Hot.
Spoiler for Thoughts on this episode (2) & next one's preview:
A ha. So it's really that rare, Kazuma's ability. I would actually felt a bit guilty since Kazuma won by overwhelming force, but then again, although he's only been training for 4 years it's not like he would have definitely lost by skill, it was his father's choice to take the battle past a matter of technique.
Kazuma is still very cool of course. Ayano is even more unreasonable than I first imagined. o.o Of course, it's fine since the show recognizes and purposefully portrays her as immature, even her friends recognize she could never get a boyfriend in her current state, lol.
Yeah, everything is not as simple as you'd expect it to be if this anime just followed cliches. The Kannagi leadership recognizes he probably didn't do this, but still figured they'd bring him in to be sure (since they thought they could certaily take him). Next episode it looks like he'll be working with the Kannagi family... Quick development, I figured there'd be dumb misunderstandings for a while between them, but looks like they're all smart and mature enough to not be tricked.
Looking forward to more interaction between the cool, mature Kazuma and the hot-headed immature Ayano. Hopefully she doesn't just interfere annoyingly in a serious fight--well, I only fear that possibility since she's been mostly useless in the anime up to this point.
Also someone said Ren was like a reverse trap earlier... doubt that's the case but wow he really is quite... yep. The random hearts that pop out from him are quite vivid.
What I like about the action is that rather than having fire and wind move like water through space--for instance, a column of fire gushing towards an opponent, or a mini-tornado like a whirpool spinning at the enemy--you have wind move like it should, as violent often-unconcentrated slices, and fire move like it should, in violent bursts like a sudden jet of the flame dancing forward into the opponent.