Summary
“The Transfer Student” draws some parallels between past and present and seems to be positioning the same conflicts to repeat themselves.
This recap of The Misfit of Demon King Academy Season 1 Episode 5, “The Transfer Student”, contains spoilers. You can check out our thoughts on the previous episode by clicking these words.
With its frequent forays into the past and the near-constant reminders that the protagonist is ostensibly the resurrected Demon King of Tyranny from 2000 years prior, it’s obvious – and especially so in “The Transfer Student” – that The Misfit of Demon King Academy is eventually going to merge the past and the present to some extent.
This week’s opener finds Classic Anos being impressed by the exploits of one of his followers, Shin, granting him his wish to be resurrected – though with a caveat. Since Shin isn’t particularly adept with Source Magic, he’ll return without his skills and memories. This is in explicit contrast to the Hero Kanon, whose Source Magic is, apparently, uniquely powerful; he is constantly resurrected, and perhaps always will be. “The Transfer Student” isn’t imparting all this worldbuilding information for nothing.
The question of whether Kanon is the new, titular transfer student, Ray, is still a bit unclear by the end of The Misfit of Demon King Academy episode 5, but it’s easy to believe so. We’re also introduced to another new character, Misa, who belies Anos is the Demon King of Tyranny and represents a kind of fan club sect whom he suggests all show him what they’re made of in the Magic Sword Tournament, which consists of yanking swords from the Earth King Arthur style.
Misa gets pally with Anos because she defends him when a teacher rigs a scenario in which it looks like he’s to blame for stealing a sword; naturally, he susses her out instantly, but it’s nice to know who your friends are. Later, once it emerges that Ray could pull swords from the ground with just as little effort as Anos himself, Misa and her girls team up with the transfer student in order to take on the Demon King, Sasha, and Misha (there are some brief flashes of resentment directed Misa’s way by these two, but one supposes more on that in subsequent episodes.)
As ever, it’s in this large scale set-piece that the episode excels, having a lot of fun visually with the Necron sisters’ magic, as well as the rendering of the pirouetting castle and the high-energy swordfight between Anos and Ray, even if the former is smugly using a branch rather than a blade. Naturally, Anos wins easily. But as the teasing dialogue suggests this might not be the first encounter between the two, I think it’s pretty obvious what we’re expected to believe here.
It’d be easy to suggest that Anos winning this fight so easily is another example of him being damagingly OP, but the opening flashback mentioned that he would defeat Hero Kanon constantly back then, too – it’s his constant returning that’s intriguing, especially as we see in the present-day Anos beginning to amass a sizeable following. The conflicts of the past look set to repeat themselves.
