Summary
“Mother’s Words” finds the Magic Sword Tournament underway, but spares time for some touching characterization and a season-best act of savagery from Anos.
This recap of The Misfit of Demon King Academy Season 1 Episode 7, “Mother’s Words”, contains spoilers. You can check out our thoughts on the previous episode by clicking these words.
Despite last week’s episode having been named after the Magic Sword Tournament, it begins in earnest in “Mother’s Words”, with Anos, true to form, easily demolishing his first opponent — Emilia’s brother — with his supposedly “lowly” sword. He makes a big point about it being imbued with more than magic thanks to having been lovingly made by a true craftsman — it’s his father’s work — and Emilia is obviously fuming.
Lay also wins his match, and as Anos and Misa watch from the wings, they see that Lay is representing the Lognorth Magic Sword Association, a Royalist outfit. When he’s confronted about this he claims they offered him enough money to live off for the rest of his life and the role of Demon Lord. He also says he can’t be friends with them anymore and tells Anos he’s going to kill him, which prompts a quick fight in which Lay takes a swing at Anos and Anos tries to squeeze Lay’s heart in his hands. Blimey, this guy doesn’t do things by halves.
Still, this squabble allows him to realize that there’s some magical gear in Lay’s body, most likely a contractual Magic Sword probably designed to destroy his source under certain conditions — he’s a hostage, doing the Royalists’ bidding since they have some kind of leverage over him.
After Anos wins his next fight — it’s such a breeze that “Mother’s Words” doesn’t even bother to show it to us — he leaves his sword in the care of Izabella and his hybrid student fan club and goes with Misa to visit Lay’s translucent mother, Sheila, who he quickly realizes is half-spirit, half-demon. When she wakes up, she explains that Lay is at the beck and call of the Royalists in exchange for treatment for her, which was predictable enough. After explaining a bit about spirits and her condition, Anos determines that he can’t really heal her without more knowledge, but Sheila is happy to die just so long as she can grant Lay the wish of fighting Anos to his full potential. In the meantime, Anos links Sheila and Misa’s sources, which is risky, but Misa is willing since she believes in Anos and because she knows there was no need for Lay to become embroiled in the fight between the Unitarians and the Royalists.
Meanwhile in The Misfit of Demon King Academy episode 7, Izabella and the girls are jumped by Emilia, who tries to take custody of Anos’s sword on the vague pretext of officialdom, but is denied. Annoyed at the rebuff, she gets physical, or at least magical, with the hybrid girls attempting to stave off her magic to protect Izabella. They all end up barbecued, a treatment of her students which Izabella is stunned by, but Emilia smugly explains that hybrids are just thieves eavesdropping on her classes. She’s still fuming about Anos embarrassing the family. She tries to finish Izabella off but the hybrids intervene again, telling her to run, and end up getting cooked further for their troubles. They’re resilient, but Emilia kills them all, eventually rounding on Izabella until, of course, Anos intervenes in the nick of time.
Anos freezes Emilia in place while he heals the hybrids. He asks all their names and they tell him; he says he’ll never forget them, indebted to them as he is. Then things take a particularly savage turn. He fatally wounds Emilia and says he’ll heal her if she admits to him being the Demon King of Tyranny, which she eventually does, at which point he kills her anyway. When he revives her, she immediately calls him a “lowly hybrid”, which is unlucky since he has also cursed her. No matter how many times she dies, she’ll always be reborn a hybrid. She will forever be the thing she hates most; either she changes her point of view, or she lives in eternal torment. That seems as good a way of tackling prejudice as any.
After a final touching moment between Lay and Sheila, where the titular mother’s words are indeed spoken, we end with the next episode nicely teed up: Anos and Lay standing across from one another in the final round of the Magic Sword Tournament.
