This week, Maoyuu Maou Yuusha shifts its focus from macroeconomics and war profiteering to agriculture. Yuusha and Maou arrive at a struggling village in the Southern Kingdoms where Maou plans to do experiments into more efficient systems of crop rotation that don’t leave the soil utterly fucked. The two of them meet up with one of Maou’s sleeper agents who follows “the way of the maid” which I can only assume is the most righteous of orders. After a long day of trekking from The Gate connecting the Human and Demon worlds to Head Maid’s estate, Maou and Yuusha are left to relax. Since it is imperative for Maou to be moe, she proposes, in a rather roundabout way, that Yuusha rest his head in her lap. She appears significantly less flustered in this scene than she does in the manga, but it still got the job done (i.e. making my heart explode). Yuusha, being a man who knows what he wants, immediately takes her up and the offer and flops his head down in her lap. THANK GOD, I wasn’t about to deal with yet another male lead who thinks affection is icky.

Guys, it’s only episode 2. There’s no way this moment isn’t getting killed

Like clockwork, our lovebirds are interrupted by horse that’s tripping balls, and find two runaway sisters hiding out in the stable. Thus begins the lesson on indentured servitude and how thoroughly fucked the working class is under a feudal system. The two sisters sought to escape their fate of being bound the land, toiling away as slaves in all but name. Initially, Head Maid berates them for abandoning their role and trying to escape only to assume roles as beggars. She pretty much says “get a job, you bums” in a more poetic way. Thus, the sisters beg for jobs in the manner and become maids-in-training under Head Maid’s direction, a service to the sisters and the rest of humanity. Awwww, optimism and happiness.

Truer words have never been spoken

The episode finishes off with Maou’s push to introduce education for the benefit of the village, as well as to gain influence with higher-ups in the village by teaching their children; influence that she hopes will make them open to her propositions. Overall, this week’s episode seems to be a chapter in Maoyuu‘s case study of how to get a society out of a medieval state. Maou’s plan seems to be to bring the struggling human kingdoms prosperity, thus fulfilling basic needs so the people can focus on more intellectual values. She is effectively trying to instigate a renaissance. If that’s the case, then Maoyuu will adequately set itself apart from Spice and Wolf and I am intrigued. Not that I would mind if it continued to be a Spice and Wolf about macroeconomics with a love interest who is a demon king instead of a sage wolf.

Presumably, there is some reformation that she has in mind for the demon world too, but we’ll have to cross that bridge when we come to it, since currently Maou is focusing exclusively on the human world. I’m still surprised at how this show is turning out and how much I’m liking it. The pacing for Maou’s and Yuusha’s romance still seems a bit too fast to me, but its rather easy to look past that and just take in all the show has to offer.