAPPA, but I’ll give them credit – this is an incredibly distinctive and stylish production.  Drawing inspiration from classic Gainax it delivers insanely cool visuals week after week, whatever its budget may be (and I’m guessing it’s reasonable but far from huge).

Idaten is a weird show, no doubt about it.  I’ve found it hilarious, shocking, clever, and genuinely exciting in turn.  This was a taut and compelling episode, but I have to say I found it genuinely depressing for its sheer Nihilistic abandon.  This is just dark and evil shit going on here, and there are no conventional good vs. evil narratives to fall back on.  Take what happens to Buzz and Merku Milano, for example, who unwittingly doom themselves by going to Piscalet for help with their offspring.  What has Buzz done wrong, exactly?  As far as we’ve seen he’s never hurt anybody, and never show any interest in hurting anybody.  He just wanted to hide out with his girl on a deserted island and screw like crazy.  So are we supposed to think it was right to slaughter the pair of them?

Of course there’s another side to this, which is that on some level the very existence of demons is a threat to everything else on the planet, and that’s why the Idaten exist in the first place.  Buzz and Milano turning their Cthulhu babies loose in the ocean is a bad thing (especially if you’re a whale).  And apparently if purebred demons don’t go through the “fusion” process by the age of two weeks, this is what they turn into.  Of course for Miku of the Godlike foresight, this is just the distraction she needs to risk contacting Over-M.  And it’s what finally shakes Rin out of her stupor (although not until seven years later).

Rin’s method of contacting the demon lord is insanely clever even if I say so myself.  When Zobel fell she gave him a slip of paper with a gibberish word, “batchyrogeh” – a word with no Google hits (it’s true, I checked – until now I guess).  When Over-M sees that word come up he knows it’s time to connect, and Miku has even prepared a mini-robot body for him.  As for Kuraishi, the means of contact (necessary as he’s the one who has the lab space) is an old password from when Miku and Ferlandia (yes, that is Kobayashi Yuu playing her) were kids.

Miku’s game, in the meantime, is to lay low and wait for the shotas to be old enough to breed – which is apparently 7.  Meanwhile Corey has gotten a lot stronger, and much to Hayato’s irritation the reason is simple – he grew up.  This is an advantage humans and demons have over Idaten, who pop into the world in their final form (though I think the ledger still heavily favors them).  Gil is also getting stronger at an insane (for Idaten) pace, and eventually she and Hayato are an even match for Corey in a fight.

All of the usual caveats about endings for ongoing manga adaptations apply here (though at this point I’m not assuming anything where sequels are concerned).  How would you even end a series like this – a series with no protagonists, really, and no moral center?  I don’t have a clue but I’m genuinely curious.  And what’s more I’m definitely going to miss this series – even if it sometimes (like this week) made me feel sick, I’ve always found it to be one of the shows I was genuinely looking forward to every week.