Unfortunately, it looks like Yomi won’t be going anywhere anytime soon, which I find rather exasperating. ‘Cause I mean, what have we learned? Nothing. Nothing whatsoever. When we last left off, an injured Sol wasn’t just close to losing his duel to Yomi. There was a real chance the former could die to the latter. Yeah, Yomi is not a good guy. Yomi is crazy enough about Iana to murder for her. The worst part is that he’ll never change his mind about Konoha. He simply will never believe Iana that she and Konoha are not enemies. And yet we fight to keep him around for what? Because he’s hot? Tch.

After Iana picks up Sol’s sword and bluffs her way to victory — she can’t really fight — Yomi is forced to back down. After forcing the murderous idiot to apologize, Iana then tells everyone how Yomi simply thought she was being abused, so of course, he was just defending her. Somehow, everyone else decides to back down as well. Uh, what? If someone tried to kill me due to a misunderstanding, I’d still want them detained and thrown in jail. C’mon, I don’t give a shit what their reasoning is. He’s trying to kill people. He’s a rabid dog. But at the end of the day, we’re starkly reminded that this is still Iana’s isekai harem fantasy and she ain’t losing any of her pretty boys.

Somehow, Iana falls ill from seemingly overexerting herself (from just picking up a sword?), but this is simply an excuse for each of the boys to dote on her one by one. Apparently, real Konoha wrote it into the story that you may only take someone’s temperature forehead to forehead. I don’t know if I’ve ever seen this practice in real life. Then again, we’re normal people who just use our hands if we don’t have a thermometer. Anyway, with Yomi, she finally tames the rabid dog by leaning into her former identity as a villainess. She has to lie and pretend that she truly wants to screw over her own sister. Again, why is she jumping through hoops for an asshole who wants to hurt her own sister? I can’t think of any reason other than he’s one of her hot creations, and that’s terribly shallow.

Then Ginoford stops by, and he now firmly believes he was wrong about Iana. He now firmly believes pre-incarnation Iana never truly bullied Konoha. She was just trying to protect them from that rapey uncle (man, that feels like so long ago). It’s wild how dumb these boys are. Real Konoha put all of their points into hotness and little to nothing upstairs. In fact, she starts reflecting on how she has refined her fantasy Ginoford over time. Well, now the ideal Ginoford is in front of her, treating Iana like a princess. But at the back of my mind, I can’t shake the fact that he’s still supposed to be with Konoha, so all these reverse harem antics feel inappropriate. I would never get this close to my fiancee’s sister. I’m pretty sure Iana won’t NTR her own damn sister, but we can no longer say that there’s zero chance. And honestly, that’s kind of disappointing. Just not as disappointing as keeping the murderous Yomi around.

Last but not least, there’s Sol. Alas, there’s nothing new here. It’s the same interaction we’ve seen over and over again between these two. Real Konoha is still deathly afraid of him. Meanwhile, he keeps teasing her, so there’s always that ambiguous “does he hate her, does he like her” play between them. I’m tired of it. It was fine the first couple of times as a starter, but it’s gotten old now. I don’t wanna watch a harem, reverse harem, or anything harem. Pick a lane. And if it’s gonna be Sol, then I want some real progress. Not this “IF YOU BETRAY KONOHA, I MUST KILL YOU BUT THEN I DUNNO YOU SEEM CUTE SOMETIMES.” Fuck, are we really going to do this for another two months?

But then the preview for next week’s episode suggests that we might get yet another pretty boy. How many do you need, woman? So yeah, that’s my current beef with this show. I wanted to see an adult Konoha look back on her youthful fantasies and reflect on what she could have done better. But the lesson she learns this week basically boils down to, “Oh, my dear heart can’t handle hot boys flirting with me. That’s why I need a self-insert character!” Meanwhile, her harem grows steadily. Meh.