I spent WAAAAAY too much time on MyAnimeList narrowing down my choices. I felt like there wasn't a whole lot of suspense anime to pick from, and Adventure wasn't a category. I also thought Isekai/Reincarnation would get its own category but I guess we can just lump that in with Fantasy for the most part.
Seriously though, in some categories I had a really hard time narrowing it down to just 3, and in others I left spots blank simply because there wasn't much I had seen in that category at all. I guess that's normal though.
What a freaking cool episode. We got more insight into the test and it seems that I was correct in that Noel was pulling the strings for the test requirements behind the scenes. That also explains the penalty of having to disband the party if they fail the challenge, which would be overly harsh and seemingly not in line with the guild's values. I suspect Noel is planning to recruit Leon afterwards to be Blue Beyond's tank.
I predicted Blue Beyond would hang back at the start of the test, but this was pretty well executed:
@rikka@ani.social
We KNOW that Noel is going to be devious and sneaky, so of course he's not going to race in to fight the boss. But the way Noel handled things was absolutely brilliant. I kept expecting some kind of trick or shady business to be revealed, but nothing of the sort happened. Instead, Noel predicted that the Winged Knights would not be able to beat the monster on their own and that Leon would betray his party by trying to do the "right" thing.
Then Blue Beyond shows up an hour later and basically starts wiping the floor with the monster. Leveled up Alma is ready to slaughter a monkey