Recap: Haruto is rescued from Beelzebub by the White Wizard, who helps him tap into even more of Dragon’s power. Meanwhile, Rinko talks to Phoenix and attempts to uncover a little more about his motives.

Dragonzigg’s Thoughts:  After the crazed antics of last week’s episode, this one is slightly more down to earth, although there’s still a fair bit of craziness. As before, we’ve got two distinct plot threads going on here, but the differences is that this time round, they’re both worthwhile and interesting, albiet for different reasons. Whereas the Rinko/Phoenix interaction offers unexpcted heart, Haruto’s arc gets by on backstory and sweet powerups. Either way, it makes for a highly entertaining episode, continuing this mini-revival for Wizard we’ve seen recently.

This time round it’s probably Rinko who falls to second billing, but that’s not to say that her segment tails off at all. Rather, there’s some really lovely work here, especially (somewhat surprisingly) in the acting. Yuko Takayama is finally allowed some proper characterisation to get her teeth into, while Atsumi continues to excel as Phoenix, alternating between swagger and surprising vulnerability with skill and believability.  Between them they make this rather implausible setup work well and the scene where they sit on the wall eating doughnuts might be the episode highpoint – well scripted, well shot and ending with a great twist. The fact that Phoenix doesn’t follow the cliched route of turning good, but instead decides to become an even BIGGER jerk is refreshingly different and means that we won’t lose his delicious evil just quite yet. It also sets up a super interesting dynamic as Phoenix turns against his former comrades. That one could have legs for sure.

On Haruto’s side, the plot is a little simpler, but still pretty cool to follow. It marks the first appearance for a while of the enigmatic White Wizard, who effortlessly curbstomps Beelzebub before taking Haruto away for a trial inside his own mind. This is honestly a pretty boring way to get a powerup – it basically consists of haruto standing around grimacing for a bit while flashy energy effects hit him – but the context is interesting. In Wizard‘s parlance, gaining more power means giving in to your Phantom more. It’s been possible to question the White Wizard’s motives before this point, but this merely adds weight to any suspicions about him. He’s clearly super powerful himself, so why put Haruto through this danger? The recurring theory that he’s actually Wiseman in disguise still seems a bit of stretch, but let’s keep a close eye on him, hmm?

As it is, Haruto’s suffering is able to unlock a hilariously cheap looking wristwatch which does allow him the pretty awesome power of summoning all four of his Dragon forms at the same time, who proceed to kick Beelzebub’s classically trained ass.  It’s unclear exactly how the Drago-Timer works – the time aspect would suggest this is a limited power, but there’s no mention of that here – but nevertheless it’s very cool to see four Wizards battling together and the choreography is dynamic and exciting, making this a great fight overall.

Going forward, it seems that the Phoenix/everyone else conflict is going to be the next story point, and that means there’s a pretty high probability that our beloved firebird may be killed off soon. I’d be very disappointed, since a lot of my favourite series involve villain infighting (hello OOO!) but it appears that in ‘hat dude’ we have a pretty interesting replacement lieutenant already lined up. Also, we’re teased with the prospect of a Phoenix vs. Medusa fight, which would be pretty damn sweet. Bring it on.

Random Observations

• The White Wizard identifies Kousuke on sight as an ‘Archetype Wizard’. Not sure what that means, but clearly the source of his powers is not unique.
• Speaking of Kousuke, he’s once again extra useless and gets comprehensively trounced by Beelzebub. It’s alarming how quickly he’s regressed and how little focus his character has gotten.
• If you’re attacking an enemy who can divert your strikes, you’d think being able to turn invisible would be something you’d use, no?
• Kousuke and Shunpei being thrown down a flight of stairs is a super cheap joke that I greatly enjoyed.
• The sequence in the aquarium is totally pointless but utterly stunning visually.  In fact, after last week the cinematography is generally excellent this time.