To cut straight to the point, that ep was kind of a snoozer.  I mean, coming off that (over)extended flashback run, did we really need an entire episode focused on Asta?  She’s fine but honestly, do I really care that much about a character I barely know?  The pacing in general seems a bit clunky these last several weeks, and it feels for all the world as if Helck is stalling for time here.  Obviously that implies a third cour has already been greenlit which would be good news, but it’s not doing much for my engagement level with the series.

There a bit of modestly interesting stuff with Azudora laying out his Plan A (the principals of which are nowhere to be seen), and giving vent to his suspicions that the humans are up to something.  But after that it jumps right into following Asta around the human’s castle, with a lot of minutiae that wasn’t very interesting and a bunch of spy jokes that weren’t very funny.

The only really engaging part of the ep came at the end, when fleeing pursuers causes Asta to have an encounter with Shalamy  That’s a name we haven’t heard for a while, and interestingly enough she hasn’t been awakened (I assume her father made that part of the deal).  She’s also apparently been kept a prisoner in the castle, and doesn’t even seem to know about the war and the awakening.  She and Asta do hit it off, and I suppose they could develop a friendship that’s the start of a detente between humans and demons.  That would at least mean this episode will have been relevant, if not particularly riveting.