First Impressions / High School DxD

「アーシア、救います！」 (Aashia, Sukuimasu!)
“We Will Save Asia!”

Listen to the voice of their breasts, Issei!

Dress Break & Pailingual

Surprisingly, it’s not Issei’s new ability that I want to talk about. It was foreshadowed a little bit and it came in handy, but it’s totally ridiculous, so I don’t have anything to say. “That shit is crazy.” There, I’m done.

What I liked was how Dress Break was played with. Often times the best written combat scenes, magical and otherwise—though this is especially important with magical combat, where abilities are often complex, numerous, and contradictory—don’t feature brand new attacks; rather, they utilize old ones in new ways and situations. Having Dress Break be immediately foiled was a nice touch, to add extra depth to what is otherwise a one-note joke attack, albeit a surprisingly effective one. Not that disarming someone isn’t always pretty useful, but in DxD it’s usually the nudity itself that stops a combatant, rather than the lower defenses or lack of weapons. A pro would never let a little nudity stop them.

But it was Issei using a variation of Dress Break to free Asia that I really liked. That’s riffing off a known spell in a new way, which is a lot of fun! It’s almost like they planned this all along, even though I assure you they did not; the author just realized he had a good out for that crisis when he got there. That’s the dream, as an author—it makes you look way more clever than you actually are.

Freed, The Running Joke Death

I was all pumped up for Freed’s (Matsuoka Yoshitsugu) return, and then he went all one-winged angel (trope!) and died like a bitch. Honestly, I’m hoping he comes back again; Freed would be a great running joke character, where he keeps surviving somehow and getting his ass kicked by Kiba every time. Anything to get more Matsuoka Yoshitsugu being crazy. If I can’t have more Sorata or Sora, I’ll take more crazy Freed, even if I know I’ll probably just get more Kirito instead. Enough seiyuu nerdery, moving on.

Diodora, The One-Dimensional Despair Fetishist

I’m glad Diodora is beaten; my only disappointed is that he isn’t dead. He’s a one-note villain, and by the time Issei was delivering the smackdown, I was already tiring of him. It wasn’t even as cathartic as I expected since he was such a clown! I didn’t when it was revealed that Diodora planned to get Asia excommunicated, though. That could easily be a retcon on the original author’s part, but if so, it fits nicely in with what we know of Diodora, so it worked. It’s just that Diodora was so uninteresting himself that his time was fast running out. I hope we never see him again.

Looking Ahead – What The Fuck?! Asia!

My first instinct when Asia disappeared: Vali did it. What he said in the preview about a partial transformation makes me think Vali is using Asia to level up Issei so he can get a good fight. As far as villain motivations, let’s-power-up-the-guy-who-will-inevitably-defeat-me is among my least favorite, so I hope I’m wrong. (Tag those spoilers, LN readers. You’ve been AWESOME about that so far this season.) Either way, Issei is going berserk, so the hype is real.

tl;dr: @StiltsOutLoud – Issei becomes the Breast Whisperer & saves Asia, while Freed re-dies like a bitch. And another cliffhanger, GAH! #haremking s3e8

Random thoughts:

My first novel, Wage Slave Rebellion, is available now. (More info—now available in paperback!) Sign up for my email list for a FREE sequel short story. Over at stephenwgee.com, the last four posts: Practical freedom, Old to them, Stop sending me job ideas, and Schrödinger’s Skill.

 

Preview

43 Comments

  2. Anything to get more Matsuoka Yoshitsugu being crazy. If I can’t have more Sorata or Sora, I’ll take more crazy Freed, even if I know I’ll probably just get more Kirito instead. Enough seiyuu nerdery, moving on.

    Heard of the names Bell Cranel & Yukihira Soma, Stilts-kun?
    You would like their stories too.

    Techim
    Reply

      2. The operative word there is “almost”.

        Though I realized after rewatching episode 8 of Danmachi for the 3rd time that Bell one-upping Kirito is a huge an understatement.

        Reikakou
        Reply

  3. Enjoyable recap I miss Sorata and Sora too.

    Now I would teach my female minions that there is no shame in their beautiful bodies so no spell needed. Heck they start the battle naked after all naked is a good combat outfit for fast movement combat and opponents can’t grab cloth, need to tie down the hair though or shave the heads. Although I’d teach them fencing so if they hit armored opponents they can lunge in though the joints. And I like the shaved look on some girls want to give them a head rub. Of course the evil Diodora would only want to suppress the embarisment so he could bring it back later.

    Curious just caught up with first posting on DXD. How is hairum anime chauvinistic? My first thought is feminists are throwing bisexuals under the bus as true bisexuals are not satisfied with only one partner.

    But this is a subject that you have to be sure of what definition of hairum we are talking about. Most hair manga, light novels and anime using the term hair is a poor description a better description would be multi suitor tales as the members of the group have no intention to share and ether the tale will end in the poorly worded hairum ending with no one chosen but clearly one must be sometime or with a happy couple. I don’t see how a multi suitor hairum tale is any more chauvinistic than any women fiction with more than one love interest.

    Now you have high school DXD that at least the males goal is a real hairum and females that at least reluctantly will share. I call these want to be hairum tales even if in the end it ends up with a couple. As in the past hairum were made by forcing women basically as slaves into them I can see a feminist worry but still don’t understand objections to consensual unions. The few real harms in Anime like in Tears for Tera probably should not be called hairum as they are quite different than the typical anime/manga hairum. In Tears for Tera as it was based off an adult game and history the bring up the lead getting 3 wives (a 4th joins the group but the anime does not mention the marriage) in a time when you had to sleep with them but proceeds to never show any romance except with wife one and that very tame the lead sleeps by himself. Tears does show female interactions still stay interesting even after marriage though same with Utawarerumono although there they never even mention that most of the girls hanging around the male are married to him in the source material. Authors should know that yes couples after they get together can be boring but multiple group marriages things still hoping as balance must be maintained. Would love to tell the DXD writer that hey you can get them together the jockeying will never end oh and guys having more than one is constant work trying like with kids never to have a favorite might be more than you want to deal with.

    There is one chauvinistic element I know, no female actually having multiple male sexual partners share her in manga/anime is that the chauvinism? Daphne in the Brilliant blue I love that the boss female of the main character actually has multiple male lovers and is not looked down on for it but she is having them one at a time. Some women want a male hairum, Catherine the Great basically had one.

    RedRocket
    Reply

    1. To be very brief: The subtext of most harem anime is that of the main (male) character “collecting” all of the female characters into his harem. That’s a very male-centric point of view, and even though a lot of authors take great pains to make their female characters, well, characters instead of shallow one-dimensional fetish vehicles, the subtext remains.

      That said, not all fiction needs to be a paragon of feminism (or any other -ism). Plenty of ladies love Twilight, and it’s if anything worse. I was merely noting that nearly all harem anime are to some degree chauvinistic, and some more than other.

      Compare this to something like Log Horizon, where yes, there are at one point three ladies who are interested in Shiroe, but it never feels like a harem; that’s because those characters’ attraction for Shiroe aren’t about him collecting haremettes, but about them and their romantic interest/subplot—which happens to overlap.

      None of this means you can’t enjoy a show like DxD. I’m a feminist, and I do. I just prefer to go in aware.

      Stilts
      Reply

  4. Im done. I thought Issei was about to pull out some Reality Marble nonsense, and then the boobs starts talking, hahaha!

    Diadora was such a disappointing villain, he just got beat on and never had a chance. I thought he was supposed to be powerful.

    And WTF happened to Asia at the end? She just vanished?

    YanDaMan
    Reply

    2. Diodora was never meant to be powerful. He is just proud of the demonic power he was born with, he never trained one single day in his life. Plus, the main villain of this arc will show up next week, he was just a side dish.

      Ise has been training daily for about 3 or 4 months, and 1 of those were with a motherf*cking Dragon in a mountain. (More or less, the timeline in DxD is not something easy to know with 100% certainty)

      Pedro
      Reply

      2. 1- Loki don’t done yet.

        2- He was strong, but also the most irrelevant villain in the entire series. Even Reynalle and Kokabiel were more relevant to the overall plot than him, so not a big deal in the slightest.

        Pedro
        Reply

  6. Well,i am sorry to disappoint you then Stilts but freed is finally a goner for good this time 😀
    As for Asia, Show Spoiler ▼

    Kinda confused on what to think of this season now since they are apparently trying to follow the plot in the order we got from the novels now, even though they reshuffled the first ones to fit with loki instead of Sona (which is a shame, that rating game would be so much more fun! ) and we got our valkyrie sooner than needed (although that one can be forgiven with how adorable she has been the few times she showed up so far 😛 )

    damrod
    Reply

  7. Great episode, even with some minor changes to give Issei the time/motivation to develop his new skill under different circumstances. I was scared when they made Diodora’s minions a threat that they would juice up McF*ckhead himself and make it a real fight, then OH so glad to see they left it as a curb-stomping. And the promise of a date giving Akeno a major power-spike is probably my favorite moment in the entire series.

    Only part they screwed up was the end. It was supposed to be less “I need a minute to turn into a dumb blonde and pray in the middle of an on-going battlefield” and more “Let’s go home, Asia. …Asia? Asia?!.

    Next episode: You… made the wrong choice.

    Aex
    Reply

  8. Well, better late than never. Bilingual (or whatever you call it in the anime) is supposed to be introduced earlier which events were not shown in the anime, so this isn’t the time where it’s supposed to debut, but still awesome to know it’s here.

    Now I will just skip this episode and wait till “that” happens which is likely to be next episode, and binge watch ’em. <3

    Red HeartGold ZX
    Reply

  11. I’m really tnankful that I decided to watch this episode in the privacy of my room instead of while commuting to work on a crowded train. I might suddenly throw away my phone when Issei used the Dress Break and the girls continued to fight naked anyway. Probably the censored version is a fucking mess with all the oppai that they have to cover up.

    Diadora simply collected all the hatred that I harbored over Shinji Matou all this time in just 2 episodes. To think that all of his evil pieces were former nuns/holy maidens that he seduced then raped. In any case, it reminded me that they are still devils, the epitome of evil and malice.

    I think I need to re-read the LNs again to brain bleach myself once this season is over.

    Reikakou
    Reply

  12. First of… most of you have some questions right?

    1. Why did Diodora was not killed?
    2. Where did Asia gone into after she disappeared into the light.
    3. Who is the one who made Asia disappear
    4. Will Asia be saved?
    5. What’s so speacial about those tentacles? (IDK what do they look like?)

    I want to say that I will answer the questions and separate them accordingly and will say Major Spoiler to some of the questions so please read at your own risk and please don’t blame me. Well don’t worry to much about it because those so-called Major Spoilers will be more or less be shown after 1-2 episodes

    1. Show Spoiler ▼

    2. Major Spoilers for this volume only Show Spoiler ▼

    3. Major Spoilers for this volume only Show Spoiler ▼

    4. Major Spoilers for this volume only Show Spoiler ▼

    5. Major spoilers for this volume only Show Spoiler ▼

    Ceimur
    Reply

  16. I’m so glad they did this episode right. Few minor changes but most of it I can let it slide.

    Show Spoiler ▼

    Can’t wait till next ep.

    Nameless422
    Reply

  17. HOLY S**T. Issei’s tranquil fury (trope!) knows no bounds. After hearing in detail what Diodora wanted to do to Asia, who could blame him?

    Also, Freed?! How are you still ali- *Cue Kiba curb-stomping Freed after the latter’s long explanation of Diodora’s plans for Asia* Nevermind… XD

    Incognito
    Reply

    1. You didn’t saw any difference?
      Weird, the censored one should have added weird cencorbars with wings on the breasts and the like while the uncenconsered one has none of that…

      damrod
      Reply

  20. this episode reminded me why issei is my favorite harem mc, for the most part he’s a nice guy who loves him some oppai, but when that armor comes on he will beat the crap out of you…..

    cookievalenzuela666
    Reply

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