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Right. I have been meaning to write up a review of this anime since I binged season one during early lockdown, and season two is literally airing now. So.
This might be my favorite anime comedy... ever? Definitely my favorite TV one, as with feature films we start getting into things like 'does Tokyo Godfathers count as a comedy' and other essay questions of that sort.
The show is based on a manga, which is kind of odd in this age of infinite light-novel franchises, and the manga is popular enough that the series had a full twenty-three episode first season, which is even weirder, because these days twelve eps is a full cour, some shows randomly get eleven, and they usually give you thirteen if they really, really like you. And season one did well enough at that length that season two is airing now-- only a year behind S1, even with lockdown. But I think this one might be going under the radar for English-speaking anime viewers; at least, I really don't run across people talking about it, and I do look.
The premise: Suzuki Iruma is an ordinary-ish Japanese teenager with two interlinked problems: one, his parents suck. Two, because he is therefore desperate for human interaction, he is so polite that he cannot refuse other people's requests on a basically physical level. His parents, therefore, constantly hire him out to random under-the-table part-time jobs such as dishwashing and tuna fishery, severely disrupting his schooling and social life. This means that when Iruma's parents sell him to a demon lord for a shockingly low amount of money, Iruma says sure, okay, this may as well happen.
Luckily, the demon lord, Sullivan, merely wants to adopt Iruma as his grandson. Sully never had children, and feels that he's missing out. His grandson will have the best of everything-- the best clothes, the best food, the most attention, love, and care, and of course the best high school education the demon realm can possibly provide, at Babyls, the unquestionable top school in the entirety of hell. That Iruma, being human, has no experience with magic at all is something Sully figures a smart kid will be able to wing. And hey, Sully cast a charm on him to disguise his human scent, so at least nobody will try to eat him. So it's fine!
Okay, the school song does contain a fervent verse about tracking down humans and eating them as the delicious delicacies they are, but nobody knows Iruma is human. So it's fine, right? Even if Iruma is still absolutely incapable of not doing whatever anybody asks or tells him to do?
What follows is a screwball fish-out-of-water comedy with surprisingly heartwarming character writing and remarkably solid worldbuilding. Iruma is such a sweet, shy person that Sully's immediate determination to be the Best Family Ever to him makes complete sense, and watching Iruma blossom under the influence of familial love and having actual friends for the first time is the show's real emotional arc.
It is surrounded by the kind of hilarity that is founded on putting a lot of strong personalities and a lot of weird worldbuilding in one place and letting them bounce around. Sometimes literally. The show has a large cast, and there are always things going on in the background, and those things are equal in humor and interest to the foreground plots. For example, demons do not look completely human, and sometimes are not even humanoid, so the queen bee, the hottest girl in school, is basically a tentacle from the Maniac Mansion games in a miniskirt and great lipstick. All the boys want to date her, all the girls want to be her, and she's a surprisingly kind, down-to-earth person who knows her own worth from her eyestalk to the faint trail of slime she exudes wherever she goes. I'm hesitant to call this a running gag, although Iruma's confused reactions to the whole thing are priceless, because she is not a joke-- she's great, and the demon realm just does not work on human rules and that's all there is to it.
I could go off for long, delighted periods of time about basically the entire cast, which is large, rich, and variegated, but in the interests of brevity, and because your reaction to him will probably determine how much you like the series, I'll just talk aboutSnape Kalego-sensei.
Kalego-sensei, bless him, is Snape without the racist, tragic backstory. He just wants to be left alone to brood in a dark corner in peace! He is afflicted with the terrible ailment of being the only competent person in this entire institution, and as a result, people keep wanting him to run things, which cuts severely into his brooding time! His intimidating stares are aggravatingly ineffective on the junior faculty! Annnnnnd he may have wound up inextricably magically bound in an incredibly ludicrous and embarrassing way to the most confusing of his students, the kid from the extremely powerful Sullivan family who nevertheless acts as though he were raised both in a barn and by people who certainly did not teach him ordinary demonic values. That time he pushed the kid off a building, as teachers occasionally do for young demons, he basically had to dive off right after him because it was like, how bad at manifesting his own wings can one adolescent be? WHY WILL NO ONE LET KALEGO-SENSEI SIT IN A CORNER AND SULK?
Honestly, I start cackling maniacally whenever I so much as ponder Kalego-sensei's Pain And Suffering. It's endlessly entertaining.
And the great thing about this show is that, although Kalego-sensei is in no way the only competent person in the faculty, he's... actually as good at everything as he thinks he is, and, though I suspect he would not say so under torture, he genuinely cares about and wants the best for his students. He just needs to get a hobby that isn't lurking in a dungeon and hissing at everyone who comes within ten feet. Iruma's presence is genuinely good for Kalego-sensei's growth as a person, although if this were mentioned both of them would scream, sprint in opposite directions, and wind up blowing something up accidentally (Iruma) or intentionally (Kalego).
I really could write something of this length about the personalities, goals, and arcs of even the most minor characters, or the umpteen ways in which demon society just is not human and that is hilarious. I mean, I fell in love with this show when Sullivan took the world's dorkiest proud-grandparent selfie in front of the school sign with Iruma, because Sullivan was contorting his fingers into a 666 as he did so-- a several-seasons-behind demon meme that the grownups have just caught up with, and which is precisely as cringe as the human equivalent.
This may also be a reasonable show for kid viewers, though I am Really Bad at telling that sort of thing, but there really isn't fanservice, and there isn't violence beyond the level of approximately Pokemon. Some of the demons are succubi, and they take classes in that, but somehow even the succubus classes aren't that fanservice-y, involving things like 1001 Ways To Make A Will-O-The-Wisp Plausible To Follow Into The Wilderness. I'd want to have a serious talk with a kid about the appearance focus the succubi tend to have, and discuss J-pop idol culture and the ways idol hopefuls wind up trying to self-commodify, because that is clearly the basis of the whole subplot, but the talk would be more about that messaging than about sexual content. I mean, parents might want to double-check me on this, but at the moment I wouldn't expose Fox to it because the social dynamics are too complicated for him and because there are a couple of moments where violence is threatened, rather than for overall content.
Things I dislike: hm. The show could deconstruct the whole succubus-class thing even further? That's... actually it? Most things I watch or read, I have a list of things I'd have done differently and/or, I hope, better, but this is comedy like a Swiss watch and I wouldn't dream of disrupting its perfectly engineered timing. Uh... the first-season ending theme is not as good as the first-season opening theme?
The first-season opening theme is a bop. In it Iruma's class fights Cthulhu for no reason. Literally Cthulhu, for literally no reason. It's catchy and adorable.
This is a big silly grin of an anime, and one of the things I stumbled across during quarantine that was the most helpful, because it's immersive and consistently funny. I might not have liked it as much any other year, but considering the sheer craft that went into it, I very well might.
This might be my favorite anime comedy... ever? Definitely my favorite TV one, as with feature films we start getting into things like 'does Tokyo Godfathers count as a comedy' and other essay questions of that sort.
The show is based on a manga, which is kind of odd in this age of infinite light-novel franchises, and the manga is popular enough that the series had a full twenty-three episode first season, which is even weirder, because these days twelve eps is a full cour, some shows randomly get eleven, and they usually give you thirteen if they really, really like you. And season one did well enough at that length that season two is airing now-- only a year behind S1, even with lockdown. But I think this one might be going under the radar for English-speaking anime viewers; at least, I really don't run across people talking about it, and I do look.
The premise: Suzuki Iruma is an ordinary-ish Japanese teenager with two interlinked problems: one, his parents suck. Two, because he is therefore desperate for human interaction, he is so polite that he cannot refuse other people's requests on a basically physical level. His parents, therefore, constantly hire him out to random under-the-table part-time jobs such as dishwashing and tuna fishery, severely disrupting his schooling and social life. This means that when Iruma's parents sell him to a demon lord for a shockingly low amount of money, Iruma says sure, okay, this may as well happen.
Luckily, the demon lord, Sullivan, merely wants to adopt Iruma as his grandson. Sully never had children, and feels that he's missing out. His grandson will have the best of everything-- the best clothes, the best food, the most attention, love, and care, and of course the best high school education the demon realm can possibly provide, at Babyls, the unquestionable top school in the entirety of hell. That Iruma, being human, has no experience with magic at all is something Sully figures a smart kid will be able to wing. And hey, Sully cast a charm on him to disguise his human scent, so at least nobody will try to eat him. So it's fine!
Okay, the school song does contain a fervent verse about tracking down humans and eating them as the delicious delicacies they are, but nobody knows Iruma is human. So it's fine, right? Even if Iruma is still absolutely incapable of not doing whatever anybody asks or tells him to do?
What follows is a screwball fish-out-of-water comedy with surprisingly heartwarming character writing and remarkably solid worldbuilding. Iruma is such a sweet, shy person that Sully's immediate determination to be the Best Family Ever to him makes complete sense, and watching Iruma blossom under the influence of familial love and having actual friends for the first time is the show's real emotional arc.
It is surrounded by the kind of hilarity that is founded on putting a lot of strong personalities and a lot of weird worldbuilding in one place and letting them bounce around. Sometimes literally. The show has a large cast, and there are always things going on in the background, and those things are equal in humor and interest to the foreground plots. For example, demons do not look completely human, and sometimes are not even humanoid, so the queen bee, the hottest girl in school, is basically a tentacle from the Maniac Mansion games in a miniskirt and great lipstick. All the boys want to date her, all the girls want to be her, and she's a surprisingly kind, down-to-earth person who knows her own worth from her eyestalk to the faint trail of slime she exudes wherever she goes. I'm hesitant to call this a running gag, although Iruma's confused reactions to the whole thing are priceless, because she is not a joke-- she's great, and the demon realm just does not work on human rules and that's all there is to it.
I could go off for long, delighted periods of time about basically the entire cast, which is large, rich, and variegated, but in the interests of brevity, and because your reaction to him will probably determine how much you like the series, I'll just talk about
Kalego-sensei, bless him, is Snape without the racist, tragic backstory. He just wants to be left alone to brood in a dark corner in peace! He is afflicted with the terrible ailment of being the only competent person in this entire institution, and as a result, people keep wanting him to run things, which cuts severely into his brooding time! His intimidating stares are aggravatingly ineffective on the junior faculty! Annnnnnd he may have wound up inextricably magically bound in an incredibly ludicrous and embarrassing way to the most confusing of his students, the kid from the extremely powerful Sullivan family who nevertheless acts as though he were raised both in a barn and by people who certainly did not teach him ordinary demonic values. That time he pushed the kid off a building, as teachers occasionally do for young demons, he basically had to dive off right after him because it was like, how bad at manifesting his own wings can one adolescent be? WHY WILL NO ONE LET KALEGO-SENSEI SIT IN A CORNER AND SULK?
Honestly, I start cackling maniacally whenever I so much as ponder Kalego-sensei's Pain And Suffering. It's endlessly entertaining.
And the great thing about this show is that, although Kalego-sensei is in no way the only competent person in the faculty, he's... actually as good at everything as he thinks he is, and, though I suspect he would not say so under torture, he genuinely cares about and wants the best for his students. He just needs to get a hobby that isn't lurking in a dungeon and hissing at everyone who comes within ten feet. Iruma's presence is genuinely good for Kalego-sensei's growth as a person, although if this were mentioned both of them would scream, sprint in opposite directions, and wind up blowing something up accidentally (Iruma) or intentionally (Kalego).
I really could write something of this length about the personalities, goals, and arcs of even the most minor characters, or the umpteen ways in which demon society just is not human and that is hilarious. I mean, I fell in love with this show when Sullivan took the world's dorkiest proud-grandparent selfie in front of the school sign with Iruma, because Sullivan was contorting his fingers into a 666 as he did so-- a several-seasons-behind demon meme that the grownups have just caught up with, and which is precisely as cringe as the human equivalent.
This may also be a reasonable show for kid viewers, though I am Really Bad at telling that sort of thing, but there really isn't fanservice, and there isn't violence beyond the level of approximately Pokemon. Some of the demons are succubi, and they take classes in that, but somehow even the succubus classes aren't that fanservice-y, involving things like 1001 Ways To Make A Will-O-The-Wisp Plausible To Follow Into The Wilderness. I'd want to have a serious talk with a kid about the appearance focus the succubi tend to have, and discuss J-pop idol culture and the ways idol hopefuls wind up trying to self-commodify, because that is clearly the basis of the whole subplot, but the talk would be more about that messaging than about sexual content. I mean, parents might want to double-check me on this, but at the moment I wouldn't expose Fox to it because the social dynamics are too complicated for him and because there are a couple of moments where violence is threatened, rather than for overall content.
Things I dislike: hm. The show could deconstruct the whole succubus-class thing even further? That's... actually it? Most things I watch or read, I have a list of things I'd have done differently and/or, I hope, better, but this is comedy like a Swiss watch and I wouldn't dream of disrupting its perfectly engineered timing. Uh... the first-season ending theme is not as good as the first-season opening theme?
The first-season opening theme is a bop. In it Iruma's class fights Cthulhu for no reason. Literally Cthulhu, for literally no reason. It's catchy and adorable.
This is a big silly grin of an anime, and one of the things I stumbled across during quarantine that was the most helpful, because it's immersive and consistently funny. I might not have liked it as much any other year, but considering the sheer craft that went into it, I very well might.
