Nia Liston: The Merciless Maiden

Episode 6

The downside to Nia Liston: The Merciless Maiden having so much going on under the hood is that you never quite know what you're going to get out of a new episode. Sometimes you'll tune in and get a small child jovially beating people into unconsciousness during sequences that look like they should be scored to a death metal track. Other times you'll get a school days adventure storyline with the backdrop of a bunch of young aristocrats figuring out how to more easily exploit the serfs. Episode six of Nia Liston falls into the latter category and, while there's still plenty to like about it, this one left me more curious about the next episode than appreciative of what I saw in this one.

This episode sees Nia, Hilde, and Reli execute their plan to broadcast a martial arts tournament established in the previous episode but, to Nia's dismay, it's an intramural tournament between the various combat sports clubs at their school. My favorite bit from this episode by a long shot is how casually Nia and Hilde address the cynical motivations for hosting this tournament within their school, which is that the parents of any kids participating will be motivated to buy a magivision so they can watch their child compete. Exploiting a person's love for something for profit and establishing a new means to deliver propaganda to them in the process is a dark, and accurate, summation of how a lot of telecommunication technologies were popularized in the real world, and all of these girls have promising careers as television executives if this whole “being anime protagonists” thing doesn't work out for them.

The tournament itself is a pretty underwhelming part of the episode, and is largely used to establish more of a baseline for what a normal young person's capacity for violence is in this universe and to establish Nia's brother Neal as more of a character. The most interesting parts of the episode are on its fringes, though. Outside of the tournament we discover that the mob enforcer that Nia beat a few episodes back has apparently started a bar and it's through him that Nia learns about a Baki-style underground fighting tournament that she's deadset on watching and that, through a series of intentionally vague communications, her doting maid and disciple Lynokis is set to compete in.

Nia also kind of slut shames a waitress, Fressa, who works at this bar, as she told Lynokis that she was “going to look at some trashy lingerie” so that she wouldn't stop her from going to a bar, and lifts up the seemingly promiscuous waitress' skirt, doing the whole “I'm not technically lying” thing that kids do. Even if viewers aren't exposed to an upskirt shot, this gag still feels discordant with the show's past humor, as well as fairly mean spirited, and I hope the show doesn't make a habit of these kinds of “jokes” going forward.

Even if this episode was more of a miss for me, I found Nia's objections to not being able to participate in the underground fighting tournament relatable as someone who was barred from meaningfully participating in adult spaces as a child, despite routinely feeling like I had more in common with them than young people my own age. Nia Liston's extremely specific charm still manages to shine through in even a quieter episode, and I'm confident what this episode sets up will be a return to form for the show.

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While Lucas DeRuyter had a fairly normal childhood (though people always seem surprised when he describes it to them with any amount of detail) his adulthood has been filled with the thrilling exploits of an anime writer and entertainment critic. To keep up with his adventures, new and old, you can follow his Bluesky account. You'll also hear from him regularly in ANN's This Week in Anime column, and can see him process what definitely aren't alienating childhood experiences by checking out his portfolio.

Nia Liston: The Merciless Maiden is currently streaming on HIDIVE.