Yet another great episode that mixed action and intense service. There’s boob play again, this time with a busty version of Maria.
The story picks up where the last episode left off, with Yahiro defeating Basara and using him as a trade chip.
In a shocking development, Zest rejects Yahiro’s offer, then kills his ass! She even burns his body to leave no doubt. Definitely did not see that coming. Poor Yahiro didn’t either.
I really like how this show has been going at a fast pace. Fast pacing is usually a good thing for storytelling anyway, plus it frees up time for more ecchi scenes.
Anyway, Zest’s kill scene left us with a nice butt shot and a really weird kill move that makes it look like her top slips off and her right breast is exposed completely, even showing the tip of a fully blank boob.
This is probably just an animators mistake. Her outfit was a wide cleavage gap and it’s likely that the animators were rushed and in doing so, they ended up having Zest look virtually topless here. The artwork was pretty rough early on in this episode.
After dealing with Yahiro, Zest brings Basara inside, and instructs Maria to break his mind (with sexual activity, of course).
Realizing that Basara is conscious and resistant to her attempts, Maria unlocks her Bankai, an ultra busty, non-loli version of her previous self. Through hypnosis she forces Basara to “have his way with her” in what is (IMO) the hottest scene in the anime so far (there’s even a bit of titty sucking).
When getting freaky doesn’t work, Maria resorts to a conventional battle. We get a nice wardrobe correction moment, and then a bunch of cleavage and butt shots during the fight.
Meanwhile, Zest is forced to deal with Yuki who snuck in after Basara downed the forcefield around the compound. IMS is borderline genius level for their ability to work fanservice into genuine battle scenes.
A juicy booty shot here for Yuki. This is quickly becoming a major theme for her character. IMS does a nice job making sure that her ass is just a little bit nicer than all the other girls.
Yuki breaks Mio free, and the fight becomes two on one. Cleavage shots dominate.
Back to Maria again. Basara takes a beating but eventually gets Maria to give up.
Zest is defeated and tied up.
Then out of nowhere, Zolgear appears. He overwhelms Yuki and Mio at once. Basara makes a dramatic entrance it is quickly apparent that he’s out of his league as well, as foretold by Yahiro.
You know, for a generic villain, Zolgear is somewhat intimidating. Super creepy, kinda rapey, ruthless and seemingly unstoppable. Rapist villains are on their own tier of evil in anime. If Basara loses, unspeakable things are going to happen to Mio and Yuki. Not that I expect anything bad to happen to our heroes, but it’s just enough to lend a sense of dread to Zolgear’s scene at the end.
Zolgear also reveals that he knows of Zest’s true feelings (that she wants to be Basara’s latest servant). He then attempts to kill Zest with a Darth Vader style levitating choke before Basara makes an arrival and breaks it up.
There are two episodes to go. With the pacing this anime is on, the climax of this arc could be wrapped up in the next episode, leaving the final episode as a dedicated ecchi episode to send the season off. That’s typically how these kinds of ecchi series go, and we still have Zest’s pact scene to look forward to.
Once again, the artwork was wildly inconsistent. During battles it was solid, but during some of the talkative scenes it could get pretty ugly. This was particularly true early in the episode. I really hope this anime gets a second season with a high end budget. Testament deserves one.
…
I don’t know if it’s been mentioned here before, but in case it hasn’t, a post-series OVA for Testament is in the works and will come bundled with the 8th light novel in June. It will be an “unaired” episode and likely focus completely on fanservice. It was actually announced way back in December of last year, a month before the anime began airing.
The OVA will bring the series up to 13 total episodes.
