Winter 2020 Anime: Official Info, Airdates & Trailers
Keep warm this winter season with the latest anime info at MANGA.TOKYO!
Episode 3 of As Miss Beelzebub Likes introduces us to two more characters who seem like they would spice things up a lot more than Azazel and Gocchin. We meet Astaroth and his assistant Sargatanas. They are complete opposites of the soft and kind characters from Episode 2. Let’s take a look at them and what they did this episode!
Japanese Title: 翼をつけた元天使(エンジェル)。/ その近侍、ドSにつき。(Tsubasa wo tsuketa moto tenshi (Enjeru). / Sono kinji, doS ni tsuki.)
Mullin and Beelzebub enjoy a nice lunch break in a cafe. After their cozy time together, they meet Astaroth, who instantly drops all the ladies surrounding him when he sees Beelzebub. Oddly, she tries to get away from him. Fast. He catches up and hugs her tightly and says how much he missed her, which leads Mullin to tell them how good they look together. That results in a sulky Beelzebub who tells Mullin to go home alone.
That meeting with Astaroth seemed very fateful, because next thing Mullin and Beelzebub know, Astaroth is hanging out in their office space all the time. Little do they know at that point that it is all thanks to his assistant, who he wants to avoid. In the meantime Astaroth tries to find out what kind of assistant Mullin is since Beelzebub seems naturally drawn to him…
Having a sweet tooth, I was totally carving a good cake or cream puff while watching this episode, because there were so many good things to eat and Beelzebub just knows how to make them look especially tasty and fluffy. Where will we ever in our life find a cream puff that is as soft and fluffy as this one? I want to eat it! I hope there will be a collaboration cafe at some point where we can go and eat stuff that at least comes close to the fluffiness of the stuff they show. I already know I will watch the next episode while eating cake. My favorite dessert this week by the way was the cream puff. They are just so delicious. Even though the ice cream looked really good as well, that puff is what I’ll be dreaming about tonight…
I don’t know what to think of Astaroth. Yes, he might be a bit pretty. But he is not as cute as Mullin or as hot as Azazel. And then he seems to be this kind of dorky guy that actually is really sensitive, which is all nice and good, if only he could stop his dorkiness long enough to make me actually like him… That sounds harsher than it is, because I still liked him a lot, just that he is not my favorite so far. There has to be a last place, even if he has high ratings, right?
There we go. That’s what I loved about Astaroth. First, he keeps calling Mullin Mirin and then his fantasy is running away with his brain, making up all these versions of Mullin that never existed. At last, Astaroth was able to appreciate ‘Mirin’. By the way, Mirin is the word for Japanese vinegar. That’s anything else but sweet. So ironic.
If I hadn’t seen Astaroth in this anime, I would have thought they would portray him totally different. He is one of the big rulers in hell, which does also relate to this anime. He was thrown out of heaven together with other fallen angels like Lucifer. The reason for it was simply because they freed him from prison, where he was put because he knew of God’s plans, even though he didn’t want to go at first. He is said to be tempting humans with laziness and narcissism and wow does anything fit to the Beelmama-Astaroth like that? He is totally in love with himself and has too much confidence in his beauty. Also, it does seem like he doesn’t like to work. He spent most of the episode in Beelzebub’s office after all, until Sargatanas came to ‘pick him up’.
The only thing we didn’t quite see yet is that according to a legend he is actually sharing a body with Astarte, a female god. In pictures, Astaroth is always riding a big monster (mostly a dragon or wolf) and he holds a snake in his hand. If the snake’s black, it is Astaroth’s soul in the snake and Astarte in the body while if the snake is white, it is Astarte in the snake and the body is Astaroth. You could also simply check if the body is female or male, but it’s an interesting detail. I wonder if there will be a time where this symbolism will be put into the story?
Where most of the demons and angels so far were taken from some kind of religious reference, this one comes from literature. There isn’t much to say about her, sadly, but she is the Revealer of Hell in Barlowe’s Inferno. The book describes the different stages of hell and Sargatanas is one of the demons guiding Barlowe. There are other works listing this demon and Sargatanas is even then described as a servant to Astaroth. I would have loved to know more about the source of her, but that’s all I could find without diving too deep into the strange world of demons and satanism… The internet can be a scary place!
I recently bought the first volume of the manga to see how far we got until now and how different it is from the anime. But wow, they are not different at all. Reading the first few pages of the manga, I could see that they literally took the manga and simply made it into an anime. There might have been a bit more food in the manga, longer times spent on setting the mood, but all in all, it’s the same.
While it is the same, I do feel like the anime is a lot better, because even the most exciting scenes like the kabe-don from the first episode or how Mullin meets Azazel seemed so fast over in the manga while they were quite magical in the anime. We didn’t even finish the first volume yet with this week, so I dare say that there would be room for a second season, if they keep up the pace. I guess I will have to buy the second volume for next week, we’ll see if there are already things they skip until then!
NEXT: Fly! Imaginary Wings / Her Highness’ First Visit
Keep warm this winter season with the latest anime info at MANGA.TOKYO!