Welcome to Demon School, Iruma-kun Season 2

Episode 11

This episode of Welcome to Demon School, Iruma-kun managed to hit on one of my pet peeves: stereotypical girl talk. Honestly, I have no real idea why I dislike this so much in any form of fiction, but the idea that when girls get together they're inevitably going to end up talking about love just ticks me right off. But at least when you add Clara to the mix things are going to be much better than when almost any other series whips out the trope like a thousand- year-old fruit cake it's trying to get rid of.

Clara really does have the remarkable talent for making any scene she's participating in more fun, and this episode is no exception. Whether she's shipping bananas or sprinting in circles crowing “ring-a-ling!”, she dresses the otherwise bland girl talk segment up in her own inimitable way. In part, that's because she's not entirely sure what's going on – she knows they're talking about love and that sort of thing, but the nuances of the interactions evade her. Her own feelings also might be a little elusive at this point, because she's clearly never really thought about how she feels about Iruma. Given some of what he did during his evil cycle, it does make sense that she'd be asked about their relationship at some point, and the way he was casually hitting on her does seem to have stuck around somewhere in her brain. But what's great about Clara is that she's just so unabashedly herself that even if she's thinking about subjects that are out of her wheelhouse she always goes back to her usual schtick. You can put her in a stereotypical “girl” situation, but you can't make Clara anyone but who she is.

I will give the girl talk bit credit for giving Elizabetta more of a role, too. She spent most of the first season just sort of being there, but now she's finally becoming a bona fide character in her own right, sort of like Allocer over on the boys' side. There's also something really amusing about a succubus who is more concerned with love than sex, mostly because of how succubi are typically portrayed. Elizabetta isn't man-hungry, she's just a fluffy romantic who happens to be a succubus…which, now that I think about it, may be part of what landed her in the Misfit Class in the first place. She's also shaping up to look like just a very nice person, which again is counter to the stereotype of her brand of demon. It's also good to have Keroli step back into the spotlight for a moment since the entire last arc of the first season focused on her and her dual roles; I do enjoy how mortified she is by her dev doll persona when she's at school.

Still, in the midst of this very fluffy episode we do learn something important: Balam has cut his hair. Okay, that's not the most important thing plot-wise, but it certainly is surprising (and reminds me that I really ought to cut mine) and it changes his look completely. Part of that change is that it makes him look a little more approachable, which is what he says Iruma inspired him to do. That's really sweet, in part because it shows that their relationship is mutually beneficial, and not in a test subject/researcher kind of way. Sure, Kalego laughs, but he's a jerk anyway. He also tells us that important bit of info – that he and Balam are the highest ranked teachers at Babylis, and that Balam's true power is to be able to tell when a student is lying, and that he's strong enough to monitor every single student in the school. Balam is the magic equivalent of Turnitin.com (software that catches plagiarism in student papers), and that means that he might be more aware of Alicred and what he does for Iruma than he's letting on.

Oh, and if you're mad at Kalego for laughing at Balam's new look, don't worry – it looks like he's going to more than get his comeuppance next week when he ends up visiting Chez Valac. I can't wait.

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Welcome to Demon School, Iruma-kun Season 2 is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.