A tournament arc! Or, rather, a tournament episode! I love that Yumiella is so focused on getting stronger, it isn't until later that she realizes exactly how obvious the principal's setup was and that she walked right into it. I did like that she basically admitted that if another student had won it she would have stolen it from them.

We also got to see some new techniques from Yumiella this episode. Specifically, this is the premiere of Yumiella punch. A move so quick that only Captain Adolf was able to see it. Additionally, it looks like Yumiella's Dark Bind hands are able to do shadow puppetry. They must have been disappointed and bored when Yumiella was stopped before she could put them to use:

I also loved Patrick realizing from Yumiella's face that something bad was about to happen and backing away. You know that he is getting a good read on her at this point since she shows so few expressions generally. However, our dear protagonist doesn't seem to be realizing how close they have actually gotten. This was the other image I had debated using as the lead screen grab:

I love this anime soooo much!

As a light novel reader, there are a lot of scenes I'm excited to see. I wasn't expecting much at the start but this series is so amazingly hilarious.

Also best boy Patrick is actually starting to understand Yumiella's thought processes. The path you've chosen will be thorny 🫡 頑張れ

There was so much good stuff in this episode!

The principal exploiting the clueless power gamer in Yumiella to get her to enter the tournaments.

Yumiella giving non-game context useful advice to help Alicia improve her Light magic.

Watching Alicia behave like a good person away from the 3 jerks was great.

"Yumiella Punch" deserves some explanation of context:

This goes back to the history of anime, manga, and live action shows, where characters are yelling out their attack names as they attack, so in all shows for young kids, all attacks are named. (See Bravern)

So if you were a young kid growing up in Japan, you're reading manga and watching shows where characters are yelling out their attacks, this naturally enters your own play, so you yell out "(your name here) punch!!!"

So Yumiella naming her punch is very puerile, i.e. kiddie-like.

Usually when we see characters yelling out their own ordinary attacks, e.g. "Ataru Punch!!" the result is disappointing, like some kid doing this while attacking in a real fight, and finding out it does nothing to enhance the attack, and they just wind up looking lame.

But this time, Yumiella Punch is a terrifying and effective attack, capable of breaking a high-level sword.

Therefore naming an extremely powerful attack with a kiddie-like attack name is such a non-sequitur that it's funny.

So far, this is the funniest episode out of all animes I'm watching this season.

I'm glad that you created the thread! I got some RL issues that kept me away from posting. (My cat went missing for three days, and now that I found her I'm overburdened with work)

The dean playing Yumiella on the palm of his hand was fun. And of course, she's brute-forcing the whole thing!