Director: Daisuke Kurose
Writer: Shogo Yasukawa
First Aired: 4 August 2023
Adapts: Volume 1, Chapters 3-4
The day after the garuda incident, things have calmed down at the school, at least on the surface. Katie and Miligan continue their work with the troll and succeed in getting him to start eating again, and having their lives saved by their ideological opponents has shut the conservatives up. However, Oliver and Chela still feel they're missing something important, and Guy and Pete are horrified to learn that, since nobody was actually killed, the faculty will likely ignore the attack.
On the other hand, after slaying the garuda, Nanao has acquired a bit of a fanbase. After a bit of back-and-forth comparing Nanao's swordplay to Oliver's spellwork and strategizing, Chela decides that Oliver hasn't been sufficiently rewarded for his part in saving the class... which she chooses to rectify with a kiss on the cheek, much to Katie's consternation. As Oliver tries to figure out what the heck is suddenly happening with his female friends, Nanao manages to extricate herself from her adoring fans and rejoins them—and decides to join in the kissing, aggravating Katie even more. Then she demands one from Oliver in return, all while Pete and Guy egg the girls on and Katie gets closer and closer to an aneurysm.
Oliver is rescued, sort of, by the appearance of his older cousin-slant-foster sister Shannon Sherwood, who is pleased as punch that her baby brother has gotten such a good group of friends around him. She, too, affectionately kisses his cheek, forcing Oliver to then explain away Katie's Relative Error.
That afternoon, Professor Grenville holds a practical exam in his alchemy class. Oliver, again showing he's a much better mage than he lets on, quickly notes that the assignment has "a lot of hidden pitfalls", and spends a good chunk of the class period running around the classroom rescuing his classmates from various Dangerous Phlebotinum Interactions, culminating in having to dive on top of Pete's cauldron before his concotion explodes. This impresses Grenville, who compliments Oliver's evident knack for alchemy but cryptically warns him he should choose his friends more carefully.
After class, the no-longer-antagonistic Richard Andrews takes Oliver aside, warning him that Grenville has a reputation for taking promising students under his wing and then stealing their research for himself. Then he introduces them to someone: a girl named Annie Mackley, who fesses up to being the girl who bespelled Katie to run into the parade in "Ceremony". That said, she vehemently denies having anything to do with the troll attack or the garuda: she's as much in the dark about that as they are.
As evening comes, Katie is back with the troll, while Oliver teaches Nanao how to cast spells outside the dorms. A comment from Nanao gives Oliver a "Eureka!" Moment about the attack; meanwhile, the troll suddenly warns Katie to stay away from it. Oliver and Nanao rush to the troll's cage to find Katie missing, and minus her athame. The troll tells them Katie was taken by "the other one" to someplace "dark and deep".
Oliver and Nanao head into the labyrinth, with Oliver explaining his theory that somebody was experimenting on the troll inside Kimberly, continuing an old experiment to grant human speech to demihumans in the hopes mages might come to respect them. That person turns out to none other than Vera Miligan herself, who has taken Katie prisoner to do a little exploratory surgery on her brain, thinking something in there might explain how she got the troll to talk. Nanao, being Nanao, charges the upperclasswoman—who reveals what's been hidden behind her bangs: the paralytic eye of a basilisk.
This episode provides examples of the following tropes:
- Adaptation Deviation:
- Andrews making Mackley fess up is a modified version of a change that originated in Sakae Esuno's manga, used to compress the investigation storyline. In the original novels, the cast got her name from the pride plants along the approach to the school and interrogated her before the duel in the colosseum.
- In the novel, all five remaining Sword Roses were involved in the search for Katie, though they split up to cover more ground so the end result was the same.
- Adults Are Useless: Discussed: Oliver and Chela have to explain to the others that the faculty habitually turn a blind eye to incidents in the labyrinth. Students who go in there are believed to know the risks, and the garuda incident is going to get chalked up to a fight between students that got a little out of hand. Though Chela does admit it would've been different if anyone had actually died.Pete: They don't care about us if we live?! That's crazy!
Guy: I know it's too late, but we sure picked a scary school to enroll in, huh? - Animal Wrongs Group: Miligan turns out to be the culprit behind the events of the past five episodes: the troll was one of her experimental subjects and was trying to get away from her, and the garuda was one of her familiars, which she employed in a counterattack on the conservatives for putting on the kobold hunt. She's revealed to have been experimenting on demihumans for years, with corpses of trolls, kobolds, and merfolk in vats around her lab, but passionately believes that her experiments in granting them greater intelligence are key to expanding the Inhumanable Alien Rights of demihumans.
- Cliffhanger: Katie is on an operating table being prepared for nonconsensual brain surgery, and Nanao and Oliver are at swordpoint with a mage three years their senior. Roll credits.
- Dangerous Phlebotinum Interaction: Discussed: Oliver realizes that the assigned recipe is leaving out a lot of hidden pitfalls. One student puts in too much bubblegrass and Oliver has to add an ingredient to calm the potion before it boils over, while another ends up with chemical burns on her eyes because she didn't know to put the lid on after adding vampire bloom to the cauldron; Oliver tells her to wash her eyes out with olive oil. Then Pete forgets to dilute an ingredient, and Oliver has to toss his cauldron onto the floor upside-down and dive on top of it before it explodes.
- Deadly Gaze: A strike from Miligan's basilisk eye freezes Nanao in her tracks and starts to turn her to stone, though Oliver fortunately knows the counterspell.
- Double-Meaning Title: The kanji used for the title, 蛇眼 jagan, means "snake eyes", but sounds similar to an Alternate Character Reading of the kanji 邪眼, meaning "evil eye".
- "Eureka!" Moment: Nanao offhandedly comments that she subconsciously assumed the troll was trying to escape, not attack, which suddenly causes Oliver to realize what's really going on. The troll telling them that Miligan kidnapped Katie clinches it: he connects it to experiments by demihuman rights activists he's previously heard about.
- Foreign Language Title: "グレアー", a phonetic spelling of "glare", with the kanji 蛇眼 jagan, meaning "snake eyes".
- Foreshadowing: Oliver has another secret meeting with Teresa Carste, with them alluding more directly this time to him having a secret Series Goal. This is accompanied by a Flashback Echo of the blonde woman from his recollection in "Ceremony" surrounded by six dark figures.
- Hiding Behind Your Bangs: We finally find out what Miligan is hiding behind hers, in the most literal sense: the eye of a basilisk. Figuratively, she was hiding that she was the Starter Villain all along.
- How Do I Shot Web?: Nanao has no idea how to use magic to do much more than throw sparks or produce a stiff breeze. Oliver spends the evening tutoring her, and tries to adapt the martial arts philosophies she was taught as a samurai into practical mental images that she can use herself.
- Jealous Romantic Witness: Being Katie is pain. She is sent into a veritable conniption by seemingly every female character except her getting to kiss Oliver.
- Love Martyr: Miligan thinks her basilisk eye is a sign of her parents' love, despite the fact that similar implants killed five of her siblings. This is an early sign of how little regard mage culture pays to child welfare, a running theme in the series.
- Mad Scientist Laboratory: Miligan's lab is laid out in the classic style, one-part surgical suite, one-part demihuman morgue, lit by will-o-wisps with vials of samples and chemicals everywhere.
- No Endor Holocaust: Despite multiple students in the first- and second-year classes getting disemboweled last episode, nobody died. The episode neglects to explain that this is because mages are just made of tougher stuff than Muggles.
- No Full Name Given: Enforced. Mackley is only called by her surname in the episode. Her given name, Annie, wasn't established in the novels until volume 12, which came out the same day as the series premiere.
- Overshadowed by Awesome: Played for Laughs. Katie gets annoyed that the rest of the freshmen are fawning over Nanao and not giving Oliver any credit for his part in the garuda attack. Pete and Chela explain that Nanao's swordplay was flashy and easy to follow, whereas Oliver's strategizing was harder to see and his spellwork was dull to look at (unless, like Chela, you understand enough to know what to look for). This is accompanied by comical images of arrows slamming into Oliver's head at each statement from Pete.Guy: Hey, calm down there, Pete! Are you trying to mentally break the poor guy?
Pete: Right, my bad. - Pass the Popcorn: Pete and Guy are clearly deriving no small amount of amusement from watching the girls fuss over Oliver, egging them on yet again.
- Plagiarism in Fiction: Andrews accuses Grenville of habitually taking promising students under his wing only to then steal their research, ruining their careers.
- Sink or Swim Mentor: Grenville is more professional in this episode than in his previous appearance, but seemingly deliberately doesn't warn the students that the potion recipe has a bunch of hidden traps in it that can cause injury, only giving a vague warning that "if you are not careful, you will die today." On the other hand, he's quite impressed when Oliver turns out to know exactly what to do when several students run into those traps.
- Smooch of Victory: Played for Laughs. Chela decides Oliver hasn't been congratulated enough for his part in saving the day earlier, and tries to kiss him on the cheek. He's actually put off by this because they're Like Brother and Sister; meanwhile, Katie, who has a crush on Oliver, nearly blows a fuse. Then Nanao comes over and, taking it as a local custom, gives him a kiss and then demands one for herself. He's saved by the arrival of his cousin Shannon, who gives him another kiss by way of greeting; meanwhile Katie is fit to burst, and Nanao is left plaintively whining about her kiss getting forgotten.
- Suddenly Speaking: While Katie is talking to the troll as usual, he suddenly starts talking back, warning her to stay away from himself and Miligan—who unfortunately is watching from the shadows at that very moment.
- Taught to Hate: Mackley's stated motive for enchanting Katie? Her parents told her that demihuman rights activists are an embarrassment to mages, and she just overheard Katie's argument with Guy about the troll and wanted to embarrass her right back.
- Unwitting Instigator of Doom: Mackley just wanted to embarrass Katie, but instead nearly got her trampled because the troll happened to go berserk at that exact moment.
