WARNING: The following contains spoilers for Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid S Episode 9, "There Are Various Reasons Behind It (It's Full of Elma)," now streaming on Crunchyroll.
The deeper we get into Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid, it only gets clearer that Elma is the anime's Best Girl. She's both adorable and strong, fun-loving and caring, without any of the problematic baggage of the likes of Lucoa and Ilulu. Her biggest competition in the Best Girl race is the titular dragon maid Tohru, but S Episode 9 not only showcases all the reasons Elma takes the title but also makes it increasingly obvious that Tohru and Elma together would be the best ship.
The first segment highlights one of Elma's best qualities: she's a hard worker who acts upon her sense of justice. That sense of justice might be driven by sweets more than anything else, but if wanting more time to shop for food leads Elma to become a union activist standing up against her and Kobayashi's creepy boss (who happens to be Shouta's dad), then Elma's sweet tooth is a positive for society. Unfortunately, her campaign for better treatment isn't successful, but the fact that she actually tries is far more admirable than Kobayashi shrugging.
The second segment shows how even Elma's faults make her endearing. Because Kobayashi's at work and Tohru's busy at the maid cafe, Elma has the responsibility of babysitting Lucoa, Riko and Shouta on a camping trip. She's not very good at it, getting so into the fun of the trip that she forgets to keep track of where the kids are, but she tries her best to make up for her mistakes and find them. This has its own comedic challenges, with Shouta blocking Elma's tracking spells, but nobody gets hurt and everyone's happy in the end.
Episode 9 saves its best segment for last: a rematch battle between Tohru and Elma, following up on their backstory segment from Episode 5. The two enemy dragons are perfectly evenly matched in power and fighting technique, resulting in a blow-out brawl that's thrilling to watch yet somehow still manages to fit with Dragon Maid's generally relaxed mood. Having Kobayashi witness the fight is vital to stabilizing the mood because she intuitively gets what this feud is all about -- it's not some high-minded conflict between the forces of Chaos and Harmony, but the result of a connection between two individuals who, as much as they hate to admit it, do love each other.
Sure enough, Elma tearfully admits that the reason she turned against Tohru was that she felt like her friend had abandoned her. While Elma might say they're "friends," Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid's place in the yuri genre means that it's bound to be read as something more. The scenes of them sleeping together in Episode 5 implied serious closeness, to say the least. Everything about Elma and Tohru's frenemy relationship makes sense in thinking about them as ex-lovers who still harbor feelings for one another. Tohru's dedication to Kobayashi need not be an obstacle to her dating Elma -- when the two dragons argue over who will pay the bill for their post-battle dinner date, Kobayashi volunteers to pay for both of them. Could a polyamorous relationship be in the cards for the three of them?
New episodes of Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid S stream Wednesdays on Crunchyroll.
