tl;dr: A solid prologue to a new arc that does everything you would expect from it in the context of Shinmai Maou, though ultimately it is just a prologue. This isn't really a proper story but rather a prologue to the next arc in that it ends with them beginning to journey to towards the village. It focuses on establishing why returning to the village is an issue not just in terms of potential danger, but also in terms of bringing up old traumas for Basara, Yuki, and Kurumi. This is conveyed to the other members of the group, and in doing so it gets everyoneon the same footing before departing, which naturally involves some decent relationship development not just between Basara and the rest of the group but also amongst the other group members themselves. This is able to occur because Basara is busy away from the group with a side story centered around Chisato, though one that isn't made entirely clear where it came from or what the purpose was but it seems to set up things that'll come up again at some point. Though to some degree it is getting kind of irritating at this point how that seems to be all that Chisato ever gets, in that she's had a decent amount of scenes but no clear substantial development and only hints and mysterious teases that seem largely pointless. There's also a fight against Lars, and though the stakes don't feel that high it's awesome enough. I don't think I've mentioned it before in any of my reviews, but Lars is pretty damn cool. The art and animation were just as good as the second season and of course the critical scenes were still there and strong. The ED was the OP of season 2 which was good enough I suppose though it would have been cool to get something new.