KEEP OUT: Weirdly named episode, but that was the least confusing thing about it. As has been mentioned, I'm not sure how much this season actually remembers form the first one. Lina does acknowledge killing Rezo, but never mentions Zanaffar or Sairaag at all, they all keep talking about Zanaffar as this legendary thing and not the final boss from three seasons ago.
For the most part I dig the extra fleshing out this otherwise MacGuffiny demon beast gets, its new backstory doesn't contradict anything from the first season and in fact helps explain why Rezo thought using something called a Demon Beast for his Shabranigdo Plan B if the Zanaffar (plural) was created precisely for that.
But the season doesn't do a good job explaining how Zanaffar actually came into play here, how Gioconda started making Zanaffar Armor to begin with, much less what 'Zanaffar Armor' even is or why that's the method Zanaffar uses to create more of itself. Bad enough the show seems to disregard much of what went down during the first season's finale, but it's not even explaining how its own new continuity works.
LEGACY: Hey it's Seyruun! Hey it's Sylphiel!! Hey it's Prince Phil!!! Suddenly the bad taste left in my mouth from the previous episode is cleared out, all is forgiven. Even though Sylphiel feels like kind of an afterthought, and as another consequence of mostly forgetting about the end of Season 1, she's just plopped into the Seyruun forces for some reason. I could buy that after Sairaag done got exploded (twice!) she packed up and went elsewhere, and if she wants to cross paths with Gourry then there are worse places to camp out in wait than the city where one of his known friends is a Princess. But it just could've used a mention, y'know?
Sylphiel's new dub actress is fine. She wasn't particularly strong in her original appearances so it's not surprising, but considering how the rest of the old dub cast has improved it might've been nice to give her another shot. I definitely approve of her calling Gourry 'Sir Gourry' now, sounds waaaaay less awkward than 'Gourry dear'.
Oh and speaking of, Lina FINALLY remembers to mention to Pokota that Gourry was the previous wielder of the Sword of Light and it's literally the only thing he's good at and Pokota happily hands over his replica. You mean that was an option this whole time? They could have just asked?!
MISTY: (is it official? Are we doing three? I'll spoiler just in case) PRobably my overall biggest gripe about this episode is the one appearance of Wizer and Xellos. Obviously we'll see Xellos later, but I took a look at cast lists for the remaining 13 episodes and Wizer is nowhere to be found. So that means the very last scene with our dear Inspector is just of him standing on a rooftop smartly deciding not to jump in on the final battle because he'd get in the way, and upon asking Xellos if he shouldn't jump in instead just getting 'lol no' as a response. That's it. I don't think we see Wizer again. And yet Pokota will be sticking around. Way to bank on the wrong character, anime team.
I don't much like Pokota, even after all this if I'm being honest. Part of this is the dub, while the rest of the main cast is much better than previously, Pokota just grates on me. I get he's supposed to sound like a young boy, but his performance just comes off as very stiff to me. Duclis isn't all that great either but at least you can handwave his voice being grating due to him literally being a monsterman. With how much better the main cast sounds, though, Pokota really comes off sounding like more of a 90s anime dub.
But as for the episode itself, Revolution corrects one of the biggest sins of Slayers Try, showing us Prince Phil and this time letting him actually BE Prince Phil. The moment is brief but I do appreciate seeing PACIFIST CRUSH one more time. Zanaffar is defeated, Pokota just casually tosses out a holy seed from Flagoon at the corpse (which Sylphiel reacts to, implying she DOES remember what went down in Sairaag but the show still isn't acknowledging it and this will never not irritate me) to take care of the miasma (which was an issue with the OG Zanaffar) and the series ends with the gang setting out to go Jar Hunting, but with no idea where to look. Thankfully the stinger gives us viewers a clue (Zuuma has it, remember him? I almost didn't)
Overall, good half season so far, though the past couple episodes dropped the ball a touch. Will Evolution-R regain its footing?
