Hataraku Maou-sama! - 7

"The Demon Lord’s Neighbor Helps Him with His Money Issues"

Can I have some of that Holy Vitamin Beta stuff?

Ah, how I wish I weren't covering Hataraku on a weekly basis. This is one of those shows that I think I would have greatly enjoyed to marathon for the sheer entertainment factor and quality; watching it week by week is a treat, but because of the fact that I cover it on Random Curiosity and on LoQ simultaneously, it unfortunately has a feeling of "work" to it (appropriate considering the series though), a fact I never quite understood until I took last week off due to exams and moving out. It's just not quite as fun to watch something when you have to be conscious of taking a certain amount of screencaps and cleaning them later (even if you enjoy the writing), so watching this episode without having to worry about that really helped me appreciate it all a bit more this week.

The devil has a new neighbor and her name is Suzuno, a traditional-looking and composed beauty who claims to come from another country and quickly integrates herself into the Sadao household. Her manners are impeccable and she seems to make a good impression on Maou, Ashiya, and Lucifer, and even Emi seems to like her as soon as she gets caught spying on her and the rest. It's not clear as of yet just what Suzuno is doing; presumably she's that Church underling sent to get Emi and Sadao out of the way, but if that's the case, why bother getting so friendly and sending a heart-shaped lunchbox to her prey? Is this a ploy to keep her enemies close and unsuspecting of her true nature? Or has she, like them, turned into an every-day citizen?

Then there's Emi's ever-amusing role as the hero-stalker, who seems to enjoy her job of following Sadao around a little too much for it just to be a "duty". She continues to play the tsundere role, which I personally like on her character considering what kind of person she is and the circumstances of her relationship with Maou, but she's also blissfully unaware of the feelings she's probably been developing toward her enemy all along. Suzuno's interest in Maou gets Emilia to warn her off, but is this really for Suzuno's own good, or is it the beginnings of a real interest on her part? Of more pressing matters, however, is that Emi's found herself attacked yet again on the streets of Tokyo, and though the attacker has different colored eyes than Suzuno, it's hard to consider the two unrelated. Though Emi has Emeralda's magical Holy Vitamin B to help her magic recover (where the heck did Emeralda get a cell phone and how is she talking to Emi if she claims she's back on Ente Isla anyway?), it seems we're in for more epic battles soon.

N.B.: Thanks to Ivan for helping me cap Hataraku this weekend while I was away!