「なまずって、おいしい?」 (Namazutte, Oishii?)
“Does Catfish, Taste Good?”

Kumo Desu ga, Nani ka’s fifth episode continues Kumoko’s journey through the cavern as she faces off against the newer fearsome adversaries that greet her in the magma cavern. But whereas the last episode was purely Kumoko, they added a little welcome tidbit of information from the human world that calls attention to Kumoko’s current journey.

The one thing I’m appreciating about the human scenes is how much they juxtapose Fei with Kumoko considering that the only thing that’s keeping Fei from being hunted down is their familiarity with her as a classmate. She’s able to build a connection with Shun, but her dragon form makes her inadvertently carry on the same kind of traits and growth track that other slayable monsters have.

Whereas the Taboo skill is somewhat of a cool ability that Kumoko revels in as it gives her enough of a boost to take on the lava monsters, Fei is in a vulnerable position after she accidentally got the Kin Eater title. Yuri’s overzealous religious fanaticism drives her to insanity as her discovery of Taboo skills makes her want to patrol for anyone with a Taboo skill so she can kill them.

With Episode 05, it’s the first instance where one section seems to compliment the other with how our knowledge from Kumoko’s Kin Eater and Taboo is used as a basis to understand why Fei is concerned for her well-being. Notably, it would be unnerving if Yuri isn’t the only person who tried to intentionally hunt down people that were labeled with Taboo skill traits. On top of this, we get a hint that Julius is traversing down the same cavern that Kumoko is in. It should be interesting to see if eventually, Kumoko’s POV ends up converging with the human realm given how the two feel like night-and-day at the moment.

19 Comments

  1. Kumoko’s skill path can lead her down to becoming a demon lord. I wonder if this series will end up with Kumoko being the demon lord and fighting her reincarnated classmates. I also wonder if Kumoko is strong enough to fight a pack of humans now that she has evolved twice and has poisonous webbing. Maybe she kills Julius, and this leads to Shun wanting to get revenge on her.

    Vance
  2. I really get the feeling that Kumoko is going to be directly, or at least indirectly involved in Julius’ death.

    Also, Yuri is seriously moving into Yandere territory. She scares me just a little more each episode. She clearly has a few screws loose, and I really get the remaining screws are getting looser rather than tighter.

    hjerry
    1. Because of how they decided to adapt this, it sure feels disjointed, in LN we don’t get to see humans for a loooong time, but here they decided to do their own thing.

      They are giving slight hints on what is happening relative to the story, like when Kumoko got that earth dragon egg, and same episode Fei shows up, think about that for a bit.

      Michael
      1. As a Light Novel reader, they’ve dropped a lot of hints and foreshadowing.

        Please, whatever you do DO NOT read any Wiki or TV Tropes or anything because pretty much *any* explanation or description will contain major spoilers.

        What I find amusing is that the bits that the Light Novel readers get excited over are different from the bits that the anime-only watchers get excited over because the Light Novel readers know where this is going.

    2. From the story beats, it feels like Julius is either going to die in the cave or get killed by Kumoko so that it gives Shun a reason to live outside of his brother’s shadows and gives him a personal vendetta with the MC.

      Yuri’s transition from “the gods are speaking to me from my level up screen” to “find and kill whoever carries a skill that was named by a feisty writer” seems like it’s positioned as a natural transition given her home life. Hopefully, we learn a bit more about her past life to get a better understanding of how she’d be susceptible to being radicalized by anything remotely holy.

      Choya
      1. Some minor context from the LN version, but one of the things that the anime glossed over is that the world at large isn’t speaking Japanese (only the reincarnations do, and then only in private with one another). However, the Divine Voice (temp) speaks in the listener’s native tongue, which means the reincarnations hear it in Japanese as well.

        Work that into the whole “reincarnated as an infant in a new world where I don’t understand anything and everyone speaks a different language except for the voice that occasionally speaks to me in my head” and it makes sense on some level that Yuri would cling to it as a tie to something from her previous life. It could very well be that she feels an even more personal connection to it than would a native who had grown up with it as a simple fact of life.

        From there, the fact that she was abandoned by her (new) parents and then raised in a heavily religious environment where that same voice is venerated as the “Voice of God”, and it’s not really all that surprising that she became a devoted, even zealous, convert.

        Veltharis
  3. The Taboo Skill does not grant any stats/ability boost, the Pride skill does. As a result of acquiring the Pride Skill (One of the 7 sins) the Taboo Skill level increased. There was a warning description from appraisal that said Taboo should not be raise, so Kumoko tries to keep it as low as possible actually.

    KnightSpirit
  4. The original line in the light novel of one of her lines in this episode is “If a little white demon came up to me right now and said, “Make a contract with me and become a magical girl,” I’d totally say yes at this point.”

    Kumoko is 100% onboard with signing up with Kyuubey.

    heiro one
  5. I can’t be the only one that things that but… pretty much everything was too zoomed in. Those are some insane budget savings that we are witnessing. Most scenes needed to be at least 25% wider.

    Are they saving up for a big fight? Do I dare dream of a blu-ray version where shots are framed properly?

    Mistral

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