Recap

Alibaba swoops in to save Aladdin, prompting a ceasefire as our heroes negotiate with Scheherazade herself.

Iro’s Thoughts

And I thought the low budget and slow pacing was hurting this show before. Silly me. In what should have been a fast and dramatic scene, Mu uses his Djinn Equip to transform into the monstrously powerful Barbatos, and smashes through all three barriers to attack Aladdin. Instead it ends up being somewhat boring, with as little budget spent on the affair as possible. Some of the shots even seem out of order, or are otherwise confusing: we see rocks and dust kicked up by the attack before it happens, for example. It seems the anime staff couldn’t even be assed to do panel grabs of the manga, and really the whole segment just looks ugly. I keep saying that I hope they’re saving budget for later, but the show is becoming an increasingly sad state of affairs.

The rest of the episode is essentially devoted to a loooong (and boooooring) talk with Scheherazade, which amounts to a big infodump. We learn that Scheherazade is some 270 years old and is about to die, and we learn a little more about Alma Toran. Except we already knew most of what we’re told about the other world, making it pointless padding. Oh boy. Other than that, there’s some pontificating about shonen-style FRIENDSHIP and blahblahblah IT WAS BORING. Maybe it won’t be boring next week, seeing as how we end on a cliffhanger of the Kou Empire attacking Magnostadt. Oh, who am I kidding? Considering the budget so far, I’m fully expecting some Last-Episode-Of-Evangelion level bullshit.

Random Observations

• The guy in Scheherazade’s flashback clearly has a Djinn pentagram on his sword, except this was 200 years ago and it’s clearly established that Sinbad was the first person to ever conquer a dungeon. The manga had this problem too.
• Barbatos is the 8th demon in the Ars Goetia. Alibaba’s Amon is the 6th, Sinbad’s Baal is 1st, and Hakuryu’s Zagan is 61st.