Recap: Keima soldiers on in the conquest of Ayumi, but her close bond with Chihiro only makes him seem callous. As he tries to work the pair in his favor, Vintage strikes all of his former conquests, making time of the essence.

I guess I can understand if the pressure is getting to him, but for all his knowledge of VNs Keima seemed to be making some pretty rookie mistakes in this episode. He knows best just how devastated Chihiro was by what happened, and yet he tries to continue things like nothing even happened. As insulting as it is to Chihiro, I feel it’s an even worse one to Ayumi. He basically acts like how Chihiro feels shouldn’t affect her, and tries to move to the ending without taking those feelings into account. While I feel sorry for what had to do last episode, here he deserved every lump he got.

Well, after talking it up the better part of 10 weeks, it turns out the anime has decided to omit the really creepy fanservice scene of Haqua in a New Hell prison cell. This is pretty surprising considering how easily they’ve used her for fanservice in the past, but to have a show actually look at a bit of story and go “What? Nope. Nope. Just… no. Even we have standards.” is heartening to say the least. This does make her return much more dramatic, as in the context of the anime you don’t know whats happened to her until she comes back to save the day. It’s nice to see her actually shown with the skills that earned her that scythe. During her first appearance, you kinda wanted to see her put in her place for the way she was treating Keima and Elsie, but after that I felt she was a little too ineffectual. This is one of the few times I liked seeing action in a show that is, if you may have forgotten, ostensibly about lampooning romcom cliches.

Down to his last gambit, Keima really has to pull out all the stops. I remember this part being more of the outside the box thinking that always came with the endgame back when this was a girl-of-the-week formula. That said, look forward to more of Keima being a crazy bastard next week. As the last conquest before getting into the nitty-gritty of the Vintage fight, this was definitely the last part I enjoyed about the Goddesses Arc. When he puts his mind to it, nothing can get in his way, and that’s what I love about this show.