Well, since it’s the elephant in the room, let’s address it up front – was Mugaro a girl all along, or is Nina simply a baka of the highest order?  Since I’m too lazy to go back and check old episodes for personal pronoun usage, I suppose it’s an open question for now (and even so – would pronouns matter if no one, you know- checked?).  I suspect it’s Nina being thick as a plank, because to be honest I think the gag is funnier that way (and I mean, she is).  But all the dialogue this week was careful to use only “kodomo” so it’s clear Shingeki no Bahamut wants to milk the gag for a while, either way.

In any case, this week’s episode starts off with Nina and Mugaro off on a shopping spree (where did she get the money?), which provided one of the more wistful and humorous sequences of what’s been an altogether dark show so far.  That didn’t last for long, though, as the two of them stumbled upon yet another scene of cruelty towards demon slaves playing out in the streets.  Nina interferes – naturally – but it’s the threat to her that prompts Mugaro to show his/her power.  That’s significant since the angels are in town searching for Mugaro and this pretty much telegraphed his/her (typing that’s gonna get old pretty fast) presence.

My favorite scene of the episode, though, was Kaisar and Rita’s lunch date.  It’s always been kind of an open secret that Rita had a crush on Kaisar, but the way this was staged was pretty brilliant.  Kaisar is such an open book, so naive and forthright and lacking in duplicity – and so dense too, of course (as Rita would confirm).  Kaisar is the sort of person for whom an irreconcilable clash between two ideals is especially difficult – he so desperately wants to see the world in black and white, but it persists in being grey.

Rita’s shaming is enough to push Kaisar to flat-out confront Charioce, it seems, and to his credit he pretty much does lay all his cards on the table.  It’s feeling like it’s time for Favaro to make his appearance soon, I think – Kaisar is kind of stuck at the moment without something to kick things forward, and I think Favaro is it.  In a funny sort of way Kaisar and Favaro complete each other – there’s something missing in each of them that the other has in abundance, and I think both of them know it.

In fact, it feels in general like we’ve reached a nexus point in the story where elements are going to start colliding in a big way.  Azazel has made his strongest case yet why the demons should rally around him (he has the red dragon), Bacchus and Hamsa have confirmed that they’ve inherited a huge headache in Mugaro, and the Gods pretty much know now that Mugaro is alive and kicking in the capital.  Chaorice and Kaisar’s conflicting visions of the way forward for humanity are about to go to war with each other, and everyone in the cast is going to have to pick a side.