‘Cause it really feels like we’ve just jumped the shark. The original premise of the show was like bad beef between France and England, and France is losing real bad. But it’s okay! Our hero’s going to use alchemy to turn the tides of the war, and along the way, he’s going to collect a bevy of hot, French girls for his harem. Easy-peasy, right? So what the hell is this demonic nonsense? Sigh… let’s start from the beginning.

— I didn’t talk about it last week, and I still don’t think it’s worth getting into: Astaroth stares at the storm clouds and mentions how the “dimensions” are unfolding. Fifth dimension, sixth dimension, seventh dimension — y’know, that sort of thing. Yeah, I don’t think that’s how that works.

— And how could I forget? We also have weird purple tentacles lined with eyes. This is apparently what happens when a small stone goes out of control.

— So Montmorency tells La Hire to take both Jeanne and Astaroth away, because he’s going to face this… this darkness alone. Right after the OP, this happens. Yeah, the animation is not doing too hot right now.

— I just don’t know how you come back from this. Obviously, there’s probably little chance that this show gets a sequel. This sort of thing happens all the time. Long light novel series gets an adaptation, adaptation only covers a minuscule portion of the story, the rest remains a mystery to Westerners who can’t read Japanese. Even well-regarded adaptations never get a sequel, so fat chance that Ulysses gets one. But putting that aside, I still don’t understand how the story is supposed to naturally recover from this and go back to the Hundred Years War.

— Lookin’ hot, hot, hot!

— I like how both Astaroth and Nicolas Flamel, Montmorency’s first mentor, had an inkling that something like this could happen, but neither of them bothered to give Montmorency any details. He thought that he would simply die if the philosopher’s stone went out of control, and that’s a perfectly fine assumption to make. If he was in error, why didn’t Astaroth correct him properly?

— Oh, I guess she didn’t know what would happen either. Welp.

— Eventually, Montmorency is no longer able to hold the “Hole of Babylon” at bay, so the tentacles overwhelm and… uh, molest him?

— Of course he has to be naked.

— No wonder he willing chooses to be abstinent.

— Good lord, what now? What am I staring at in the distance?

— …

— I guess Montmorency is watching Astaroth’s original partner seal the king of the gods away? And as soon as her partner did so, he pretty much got Thanos’d.

— Back in the real world, Montmorency morphs into some sort of anime demon. Or more specifically, the king of the gods that got sealed has now taken over Montmorency’s body. Funny how being a demon also gives you a six-pack… or I guess an eight-pack in this case.

— Yeah, that’s how I kinda feel right about now.

— If the soldiers see Jeanne as their saint, I’m not sure how they’re going to reconcile the idea of her continuing to spend time with Montmorency. I mean, I’m going to assume that there’s a happy ending at the end of all of this. Jeanne and Montmorency’s friends are going to do what they can to help the guy turn back to normal. But then what? To the commoners, it won’t change the fact that one of your military leaders literally turned into a demon and started killing people. Killing people is putting it lightly. This is a massacre.

— Demon Montmorency then commands his Ship in the Sky to attack, but yo, this looks more like an alien spaceship than something a god would use.

— Oh c’mon, we’re in space now. Space. What the hell is going on? Is this guy a god or a demon? Or a goddamn alien?

— Good one, La Hire.

— At least we can still crack jokes.

— Nicolas gives us a brief plot dump, but it doesn’t really explain much. Something about Temple Knights trying to destroy all the philosopher’s stones, but one ended up in Montmorency’s hands anyway.

— Such great animation.

— The old man tries to defend Astaroth, but he eats it pretty quick. So much for that. Afterwards, Demon Montmorency swears that he’ll basically torture the fairy goddess for eternity, because she supposedly can’t die.

— Elsewhere, La Hire stabs herself with the Joyeuse, because she’s going to try and wake Montmorency up before the poison of the philosopher’s stone kills her? I’m just not clear on exactly how she intends to knock some sense into the guy.

— Oh well, it turns out she didn’t really know what to do either. So she just goes up to Astaroth and asks the fairy what to do. Basically, you rip the stone out of Montmorency, and all of a sudden, everything will be fine? The evil bad guy will just disappear?

— Demon Montmorency then tries to attack La Hire with his tentacles, but she manages to shoot them all down with her gun. Yes, the king of gods — who might just be an alien from outer space — is being stymied by a gun. In fact, the gun gets him real good, and just like that, the stone gets knocked out of him. But then the tentacles just pick the stone back up and stick it back inside Montmorency’s body. Haha, I don’t even know anymore.

— In a moment of clarity, Montmorency begs La Hire to finish him off. Just blow his head up and this will all be over. But of course, that’s not going to happen. Hell, this isn’t even the last episode.

— La Hire was maybe going to do it, but she took too long to come to a decision, so Demon Montmorency is back. This is all just buying time for Jeanne, because that’s just how these stories work. If the main character goes nuts, then only his true love will bring him back. Despite all the girls vying for Montmorency’s attention for some bizarre reason, the story never really hesitated to pick Jeanne as the clear winner right from the start.

— The problem, of course, is that you can’t become a Ulysses more than once a day, so how exactly will Jeanne be able to stop Montmo–…

…oh nevermind. The girl is back, and she doesn’t care if it doesn’t make sense.

— When in doubt, just keep punching.

— Unfortunately, Demon Montmorency refuses to go away. Meanwhile, regular Montmorency sees a vision of a future in which France burns Jeanne at the stake, so he’s too mentally fried to pull himself together. Jeanne’s voice can’t reach him, because he’s too busy despairing over the fact that the people will turn against her anyways. And that’s how the episode ends.

— Yeah, I kinda knew this show wouldn’t be very good, but at least it’d be trashy enough to have fun blogging about. But even I couldn’t have predicted this strange heel turn.