Kyou Kara Maou R 1

What does the R mean? No idea. But I watched the first episode today anyway.

Good stuff so far. Conrad and Josak being badass, Yuuri being Yuuri, and some crazy twists thrown in to mess with my mind. Maybe if I could read the light novels–which I do own; they’re sitting in a sad pile due to my lack of kanji skills–I would have known what was going to happen at the end of the episode, but I certainly did not. Or maybe this OVA is completely original. In any case: Fascinating! Corporeal? Guess we’ll find out!

I love the opening animation, too, especially where Yuuri goes from Maou-mode back into bashfully smiling Yuuri-mode. In fact, I loved that part so much I made this herky-jerky animated gif. (It’s a couple hundred K so I figured I’d link to it instead of forcing you all to download it.)

The ED, with trademark chibified cast members, was also quite nice.

There are a couple of new characters, including the main antagonist and his retainer, and apparently a new girl at the castle who wasn’t in this episode but is in the OP animation. I’m really intrigued by the antagonist, who seems to have certain abilities–which Yuuri is either immune to after a point or which someone stopped in time. His retainer is your standard badass swordsman there to give Conrad something to do, but hopefully he’ll turn into an interesting character like Raven did.

Since this is all Shou Shimaron related, I wonder if we’ll be seeing 刈ポニー?

Final thought: Brooke, there’s some Josak fanservice for you in this episode!