Welcome to Demon School, Iruma-kun Season 3

Episode 17

I don't know why I was surprised, but I'm probably not the only person whose first thought was, “That's the Legend Leaf?!” Even Iruma and Lead were baffled, which admittedly made for an excellent scene of them attempting a badass walk out of the forest with the world's dumbest-looking “leaf” between them. Suzie and Balam's excited reactions just push the whole thing over the edge, because they're so thrilled that it makes everyone else's dumbfounded expressions stand out more. Though not even they expected the Legend Leaf to start talking, so clearly it's a plant that defies all reasonable expectations.

That the Leaf and its pot would give Iruma and Lead a first-place tie was a foregone conclusion, so attempts to obfuscate that do feel a little lame. It is believable that Suzie and Balam would be so excited to see the Leaf in all its glory that they forgot that the pot was worth points, too, but given that Iruma and Lead were only able to make the Leaf bloom because they also got the secret third ingredient – the Rainbow Watering Can – it doesn't quite hold up. Naphula and the Watering Can aren't worth points per se, but they're still part of the conditions required to get the Legend Leaf, so blanking on the worth of the thing needed to plant the seed doesn't pass the sniff test. (Though it did give Jazz the chance to shine, so there's that.)

It does, however, make narrative sense. Orobas needed to at least experience a brief victory so that he could finish his realization that his methods, although legal, weren't fulfilling. When he finds himself feeling empty before the point upset, he's beginning to understand that his need not to be second wasn't worth the nasty tricks he pulled, and that relying on Ocho's trickery isn't the same thing as beating Iruma fair and square. In some ways that does make him what the Legend Leaf (and the former demon king) were looking for, because his desire to win fairly does make him un-demonlike. And when he realizes that third place is fine because it's not second, he's again exhibiting less demonic behavior, because at the end of the day he doesn't care what his rank is as long as it isn't second. Iruma's the least demonic student at Babylis because he's literally not a demon, so that puts Lead and Orobas in a true tie.

We should probably worry about the fact that Ocho just faded back into the forest. No one besides Orobas ever seemed to acknowledge him, which means that he's more than likely working with Kiriwo, or at the very least, not a student at school. He seems like a plant, someone who came out of the woodwork to try to use Orobas for his own ends and then retreated when the game was done – something he did before Jazz revealed the miscalculation, so he may not even realize that his mission failed. I doubt we've seen the last of him, and that's concerning.

But at least the Harvest Festival Arc is, at long last, truly over. Iruma has impressed the demon king, Ameri's hopefully back in the picture, and Naphula turns out to have been the best stinky friend that Iruma could have asked for, because it looks like he went above and beyond what their actual role was supposed to be. Trust Ameri to pick someone she and Iruma could truly count on!

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Welcome to Demon School, Iruma-kun Season 3 is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.