Please hide WN/LN/manga spoilers.
MAL entry, Anilist. The zeroth episode is a spin-off-ish, focusing on Sylphy after the Calamity meeting with Ariel, becoming “silent Fitz”, and struggling with her new situation; as well as the power struggles between Ariel and her brother I-always-forget-his-name for the Asuran throne.
The heavily sexual stuff Ariel and Luke talked about in the intro… they’re definitely quite perverted lol
LN Meta spoilers
They seemed to skip a bunch of scenes from the LN though… Derek’s death didn’t even hit in this episode, and Sylphie’s pledge to Ariel was barely built up…
LN Meta, perversion
I think that they tried to cram a bit too much content into this episode, and as a result a lot of things ended rushed.
Another thing that they cut out is that Ariel is a maso. The bed scene with Sylphie was supposed to awaken her masochism. Still - I love that they set up the dynamic for Sylphy to be the straight woman among two perverts.
LN Events
Agreed, They also seemingly skipped the entire Ariel fleeing Asura adventure and her dealing with losing most of her loyal supporters along the way. They may come back to that as a flashback scene since it isn’t really relevant until after the Ranoa arc.
Re: Sylphie and Ariel - I think they did a good job at setting up the dynamic of the two and it should lead pretty well into the Ranoa arc for viewers.