Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid S

Episode 5

This may be my favorite episode of Dragon Maid yet. Before I dive in, apologies for the delay on this as I was in transit and at Otakon for the past four days. I'm excited to be back home at my desk to gush about Dragon Maid and its foray into worldbuilding this week. I've also made it no secret that I'm a fan of Elma, and she gets a lot of screen time as the story looks back at how she and Tohru first met and how their relationship developed.

The pair initially met far into humanity's past where their ideologies of Chaos and Harmony clashed. Elma is firmly in the camp of peace and in a land where water is a scarce resource, she's willing to use her abilities to assuage conflict by providing it. Understandably, this invokes reverence among the humans who begin treating her as a god. Elma's campaign initially intrigues Tohru, who doesn't understand her ideological rival's perspective (especially the fact that it doesn't include eating humans).

While Tohru and Elma bicker incessantly in the present, the episode's larger theme is middle ground and tolerance. Instead of Tohru writing off Elma's approach as pointless or wrong because it conflicts with her own approach, she instead chooses to tag along with her and observe her actions before coming to a conclusion. It's then when Elma starts to succumb to her own feelings of righteousness that Tohru is able to call her out, having witnessed how the Harmony Dragon's own ideals eventually became corrupted.

The two dragons have an interesting conversation preceding their giant serpent battle. The issue is actually less that humans have come to revere Elma (although that's part of it) but more that she's established an institute of peace that centers around control instead of freedom. Tohru points out that the human population was breaking into factions – those that follow her and those that don't – and it would inevitably lead to violent conflict. Elma retorts that she wouldn't have allowed that, which infuriates Tohru. What Elma has essentially said is that she wouldn't have allowed dissent in the first place. Peace that doesn't allow any sort of disagreement isn't peace at all, and runs counter to their own arrangement as "judges" of humans from opposing viewpoints.

The episode also gives us an idea of the less "domesticated" Tohru; she's more wily for sure, while I'd say that Elma seems more sophisticated.

Even though their cohabitation eventually fell apart, the episode includes these poignant moments from their past where it's obvious how much that relationship really meant to both Elma and Tohru. Whether it's sharing a meat bun or waiting for the other on the side of the road before following along, it's clear that their fighting is mostly bluster.

The second half of the episode checks in with Ilulu, who has been seeking out a purpose for her day-to-day life ever since she began living with Kobayashi. Tohru is fed up with her lazing about and pushes her into seeking employment. Through a matter of mostly good luck, Ilulu gets a job at a traditional candy store that sells small, cheap toys and is a popular hangout spot for young kids. We've seen plenty of examples throughout the series so far that Ilulu feels most at ease around Kanna's age group despite the fact that she's supposed to be approximately the same age as Tohru. Likewise, when she's introduced to humans, they've settled on her introducing herself as 16 years old.

I've got, you know, thoughts on that and how it continues to feed into the discourse around her character and it's design. It's the combination of factors that includes "actually I'm an ancient dragon" but the cast socializing with Ilulu like she's a kid (I mean specifically among Ilulu's direct dragon peers; Kobayashi basically treats all of the dragon cast like kids). The segment also introduces a (one-way) love interest in the shop owner's high school age grandson. He's a good kid who finds himself in various sexually-charged situations with Ilulu because, despite the fact that she thinks men naturally have high sex drives and like titties (see Kobayashi gets a penis episode) she's also conveniently ignorant over things like removing her clothing in front of teen boys.

It's a silly inconsistency in order to write-in some fanservice. It's not my intention to admonish the scene for being there in the first place, but it's still hard to tell if Ilulu is a character designed with child-like ignorance about herself when that seemed absent in her introduction, at least when it came to this specific subject.

Regardless, I still really enjoyed the Tohru-Elma portion of this episode and what it had to say about their dynamic. More dragon fire-fueled french kissing, please.

Rating:

Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid S is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.