I just moved and am thus, unsurprisingly, exhausted.  But Mairimashita! Iruma-kun is the perfect show for such circumstances.  There are no bad times to watch it, to be sure.  But when you just want to relax and smile your face off, there’s nothing like this series.  It may never be the best show airing at any given time (subjective as that is) but it’s as close to functionally perfect an anime as I’ve seen in years – the Platonic ideal of a school comedy.  In terms of living its best life, Mairimashita Iruma-kun is the standard – it’s simply the best at being exactly what it sets out to be.

That starts with the main trio, of course.  Iruma, Clara, and Azz-Azz are for me perfect characters for all intents and purposes.  This wouldn’t work if Iruma wasn’t totally loveable without being self-aware about it, but of course he is.  But Azz and Clara are remarkable too.  They’re such ideal sidekicks, both as individuals and as a mismatched pair.  Hilariously funny, totally dedicated to Iruma-kun, just generally perfect.  Am I gushing?  Sorry – but an ep like this, which really shows off the main trio, brings it out in me.

Then we have Ali-san, a new addition to Team Iruma this season.  Another great creation by Nishi Osamu to be sure, but boy – I can’t imagine this character without Miki Shin’ichirou.  Talk about living your best life, Miki is like a jazz musician on the roll of his life here.  When he’s doing screwball comedy, Miki has the rare ability to make scripted material seem improvized.  He’s not just riffing here, but it sure seems like he is – and it all comes from the personal style he brings to the dialogue.  It reminds me in an odd way of Robin Williams’ performance in Aladdin – much of which was improvized, as it happens, so maybe Miki is freestyling just a bit here and there.

How adorable is it that Clara and Azz are so insecure about Iruma slipping back into his evil cycle that they’re clinging to him like toddlers?  And of course he can’t say no, even when his classmates come to his aid – so they all decide to dogpile themselves.  Here we get a reminder of Iruma’s insecurity – as it happens, he’s bad at studying (and tests).  Let’s not forget his human parents were such scum they never even sent him to school.  Iruma has developed self-confidence in many respects, but there’s no question part of him carries that fear about his past – that this could all go away at any moment.

Naturally his besties are going to help out – Azz, especially, as he’s seen a vision of Iruma as the demon king (duh).  Clara is, hilariously, a better student than Iruma – a blow to his self-confidence to be sure.  The arrival of Ameri’s stalker Eligoth Schenell into the battler is a bit of a spanner in the works (kind of a dick move by Ameri to pass him off on Iruma, actually) – he figures to be mainly a comic relief character, but I’ve been surprised by this series many times.  Fortunately Schenell is self-absorbed enough that the others are able to get back to studying – not that this goes well for Iruma, despite Azz’ best efforts to boost his confidence.

The highlight of this sequence for me was absolutely the “Who Wants To Be A Millionaire” parody.  I love Iruma but I mean, seriously – who the heck uses Clara of all people for a phone-a-friend?  The stakes are actually high here, because test results can impact ranking – and if Iruma drops a rank, that could be it for Ali-san’s corporeal form.  Fortunately for Iruma he stumbles on a book by the much-feared professor Balam – one which actually uses rather brilliant methods of confidence-building to set the student up for success.  As a result when Balam is the sub for netherworld history, Iruma is the only one happy about it.

Also – I definitely want to see Smart Clara for an episode…