Isekai Quartet

Episode 11

NOTE: Since I will be traveling overseas next week, there is a strong possibility that the review of the last episode will be a few days later than normal.

While this series has done a wonderful job exploiting the comedic potential of its cross-franchise gathering, there have been still been a couple of gaping omissions. This episode fills maybe the biggest of those holes by bringing in Yunyun from the KONOSUBA franchise, who writer/director Minoru Ashina seems to understand perfectly(1). Revealing her as a student from the previously-unannounced Class 3 seemed suspicious at first, and the fact that her class scored nothing in the Field Day so far only added to that suspicion, but it isn't until the cavalry battle that the full extent of the situation becomes apparent: she's the only member of Class 3, carrying on KONOSUBA's running gag about her being friendless. I cannot think of a better way to spoof on her.

This episode also features the formal addition of a few others who only got cameos last time. From the Re:Zero franchise we have Julius, who serves well to arrange a temporary truce with Subaru's team, and Felt(2), who makes a good physical match-up with Tanya for the top of the cavalry battle. (I wonder if it's intended as a joke that two of the smallest characters were chosen for the tops in the cavalry battle. While that would make them easier to carry and harder to attack, their limited reaches would definitely be a negative.) This episode also gives a formal introduction to Pandora's Actor, who had appeared in a previous episode as a statue but now joins the teachers' cavalry team. It's odd to see him on the staff team, since he's just as much a minion of Nazarick as Albedo or Demiurge, but whatever. As his name somewhat suggests, he is a master of duplication, and he can even somewhat duplicate the powers of those he copies. Adding double-sided teleporting into a cavalry battle is definitely a new twist.

But of course the series couldn't come to its impending climax so simply. The Tanya-world generals spice things up by finally revealing their mysterious weapon: the mobile fortress Destroyer, which was the apocalyptic foe at the end of the KONOSUBA's first season. Given how the heroes were ultimately able to handle it in that series, the gang should have more than enough firepower to take it down, and they've fostered enough teamwork by now to make a victory quite feasible. But will such a silly series really resolve things that simply? We'll find out in next week's finale!

1. Yunyun is from the same village as Megumin and considers herself (unrequitedly) to be Megumin's rival, since she always finished #2 to Megumin in school.
   
2. Subaru and Emilia originally encountered her as a pickpocket who stole Emilia's pendant, but Reinhard discovers that she's actually the fifth dragon priestess candidate and, with Reinhard's backing, a candidate to succeed the local throne. The way she's dressed in this episode calls back to her pickpocket days.

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Isekai Quartet is currently streaming on Funimation.