「フライング、ゲット?」 (Furaingu, Getto?)
“Am I Getting, Ahead Of Myself?”

The infodump is real on this episode of Kumo Desu ga, Nani ka? as Kumoko gains the power of immortality right away. But while oceans and attacks can’t keep her down for the count now, she’ll still have much to deal with from the Demon Lord and the mysterious D as she learns more about the circumstances that lead her here.

I’m impressed that D actually gave us a nearly full run-down of what Kumoko has been experiencing up to this point. D’s call briefed her on the role she played as a student considered suspicious enough for the Hero and the Demon Lord to target in the explosion that killed everyone. In the process, D’s safety net allowed everyone to be reborn with their memories in-tact, but as many of her classmates are reborn as humans, she gave Kumoko a head-start as a spider, explaining away why there’s a time gap between what happens to Kumoko and what happens to Shun.

But even with so much valuable information that D gave Kumoko and the audience this time around, D’s identity is the only question that still remains a mystery that would lead to a better understanding of why everything happened. She might have given the bag away that she was a classmate, but still keeps enough of a distance that there is still an underlying mystery about the exact circumstances of D’s research, how she created the safety net for them, and who exactly D was at the school. Despite both that reveal and Kumoko’s immortality being major game-changers, the Demon Lord appearing before Kumoko in a clumsy CGI ending scene blows away any expectations that the show would just merely end once she no longer had to entirely worry about survival.

Shun’s section wasn’t half-bad either since we got to see Fei’s humanoid form. It was a nice change of pace for Fei to evolve enough to gain a Humanification skill and allow her to not have to be forced to stay in dragon form as she laments not being able to experience the same joys that Shun and his allies could. It also gives us a little shiptease as she can now get a little closer to Shun. If I must ship humans on this show, I’m semi-rooting for either Fei or Katia to get with Shun, but I’m not sure if it’s really that kind of show, so I’ll elect to not concern myself with whether he even wants to get with anyone in their forsaken RPG universe.

The Katia fight scene a few episodes ago has made me more hyper-alert of whether there is coherency in Shun’s action sequences. As it turns out, yes, the water dragon sequence was difficult to make heads or tails of. It started out relatively normal as they started swimming to avoid the water dragon, but as soon as Fei fired off the mouth beam, it took a string of choppy, thrown-together bits of action to launch them into safety as they made it into the labyrinth. It’s not a complete deal-breaker, but it is endemic to the anime’s larger issue with the human side’s animation, which blows because this is all kicking in right when the story’s getting interesting for both Shun and Kumoko.

But animation issues aside, it’s nice to see the parallels between Kumoko and Shun based on what kind of power they’re both working with. Whereas the humans have to dodge the water dragon as if it’s a horrid threat to their safety, Kumoko is at a point where she can casually fight it off as if it was nothing. On the other hand, Kumoko might be immortal, but she’s been fighting tooth-and-nail to gain some form of Humanification that Fei just happened to stumble into. It helps to spice things up that they might be dramatically different, but face unique issues based on their experiences. It’ll definitely be interesting if Kumoko’s route gets another complete shift in tone now that she’s gained the Demon Lord’s attention.

10 Comments

  1. I’ve been meaning to talk about this sooner, but we’ve seen that Sophia kept her name even though she is a human vampire in this world. All of the other reincarnated kids appear to have names, so it begs the question of why Kumoko is the only one who is unnamed. Maybe the answer is that Kumoko is not a straight up reincarnation. I don’t know what the limits of Administrator D’s powers are, but it would not surprise me if she merely implanted Wakaba’s memories into an unborn soul, and that is why Kumoko has Wakaba’s memories but is unnamed, and that would be because Kumoko isn’t actually Wakaba but merely a vessel with her memories. As for why Administrator D would do this, I’m not sure why she did that if that is indeed what happened here. Maybe she did that for the sake of furthering her entertainment since she repeats that she finds Kumoko entertaining. Alternatively, it could be for some yet-to-be-determined reason.

    Vance
    1. I mean, who’s naming them? who’s naming Kumoko? the status screens don’t even show their Earth names besides Sophia’s Japanese name in furigana

      but, what Espy said

      GoXDS
  2. Can’t wait to see the fight with the demon lord like what was hinted in the opening!

    Now regarding the current episode, can’t say I saw Fei turning into a human so soon. It is quite interesting that it looks almost exactly like her past self. I suspect it has something to do with her being very confident about her looks, and a great desire to have it back. Looking at Katia and Sofia, it really looks like they get reincarnated into something they desire. It also looks like D helped them with it. The two known exceptions are Kumoko and Fei. This got me thinking that perhaps D is actually Wakaba. Sensei couldn’t find her, so she suspects she died. While it would also be understandable that she’d view her bully as a dragon thus turning Shinohara into one. It does open the question on who Kumoko actually is. The only ones Wakaba might have a problem with is Shinohara and her two friends. But why a spider?

    theirs
  3. Okay Mother of All Spiders is here. Ariel the Origin Taratect, the Divine Beast, and Demon Lord. (etcetere etecetera) All hail her majesty!.
    We definitely will be testing how exactly works Immortality because her first blow was enough to give Kumoko some “multiple pieces of body syndrome”:.
    I wont be speculating about who reincarnated as who at this point because we have not enough infoi for that and D is not helping a bit by being overtly cryptic.
    Katia is kinda looking jealous eyes at the way new humanoid form of Fei interacts with Shun… Ships might not be sailing yet, but there is frantic work at shipyards….

    ewok40k
  4. Yeah the animators seem to be under tremendous burden to produce the next episode. I wouldnt mind if they took an entire month or two off to refresh and hire more people to animate at a higher quality and slower rate. Cant see it happening though.

    I liken the next fight sequence to be like Naruto x Pain fight scenes. Total garbage despite the story being really good.

    I would still watch though :’D

    man_iii
    1. The hellgate magic she used earlier and other characters like the demonlord have hurts the soul bypassing immortality, in classic fantasy style. I think this is the only moment were immortality helps her survive.

      Ishkander

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