Summary
“15th Birthday” proves that even time is no match for Anos as the lore is deepened and sisters do it for themselves — though admittedly with a great deal of help.
This recap of The Misfit of Demon King Academy Season 1 Episode 4, “15th Birthday”, contains spoilers. You can check out our thoughts on the previous episode by clicking these words.
Since last week’s episode ended with a pretty major twist, it’s only right that “15th Birthday” opens by addressing it — and of course, Anos has a pretty good grasp of matters anyway. For the audience, though, it might be a different story, so the explication is necessary as Misha explains that on her 15th birthday she’ll cease to exist since she was never of this world anyway. Anos correctly posits that she was once Sasha, which he figured out when Sasha destroyed their Zecht, something that would be impossible if it was drawn up between two distinct parties. He talks of an old spell that could separate one person into two entities, and Misha confirms that when she was a fetus she was given a part of Sasha’s soul.
This, we learn, was all the work of Ivis Necron, who came up with what Anos calls a “foolish spell” in order to create a stronger demon race. Misha and Sasha have been magically kept apart, but it can’t last forever, and Misha was always happy with that; she just wanted a life and some memories of her own before she disappeared and Sasha remained. She was ostracised by the demon world, though, so saw Anos’s attention as something of a minor miracle. He resolves to grant her wish, which is to make up with Sasha, and makes her promise to live each day as if there’s a tomorrow.
When Anos and Misha catch up with Sasha, Misha wants to know if Sasha hates her. Sasha challenges Anos to another duel and states that if he can control the magic in the circle she creates, she’ll answer Misha’s question. She says she’ll make sure it’s done by midnight tomorrow and sets about it while Anos graciously closes his eyes to her efforts. By the time she’s finished, she’s panting and sweating, having conjured Zexis and Delt, magic she has invented herself that Anos immediately figures out the function of. He only has to control Zexis, which of course he does easily, but this is all part of Sasha’s face-turn plan. Through some flashbacks, The Misfit of Demon King Academy episode 4 reveals some of Misha and Sasha’s backstory, as we learn that for the last 15 years Sasha has been grooming Misha to hate her for this very moment: She intends to give her life over the Misha, but the only requirement of doing so is that Misha rejects her. But she won’t. In so doing, she’s able to make amends with Sasha, thus granting her wish to Anos.
Naturally, Anos has other ideas and can save them both by meddling with time so that they become twins rather than two halves of the same entity. But this requires Sasha and Misha to go back in time themselves. The process is interrupted by Ivis Necron, who stabs Anos through the heart, but naturally, he just brushes it off and javelins the sword right through his skeletal face. On with the time travel!
Anos, Misha, and Sasha are greeted by the Guardian God of Time, Eugo La Raviaz, who won’t allow Anos to meddle with the time stream and instead rewinds Ivis’s deathly wound and tasks him with annihilating Anos. Ivis now has the power to control time, which means that even Anos has to think on his feet a bit, and he ends up getting skewered by Ivis again. This, though, seems a typically small affair for Anos, who is quickly resurrected, prompting Ivis to childishly stop time in response. Anos does that thing where he smugly explains why he’s better than everyone else, and it’s really quite striking how nice the visuals are. He also explains to Sasha and Misha that if they simply walk behind him, he’ll deal with any injustices in their path, starting now. They both say they believe in him, pledge themselves to him, and in so doing, both are saved.
Ivis, meanwhile, is fuming about his 2000-year-old plan. It’s time for Anos to take him on. Anos takes the matter seriously enough to whip out a meaty demonic sword — not a euphemism, honestly — and shove it through Ivis’s face — still not a euphemism — before dicing him up into little pieces. This brings Ivis out of his possession so that Anos can restore his real memories and put him to the task of investigating the other Elder Demon Emperors in the hopes of figuring out who killed him and overtook him in the first place.
It’s a happy ending, then, and Misha gets a fine 15th birthday present. With the lore deepened, the death of a Demon Emperor faked, and an obvious conspiracy afoot, there’s plenty of plot to chew on here, even if the thing that’ll keep people watching is inevitably Anos finding an opponent who’ll actually give him a decent fight.
