And we’re back.  For better or worse, without a beat being missed.  Which makes sense, since the first cour ended without any sense of finality – it was just a 14-week break between episodes instead of one.  The naming convention reflects that too – this seems officially to be “Episode 13” and I see no reason to go against that.  Given my feelings about the first cour I’d have to call that something of a mixed blessing, though I certainly didn’t expect anything different.

I wish I could say something clicked for me here, but that’s just not the case.  The whole school setting has been hit or miss for me from the start, and this ep was just sort of fine.  There were some good moments, and Mahoutsukai no Yome always has a certain aura of specialness about it that shines through.  But by its own standards Hogawarts is often a pretty mundane place to be. We have a lockdown in place due to the “Testament of Carnamagos” incident, though curiously for the second episode in a row that mystery gets almost no attention.

A few new developments include an “artificial fairy” sent by the Rickenbackers (that name keeps popping up), presumably to drag Philomela home, but that’s not quite clear.  We also get a little scene between Elias and Simeon dwelling on Elias’ education about friendship.  It’s probably the best part of the episode but also a reminder of how much this arc has turned Elias into a bit player (which is not a good thing).  Most of the oxygen goes to Fabio Zaccheroni, the obnoxious teacher who turned up in the waste tower incident in Episode 11.  This time around he’s here to give the students some practical lessons on self-defense, given the crisis.  Mostly, though, he seems more interesting in having fun bullying them and generally being a douche.

I certainly see why a shift in focus for these kids’ education makes sense under the circumstances.  But Fabio doesn’t do much for me as a character.  And a lot of the students have next to nothing to do in this sequence, symptomatic of how few of them are really relevant to the story (so far at least).  There’s a little exchange at the end between Mariel and Isaac which shows that the mystery hasn’t totally been abandoned, but most of the ep felt pretty much like filler.  It’s not a great (re)start, but I guess even middling Mahoutsukai is still better than most of the generic product on the schedule.