What a time for a random flashback from Root. I forget if that was already shown in the anime or they put it here, because it just happened recently in the manga. Feel like they should've kept it back whenever it happened and not interrupted the flow of the fight.
Sofia possibly being charmed is a pretty interesting twist, makes earlier scenes make more sense with her lying to Rona about what happened and leaving Tomoki alive.
Either way this is probably my favorite part, specifically Rona attempting to cast something, Makoto calling her out on it, and her just be like "ha, just a prank bro, what were your demands again? sounds good to me, whatever happens to Sofia happens, bye". That and the team Io blasting off again.
I can't remember if there were more training scenes for Makoto in the novel or not. Definitely feels like he was training up for a goddess smackdown and suddenly got wrapped into a fight in the starting zone. But without seeing any training it feels kind of like... when did it happen? I feel like they didn't do a good job explaining the mana armor, especially when they showed it off by him... knocking a tree over. I don't know if it's explained at this point or later...
some mana armor stuff, maybe covered later?
From what I think I remember it's near impossible to make mana take a physical form. He read that book on the theory of doing it from the librarian, and I think maybe they succeeded in doing it for like an atom of mana for a nanosecond before blinking out of existence using up tons of energy, sort of like large hadron collider level stuff... so Makoto just able to make an entire giant armor of mana and materialize it near endlessly is just complete insanity
Oh I thought next episode is last but I see there's 25, so that makes me less worried, feel like there's still a lot to wrapup but probably doable in two.