'Maoyuu Maou Yuusha' can be legally steamed on Crunchyroll and the DVDs can be purchased from Sentai Filmworks.
-Story-
If medieval economics can create a cult hit, why not medieval agriculture? Well, first you have to understand the basics of agriculture. The central plot is that humanity can't afford to have peace with the demon races, because if the war ended there would be mass starvation, so the Hero and the Demon King have to work together to improve agricultural output. Which might be a feasible premise if it weren't full of more BS than a fertilizer factory. Short version: war means fewer farmers (due to military conscription and recruitment), most of whom are not top-quality workers (because military forces naturally select the youngest and healthiest people), are working to feed more people (more soldiers means fewer farmers) while under constant threat of attack (raids were a central part of medieval warfare- admittedly MMY knows THAT much), and should such a raid come there would be large-scale destruction of supplies, stores, and livestock- leading to food shortages that would cause starvation and disease and FURTHER reduce agricultural output (you can't grow crops if you're too hungry to get out of bed or too sick to see straight). These problems are compounded when farming is as labor-intensive as it was until the 20th century. Go read about the Hundred Years War and see if France had an agricultural boom thanks to all the political chaos, English raids, and wandering bands of out-of-work mercenary bandits. The return of peace would mean the end of Demon attacks and the human soldiers could go back to farming- so how does this mean less food to go around?
And even excusing MMY's badly flawed premise, the execution is dreadful as well. Most of the dialogue is shameless info-dumping (the first episode is nearly all one expository conversation), made worse by the fact that Maou (the Demon King) is telling Yuusha (the Human Hero) how the human world works- she goes so far as to describe the basic structure and functions of some of the largest religious and commercial organizations in the land to him (because apparently he never learned that the Church of the Light Spirit is the largest and most influential religious group in his homeland). There are 2 time-skips just in the first 3 episodes alone, creating a disjointed feeling as the show skips from plot point to plot point. And most of the dialogue that isn't expository is cheap jokes about Maou's exceedingly ample bosom (apparently demon culture doesn't consider large-chested women highly desirable, and the fact that human culture does seems to be the one thing about humans Maou conveniently doesn't know) or 'ship-tease' scenarios where Maou and Yuusha almost kiss only to be interrupted by something (they're adults living alone together for MONTHS and Maou clearly wants Yuusha to take her all night long, so why exactly are they still acting like shy 8th-grade crushes?) And what little conflict does appear is almost instantly solved by Maou, so there isn't even meaningful struggle to get attached to. The story is a masterclass in how NOT to hook an audience- I ENJOY medieval history and economics and this plot still couldn't hook me, how bad must it be for the 99% percent who don't share that niche interest? If you absolutely need your medieval agriculture fix just read the 5th US volume of 'Vinland Saga'.
-Art & Sound-
Thoroughly mediocre and they're still the high point of MMY. The aesthetic has no glaring faults simply because it settles for being so blandly average, with production values to match (for comparison, 2013 was the year MMY, Attack on Titan, and Psycho-Pass all aired- one of these is not like the others.) The sound is generic as well, the OP, ED, and OST are all standard fare with nothing to distinguish them. I can't complain about the voice actors, but given that this series is English sub only I have little means to judge them.
-Characters-
Take the most generic, bland, clueless, and aimless male anime character you can think of- he'll be Edward FREAKING Elric compared to Yuusha. He does little more than follow Maou around while she info-dumps on him, at one point even he realizes he has very little to do with what's going on. The story is hinting he'll start doing more things in upcoming episodes, but given his lack of development and motivation they don't promise to be more than empty action scenes to shake things up. His design could have been copy-pasted from any number of fantasy series as he lacks a single unique visual feature. Maou the Demon King isn't any better: a shameless blob of boob-joke fan-service who adores Yuusha for no clear reason, wants peace for no clear reason despite being from a culture that clearly favors continuing the war, and solves everything with an info-dump. The other cast members? Empty cliches. MMY relies on its main two and they stink.
For comparison to the series MMY was clearly trying so hard to be, 'Spice and Wolf' uses a near-identical set-up and pulls it off beautifully because its main 2 are handled exceptionally well. First off, S&W was balanced. Holo had charisma and special abilities Lawrence lacked (being able to tell when a person is lying is useful for a travelling merchant, and being able to turn into an unstoppable giant wolf has pretty obvious benefits), while Lawrence was far more worldly-wise and his rock-steady personality served as a counterbalance to Holo's negative character traits and mood swings. You saw that they truly needed each other. In MMY Yuusha is effectively useless as Maou has to guide him around his own world. Also, the S&W mains had distinct personalites. Holo would snark and tease as a way of dealing with her own loneliness and to hide her developing feelings for Lawrence- feelings her pride didn't want her to admit. Lawrence was more of a 'straight man' to Holo's outlandish personality, he rarely tries to compete with her in snark-to-snark combat but does like to take the occasional shot just to keep her honest. He hides his own loneliness with silence and doesn't want to admit his developing attachment out fear as he assumes Holo will 'inevitably' leave him. In MMY, Maou is cheap fan-service and Yuusha has even less personality than that. I want to clarify that I'm not 'hating' on the MMY cast, nor am I a S&W fanboy just bashing one show to make my personal favorite look good (I've yet to finish S&W season 2 and am in no hurry to do so), I'm criticizing it heavily because it makes numerous basic character writing mistakes and because there's a clear example of how to make practically the exact same cast dynamic under nearly identical conditions work beautifully.
-Enjoyment-
Back in Jr. High I had a brief desire to be a ventriloquist, so I bought a book on the subject. One of its tips was "Open with your 2nd best joke". A basic rule of good entertainment in any medium is to strike early with a good hook to get the audience interested quickly. All this to say that MMY doesn't open with a hook but with a train wreck. I almost never drop a series, I tend to get hooked fairly easily even if I know the series is objectively nothing special (I completed 'Samurai 7' and 'Romeo X Juliet' for Pete's sake). The fact that I dropped MMY should say plenty. I only stuck around for 3 episodes so that nobody would pull the '3 episode rule' on me, and even if it does somehow manage to get good later that still means MMY will have wasted at least the first 25% of its run time- that's not exactly a positive either.
-Overall-
A poor man's 'Spice and Wolf'. A VERY poor man's. Story and characters are terribly written, and utterly mediocre production values can't distract from that for a minute. It's clear what MMY was trying to be and it's even more clear that it failed. I can't even recommend this series to people like me who might be interested in its look into medieval farming techniques, never mind a mass audience. Skip it.
