I woke up today hoping that this week’s episode would be the season finale. Alas, we still have one more to go. Nothing better for Christmas Eve than the season finale of a middling anime. Bah, let’s get this over with. So when we last left off, Iana wanted the fix the vampire’s seal before it broke. But where’s the fun in that? You can’t mention a vampire without showing us one, so of course, Iana and her team of pretty boys — Sol and Yomi — are too late. The seal has already broken, and the entire elf village has been subjugated. Well, these look and act more like zombies than vampires.

There’s not much to say about this sequence. The pretty boys try to fight off the vampire horde, but they’re undead. It’s futile. Still, let’s say Konoha somehow fully awakens to her powers in the season finale and purifies the village. If the elves already have holes in them thanks to Sol, will they end up dying anyway? Meh, I suppose it doesn’t matter. It’s not like this is a good show where this sort of speculation pays off.

Speaking of Sol, he’s all “gentle” with Iana now. At first, he naturally kept questioning why Iana would run off to do the wacky things that she does, and why wouldn’t he? From his perspective, Iana’s actions don’t make a lick of sense. I’d rather see the isekai character have a frank conversation; I’d rather see Iana try and explain herself. Maybe Sol believes her, maybe he doesn’t. It would be a nice way to show us how far their relationship has developed since the start of the anime. But what do we get instead? Yomi scolds Sol for not actually caring about Iana, so now the latter acts like a sad, browbeaten dog. Pathetic.

Anyway, they come across the last lucid member of the elf village, i.e. the guy they saved in last week’s episode. Unfortunately, he, too, has been turned into a vampire, so he immediately takes a bite out of Iana. According to her “deep” lore, she’ll be a “grandchild vampire.” Basically, she’ll act like one of the dumb, zombie-like ones. But there’s no way that would happen, right? Not to the heroine of the show, right? How would you explain her being immune, though? According to Iana, even if Konoha got captured and bitten by the hot vampire, she would never turn into one because her blood is just so pure (gag). Man, don’t tell me Iana shares the same trait.

But that’s pretty much our episode. I don’t know how things will turn out, but the possibilities seem weak. Either Konoha magically shows up and saves the day somehow, or Iana shares the same special traits as her sister. The former possibility is disappointing, because it would just feel anticlimactic. And yet, it would be a natural development, but Konoha half awoken to her powers in the last arc. I guess it would make sense for her to fully awaken in order to save her sister. Then if there’s a season two, I guess they could segue smoothly into going on an adventure to defeat the demon king. Only this time, we have Iana in tow. It’s at least better than the other possibility, which, again, requires Iana to also have special blood.

Why would that be disappointing? Because if we should commit to our premise, we need to commit to it all the way. From the very start, it has been clear that real Konoha is very different from ideal Konoha. Real Konoha did not get to become her ideal. She is not isekai special, but that’s okay; the moral of the story is that she needs to love her plain ol’ self. So it would be incredibly disappointing (and boring) if Iana ends up being immune. But I’m afraid that’s probably where we’re headed.