Anime

This was an extraordinarily disappointing episode. It feels so poorly thought out that it seems like filler. I haven't read the LN, so this actually might be filler, for all I know. The whole season might be filler, but if so, it wasn't so obvious until this episode.

The main reason it feels like filler is that filler tends to be super simplified. Everybody's power has to be fully explained. Everybody's motivations have to be fully explained. There was a lot of stuff that wasn't explained before this episode, and now it feels like everything has been explained, which really ruins a lot of the story. Like everything was suddenly written by a third rate writer.

They introduced a super-convenient "negative blessing", and apparently invented that blessings may be forcibly given to others.

Then, there's the way that conflict was created without creating additional characters. They just sorted the existing characters into good and bad. But the bad characters have a way out, in such a way that as soon as their problems get resolved, they might just be completely forgiven, and then it would be like nothing happened.

And then, there's the part where it's poorly thought out. As if most of the characters lost the ability to think. The plan to bring an equal number of strong fighters into one place, and basically say, "Hey, we're bad guys. We plan to do a lot of bad things to save this person you've never met. Do you want to join us?" It's ridiculously stupid.

On top of that, their plan doesn't make sense based on what we've been told. The demon king or whoever wants to control the dungeon, but they want to get a wish, which would immediately destroy the dungeon. They've only got a year on their timer, so best case scenario for them working together is that the demon king gets the dungeon for a year? Honestly, it seems like their goals are hopelessly misaligned.

And they tampered with the teleporter, presumably in order to kidnap Lamis and make Boxxo and the others follow their orders. I thought Hulemy was the only person available to fix teleporters, though? It's inconsistent. And even if they did have the ability to muck with transporters, it seems like that's a lot of extra work when they could have just planned their original ambush in the crystal cave better. It really makes no sense to me.

Why doesn't Kerioyl use his abilities to cancel blessings on his son with the negative blessing? Why did he leave his son with those people? Like, they could simply end all of their problems by letting the son out of the crystal. Because since this is an anime, the son would inevitably say, "Mom, Dad, brothers, I don't want this. I don't want you to side with evil people and hurt others for me." Of course, they could also just kill the child. They wouldn't think to do that, but given Kerioyl's new personality, it seems unlikely that he wouldn't think they'd do it. I don't think such evil people would leave their treasure in the hands of their enemy.

Truly a disappointing episode.