Highschool DxD New Episode 5
What They Say:
The Kuoh Academy students fight Kokabiel and his minions to defend their school and their town.
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
With the school now protected in a barrier in order to stave off any problems from the outside, the new showdown is getting ready to commence. With the help of Sona and her group to make sure things stick to the status quo, she at least does indicate that there’s a chance that things could go really awry as nothing can be kept truly safe and the whole event could just be a mess. Which is why Akeno does make the push to get help from the big Devil himself with her older brother Zechs in bringing in additional help. That’ll be there in about an hour, which Rias does actually agree to, but does she agree to wait the hour before going in and dealing with what must be dealt with?
At this point, it’s essentially a stalling game as Rias wants to get Issei up to speed and properly powered up as needed since he’ll be key to the fight. And as we’ve seen before, this kind of praise and incentive is what he needs to really rally himself and that always makes Issei fun to watch since he can get aggressive in wanting to please the women in his life. Such is the case when they all go up against Cerebus, as the rest of the team distracts and pushes back against him while Issei boosts up with Asia keeping close by to help him out if needed. It’s a pretty fun series of actions as it goes on, with Kiba throwing some surprisingly good bits along the way and Rias herself getting involved quickly and strongly in order to provide overall support, especially since Kokabiel is realizing just how much of a problem the Red Dragon Emperor is going to be.
Kiba actually ends up dominating a good part of the second half of the episode as events start to work against him when dealing with the opposite side, and we get some small nods to his past as well which helps to flesh him out just a touch more. But it also draws Freed back into the game as he defends the priest and sets up for a fight that everyone else rallies around him for in order to take it to its natural conclusion. Considering Freed was pretty much despised in the first season, he’s not changed much here, and if anything is just even more intolerable. Though there’s a good bit of dialogue that’s pushed into it, which isn’t a surprise since the first half was more action heavy, the posing and stances here are fun and it’s really nicely animated as we get the twist that pits the team against Freed to take him down once and for all.
In Summary:
This season of Highschool DxD has been a bit difficult to get into for me but this episode feels like things are a bit better off and more on track, giving us a good bit of action, some very fun animation and finally some additional if brief character material for Kiba. Bringing Freed back into the game annoys me to no end, still making me wish he was just sliced up in the first season, but it makes for some good psychotic material here that is fun in its own way. The show has a lot of action here but also slows down for a bit of exposition and posing so that they’re not over-animating the thing, and the end result is a pretty solid episode that does leave me curious where it will go next.
Grade: B
Streamed By: FUNimation
Review Equipment:
Sony KDL70R550A 70″ LED 1080P HDTV, Apple TV via HDMI set to 1080p, Onkyo TX-SR605 Receiver and Panasonic SB-TP20S Multi-Channel Speaker System With 100-Watt Subwoofer.