“A No-Holds-Barred Eden”

Saturdays 2:28 pm EST on Funimation

Leo hangs out with Black and the two bond over the love of their respective sisters. Zapp gets in trouble (allegedly) and the only way Klaus can save him is by fighting in a sweet underground cage fighting tournament.

Jel’s Thoughts

After last week’s thoughtful but brutal episode, it was kind of nice to get something a bit lighter this week. Having Klaus trounce a bunch of monsters made for some cool action scenes. I appreciate how they manage to make him appear vulnerable and human despite the fact that he’s kind of overpowered, particularly with how popular shameless, self-insert Anime Messiahs seem to be these days. Leo, our actual audience proxy, is mostly just an observer who admires Klaus for his kindness and leadership far more than his physical abilities. It’s particularly telling that they don’t even bother showing the end of his last fight. It was more important to emphasize he’s a big enough man to care for Zapp even though he actively tries to kill him every single day.

That being said, I didn’t feel like we got a much in the way of progress or new information. Most of the episode just reinforces what we already know about Klaus and Zapp’s characters. We already knew something was up with Black, so seeing his hilarious “transformation” to one of the thirteen kings wasn’t exactly a shock either. Having the boss turn out to be an Elder Blood was a nice callback though, and it’s cool to see they are still the threat they were made out to be several episodes ago. Maybe we can get some kind of massive war with them before this is all over?

I suppose it will be interesting to see how much of Black’s friendship with Leo and his concern for his sister are legit and how much is an act to undoubtedly exploit Leo’s powers. There’s also the looming question of how much does White know. Is she also in on some kind of plot to trick Leo or is she really just the Twins style leftovers that we keep mentioning? Again, these were questions we already had and got no close to answering this episode, so while it was fun to watch I feel slightly unsatisfied. Hopefully we can get something with a little more substance next week.