Score: A-

Truly this was a “Fran is definitely back” episode. Just picking right up where the last season left off and sending Fran and Teacher right into their next adventure. Nothing like a floating island full of the undead to get the blood pumping! No doubt that things are going to get crazy and I’m sure there will be some emotional gut punches along the way with how they are setting this up.

Fran is a great fangirl herself!

Fran is adorable. That’s just a given. Whether she’s drooling over curry or just falling asleep because of complicated discussions…she’s a treasure. It’s just nice to have Fran back. Her character does manage to balance out being deathly cute and just being downright badass. We haven’t seen how dark and merciless she can be in this opening episode, but it is there. Now I’m not entirely sure how much of that we’ll see in this arc anyway. But if nothing else she looks hyped up for this adventure even if it’s clearly going to be a dangerous one. I love Fran’s character even if I risk just constantly calling her cute and not going into enough depth about it.

This is going to get dark

This whole situation just feels…like it’s going to be really tragic. The OP nails the overall tone and the flashbacks to a mysterious individual just hits home where this is going. Seems likely that person ended up killed through these horrific experiments, turned into an undead, and basically killed the people responsible while turning into a dungeon of the undead. It could go in various directions, but that feels like what we’re heading into. And this could be a good challenge for Fran emotionally since in some ways she might be able to relate to the Dungeon Master. Both of them were slaves that lived miserable lives to a point. Fran was saved by meeting Teacher and now things are looking so much better. The girl of this flashback? Clearly she didn’t get that.

A deeper guy than he’d admit

Jean seems like an entertaining guy. He’s a weirdo for sure…but in this show that actually works just fine. You can also see that he’s a good guy underneath all the silliness. He definitely lucked out though in getting Fran and Teacher along for this dungeon mission. I think the threats are going to be even more insane than he can imagine. He is the right guy to have around in a dungeon that is focused on the undead to be sure though. And there might be less worry for Fran and Teacher in terms of showing off what they can do since he’s already figured out the intelligence weapon thing.

RIP Andy. He gave everything to get Fran and company up to that floating island. A nice touch by Jean that he did properly send him off instead of just leaving him until he disappeared on his own. That it took so much effort to reach that island shows how difficult a dungeon it is. That place is itself a fortress and the attacks will probably intensify the further they go.

Welcome back Fran

It was great to get back in with this series. The only negative I had…was the ED. I didn’t love the song in general, but I really didn’t like how they used the song to trail into the ending. Usually that’s great. Some shows use that unbelievably well to let the end of the episode hit even harder. In this case…WTF!? You go from a kid getting limbs chopped off and screaming in agony…to an upbeat sounding ending song!? Just no…hard cut into the ending song if you have to. But don’t mess with the atmosphere of the end of the episode. That doesn’t work. But yeah, it was one small blemish on a really solid return to the series.