Zero no Tsukaima ~Futatsuki no Kishi~ – 03

Summary:

Because of the coming war with Albion, all the male mages of the magic school are leaving to join the army, making Saito realize that he’ll be the only guy left. This turns out to be untrue, however, because a new male transfer student soon arrives from Romalia on his dragon and introduces himself as Julio Cesare. Saito immediately takes a disliking to him, particularly because all the girls can’t keep their eyes off him. During class time later, Agnès and her troops suddenly burst in and order all the students out into the schoolyard to do some military drills. When Colbert is adamant about not ending class and about not bringing the war into the school, Agnès draws her sword on him and declares that she hates mages, especially those who use fire. With his life being threatened, Colbert has no choice but to back down and let her force the students into the schoolyard for training. More resistance to these drills comes in the form of Montmorency once they’re all outside. She feels that since they’re mages, they don’t need to be training with wooden poles but should instead be practicing magic. To prove that Montmorency does need this training, Agnès snatches away Montmorency’s wand and puts her into a hold, showing that she’s useless without the wand.

Watching from the sidelines, Saito notices how the girls are trying to cozy up Julio even during training, but Julio wants his opponent to be Louise. When she charges him, he sidesteps and catches her in his arm, causing her to blush and causing Saito to get angry. However, Saito has his own problem to deal with because Agnès’ subordinate Michelle suddenly attacks him with a wooden sword. She wants to see how skilled he is, but after she soundly defeats him, Saito explains that he can’t use his Familiar powers without a real weapon. Julio finds this very interesting and decides to challenge Saito to a match where Saito is allowed to use Derfflinger. The winner gets to kiss Louise, and while Saito doesn’t care about as much, he does really want to go through with this match. Louise, however, doesn’t want Saito to use Derfflinger because he could end up killing Julio, so she orders him not to participate in a match with real swords. Saito interprets this as a go-ahead to use wooden swords instead, so that’s what he agrees to with Julio. That afternoon, Saito goes to Agnès to ask her to give him some formal sword training. Up until now, he’s just been using on the Gandalfr power to move his body when he had a weapon, but he doesn’t want to rely on only that. When she hears Saito say that he won’t be able to protect Louise if he doesn’t get stronger, Agnès decides to help.

Louise meanwhile is searching for Saito and accuses Siesta of hiding him. Since Siesta really doesn’t know, Louise then asks Kirche who reveals that she saw him with Agnès. Unfortunately for Saito, Louise finds him at the very moment he accidentally falls on Agnès, so she blows him up. The next day, a bruised Saito shows up for the fight against Julio, but he’s nevertheless ready to fight. Kirche is surprised to see Montmorency actually cheering for Saito instead of Julio, but the truth is that Montmorency doesn’t want Julio kissing Louise. Against Julio’s strength though, Derfflinger doesn’t think Saito will be able to win, and the signs of fatigue soon start showing in him. However, when Julio charges to attack, it’s Saito who succeeded in batting away Julio’s wooden sword. Knowing that Julio lost on purpose, Saito isn’t pleased with the win and doesn’t want the kiss. Louise and Saito then get called by Michelle and are brought before Henrietta. Julio is also there, and when Saito asks him about the fight, he admits that he wasn’t interested in winning or losing – he was just trying to gauge his comrade’s strength.

Before anything else, Henrietta thanks Louise and Saito for what they did last time. As for why Julio will be joining them, it seems that Romalia’s Pope also has misgivings about what Albion is doing, so Julio was sent to help. Henrietta now tells Agnès, Julio, Saito, and Louise that they are the only ones she can rely on. Saito realizes that this means she’s gathered her men here at the school, but he also remembers how Colbert didn’t want to bring war to the school. To this, Henrietta says that she doesn’t intend to involve the school in war and that she want to borrow everyone’s strength for the sake of peace. After Saito agrees to help, he gets angry at Louise for blushing when Julio kisses her hand. Unbeknownst to them, a woman named Sheffield is at this time using Cromwell’s execution to incite her troops in Albion.

Preview:

The pace slowed down a little here, and after how quickly the whole Wales ordeal was over, this left me feeling that a good part of the episode was wasted in terms of advancing the overall plot. Julio appearance introduced his character, but for most of the episode, he was relegated to the role of love rival to get Saito mad. We’ve already gone through something similar back when Waldo was around in the first season, so it felt like there was less need for this. I guess it did make it clear that Saito and Julio don’t get along, but that could have been compressed and more story could have been developed about the impending war.
That war probably isn’t going to get underway until after next week’s episode, which looks to be about Louise’s family, including her two sisters. From the looks of it, Éléonore might be as into S&M as Louise is…