天下制覇

Did a different group of people write this episode?

Impressions:

I don't get this episode. Mind you, I'd also call it probably the strongest episode of the show so far, but it was also like it was written by people who hadn't seen any of the previous three episodes. The only thing it really had in common with them is that it had basically no comedy, but this time, it felt more intentional. The whole thing was character driven, and didn't do too poor a job at developing Shia and giving her a reason to respect Ninomiya. Not so much him, but it's hard to even know where to start because his entire character did a complete 180 for most of the episode to become selfless, competent, and fairly heroic. So completely unlike his personality for the previous three episodes. Not as a punchline like Shia was drugging him with a hero potion or something. Just… his creed is now something like "be free" instead of "be maximally lazy and hedonistic." It's a bit of a shift.

Which isn't to say that there weren't rough edges. The whole starting bit with the debt collectors spent about three minutes explaining and lamenting that it was an impossible amount of money only to abruptly timeskip, go "and his scheme worked and it was all paid off." The people making the show also seemed unaware that every plan against the proto-devil was "dig a hole." You just spent like five minutes on the intracicies of things happening off-screen to explain "giant monster appears in dungeon," but we're ignoring this? Uh, right. And I imagine this is the last we'll see of the mass-advertised monster farm that generates billions a day for zero effort that nobody has thought to do apparently to this point and nobody will be copying.