It’s going to seriously suck if The Duke of Death and His Black Maid gets cut off at the pass after next week.  The anime is certainly doing nothing to hustle things along, and if it were to end here, one might reasonably ask “what was the point?”.  I mean, it’s not as if they could reasonably have expected it to sell a bunch of Blu-rays or something.  Fortunately I do think that’s pretty unlikely.  The manga has finished, the remaining material fits one cour pretty neatly, and the budget for the anime is obviously pretty minimal.

As a manga reader I’d say the wizardry school arc is a good one, well worth waiting for.  You might call me hypocritical for saying that after dissing Mahoutsukai for doing the same thing, but these are very different series.  Shinigami Bocchan is pretty much tailor-made for this sort of material, and it’s tonally much more consistent with the series as a whole.  I quite like the design Nico has used here too – the place looks like some sort of Chinese palace (for some reason).

Before we get there, though, there’s the usual pattern to work through.  We start with a fluff chapter – this time it’s Viola doing a makeover on Daleth, who could not be more hopelessly in love.  I think she’s in fine shape with Walter, too – he’s just so profoundly lacking in practical life experience that he has no clue how to demonstrably reciprocate her feelings.  We also get a little snippet of the journal, which contains an entry from Sharon.  It does reveal her as a rather irreverent person, but more pointedly it seems to indicate a very friendly relationship with Sade.

Bocchan is grinding over whether to invite Viola to the school (Walter will basically invite himself), but once Caph shows up and spills the beans Viola isn’t going to be denied.  She loves the idea of wearing a school uniform and hates the idea of being left out – it’s a no-brainer for her.  She (using her mother’s money – she surprisingly OK’s the outing) commandeers an entire coach for everyone to ride in.  Except for Daleth and Keto, who ride on it – Daleth is in full-on stalker mode by now, and unwilling to let Walter head off anywhere unseen.

The school, as mentioned, is quite a striking place.  It has only four students (people with magical ability are hard to find) and three teachers including Nico and Ichi.  The third is Flea (Iwata Mitsuo).  He’s a witch, interestingly, someone you wouldn’t necessarily expect to be working for a sorcerer.  But he professes himself to be an admirer of Nico, and Nico announced that Flea is going to be the main teacher for the newly-arrived sextet.  Walter (who can’t even bring himself to say Nico’s name, and switches to “Sanco”) only intends to stay a week, but that’s only enough to learn the basics of sorcery.

Walter’s role in all this is, as usual, among the most interesting.  Viola is here on a lark, the others are here with a very specific purpose in mind (though Caph has her own twist on it, which Ichi has taken a personal interest in).  But Walter is different.  This is a test of how seriously to take his claim that he plans to break his brother’s curse himself – he’s going to have to wager a lot more than a week of his time on it if he is.