The following contains spoilers for Season 3, Episode 4 of Welcome to Demon School! Iruma-kun, “The Signal That the Harvest Festival Has Begun,” now streaming on Crunchyroll.
Welcome to Demon School! Iruma-kun has returned in the Fall 2022 anime season for another semester of demonic isekai fun. Iruma Suzuki and his classmates may have won a major victory at Walter Park in Season 2, but these boys and girls still have much to learn before they reach Rank 4, Dalet.
Iruma and the others spent weeks in grueling training sessions for just one event: the Harvest Festival, which finally begins in Season 3, Episode 4. This is a challenge like no other and the competition is fierce, even with the abnormal students getting a much-needed glow-up after training. Even Asmodeus Alice and Sabnock Sabro, the class’s strongest fighters, won’t have it easy.
The True Test of Welcome to Demon School!’s Harvest Festival
Hundreds of Babyls students, mostly first-years, gather at the jungle’s four main entrances, ready to storm the place and gather ingredients for points. The abnormal class’s students all gather for one last huddle, getting themselves psyched for the trials ahead. It’s clear why they need this mental boost, given the sinister look of that jungle and how powerful the other participants seem to be. In some ways this is Iruma-kun’s own Chunin Exam, but with a twist — the students may not directly attack one another. Instead, they must compete to gather ingredients and score the most points, and the local fauna will certainly fight back with fangs and claws. It’s like the Netherworld’s most brutal Easter egg scavenger hunt.
Even if the students cannot trade blows, they can still compete fiercely in indirect duels, as Asmodeus Alice and Sabnock Sabro learn in Episode 4. The jungle is rife with ingredients but the supply of truly worthwhile prizes is limited, and the strongest students will definitely get in each other’s way. Alice and Sabro aim to capture high-point monsters and even the “legend leaf” to score big and win the Harvest Festival, but then the competition arrives.
The battle-hardened Dorodoro brothers, Ichiro and Niro, sneak up on them and announce their intent to compete for those high-point prizes. The four boys are after the same goal, and there can only be one winning team. Alice and Sabro are tougher now, but the Dorodoro brothers are true warriors, a worthy challenge for any abnormal student.
The Potential for Disaster in the Harvest Festival
On the face of it, the Dorodoro brothers should make for some fierce but healthy competition for Sabnock and Alice, and there’s no hint that the brothers will cheat or harm anyone on purpose. They’re aggressive and cocky, but they won’t get themselves disqualified by landing an illegal blow on their abnormal class competition.
Instead, Alice and Sabnock must fight hard to keep up with or surpass the Dorodoro brothers to claim those prizes and score big. The real problem is not their opponents, but the monsters all four boys are trying to catch — or perhaps some natural hazards surrounding the much-coveted legend leaf. In fact, the boys might reluctantly team up to claim that leaf, then find a non-violent way to decide who keeps it.
That said, anime tournaments like the Harvest Festival are a perfect chance for true villains to attack. This already happened once in Iruma-kun with Kiriwo and his boss Baal, and Naruto’s famous Chunin Exam — when Orochimaru made his move during Gaara’s and Sasuke’s match — is another prime example. Perhaps Kiriwo and Baal will return for more after their bungled Walter Park scheme, or an all-new villain might arrive to shake things up. Anything can happen in this jungle, but at least Alice and Sabnock know better than to lower their guard. Professor Balam taught them to survive and win, after all.
