Hataraku Maou-sama!

I'm well aware this isn't going to be a popular review, so go ahead and downvote it just because I gave it a 5/10, but at least listen to why first, because someone has to shatter the illusion that this was actually a good show.

The basic premise of the show is that the overlord of the demon army and one of his generals are attacked by the hero during a large scale war to take over 'ente isle'. They attempt to temporarily retreat to an alternate dimension, but find themselves trapped in modern day japan and are unable to return. So must work menial ... jobs to survive while they attempt to find a way to recover their powers and return to ente isle. It's a solid premise that's fairly original and had a lot of potential, but ultimately failed in its execution.

I know what your thinking, the main character of the show is a demonic overlord trapped in human form, working in McDonalds. So we'll get an evil anti-hero with dark tendency's who goes on to become good, accepting human values, and seeking reconciliation for his dark past. But instead we get your typical self sacrificing "emiya shiro" right from the get go. He becomes your generic harem/action protagonist, and never displays any regret over his past actions despite this. As such Maou gets no concrete development over the show, and the fact that he is a demon has no relevance to his personality whatsoever.

The show then goes on to introduce more and more female characters to the point where it becomes a slice of life harem with a little action and comedy scattered throughout. We also see scenes from ente isle but bizarrely there are no demons present at all, despite being on the verge of conquering the entire world before Maou left they apparently just got up and left.

Most of the "plot" starts feeling like filler after each of the characters is introduced which ultimately meant they ran out of time to develop any real closure on the romance side. Making the ending feel like a half season break, rather than a satisfying end to the show. So you'll have to wait at least another year for season 2 to get any closure.

The comedy starts off okay but there was never really enough of it to sustain the show purely on laughs, and as the show goes on the comedy becomes less and less frequent and much more repetitive (oh we are so poor, that's still hilarious the 1000th time we've heard it)

The opening isn't present for the first two episodes, because when it is finally introduced it just recycles footage from the first two episodes. The music in the show isn't awful, but it certainly isn't a selling point for the show. The art is of the same high quality we've come to expect of modern anime but doesn't do anything exceptional in that regard.

Overall I believe it is a very overrated mediocre show. Whist its premise is fairly original its poorly executed and there's nothing here that hasn't been done much better elsewhere.

Well I have just completed this anime and therefore I am going to give my opinion about this anime too, as I think this anime does not deserve the rating it is given right now.
When I heard about this series it immediately caught my attention. The demon Lord somehow ends up in the human world and starts a conquest to conquer the world! This all wrapped nicely in a comedy show and it immediately reminded me a bit of Beelzebub. So you could imagine how excited I was for it to air. And for the first few minutes my expectations where fullfilled but afterwards it ... went downhill. And I will telly you why in this review.

Art:
First off the Art is good. Its not glorious but its good.

Sound:
Same wiht the sound. I didnt find anything to stand out, but neither was it bad its good.

Story: Ah yes the Story. Probably one of the most boring Stories I have watched recently, wasting a very interesting and good start by throwing it in the dark pits of average boring slice of life Hell. But more to that when I talk about the characters.

The fights: They are not even worth mentioning as they are quite boring, short and consist mostly of talking.

Comedy: This is were the show shines, this is what made me not stop watching the series. The comedy is simply hilarious and extremely funny. But there is one problem. The show only consists of 20% comedy. The other 80% are wasted on the extremely boring story and some boring slice of life which is not funny.

Characters: This was the probably weakest point of the show. And its not the characters themselves that are bad but their progression.

Mao: The main character is the probably weakest of them all. Starting off as an epic Demonlord worthy of his title killing thousands of his enemys, he then lands on the human world, providing us with the funny awkward comedy that only a demonlord stranded on the human world could provide, just to change in the mere time of about 5!! minutes off the anime into the most law abiding and good-hearted citizen you have ever seen! Like wtf? How the hell does a Demonlord that has killed thousands of people change into the most naively good-hearted guy you have ever seen? This is what the main character basically is. Another generic anime good guy, with the exception that he is the demonlord. And the anime sometimes lets hin show off his powers just to remind you that he in fact is actually a demonlord, cause otherwise you would surely forget!

Ashija: He is the Demonlords right hand who accompanies him from the beginning to the end. While he suffers from the same issues as Mao-same as in loosing his demonlord character and becoming a loving a caring housewife for Mao Darling, he at least keeps a certain form of awkwardness regarding the human world and its custodys. He STILL feels like he is from another word and he also provide most of the funny moments and comedy this anime had making him my favourite character of them all.

Emilia: Ah Yes the generic tsundere. The Demonlord slaughtered her whole family and town killed many of her friends and brothers in arms, she herself risked her life in fighting the demonlord, but hey on the human world everything is different. After the first encounter being one where she immediately attacks him, she soon after seeing that the demonlord has lost his bite she forgots all her grudges against him and is as worryfree as ever around him.

Chi-chan: Well while she wasnt highly original either she was a very likeable and lovely character. She also had this interesting ability where she responded to magic in some sort but the show never bothers to explain it further and simply throws the fact away after the first time it shows up in the show. So making Chi-chan the loveable yet useless potential love interest for the demonlord. But wait what for this anime doesnt have romance.

All in all I do not recommend this anime to people looking for a great comedy or for people that care about character development that does not make any sense at all. On the other hand if you enjoy some semi-serious slice of Life this show might be just for you.

A failed gateway drug.

Slice of life and romantic comedy genres have always been behind shounen and fantasy/ sci-fi in popularity. It stands to reason that eventually a producer would try to encroach on that territory with a special formula pure-bred to draw in a new audience and teach them appreciation of your genre.

Hataraku Maou-sama! is that special formula, sadly it is not a very good one.

At first glance, the concept lends itself very well to what they are trying to do. Satan gets exiled to Japan along with his most loyal henchman, and has to learn the ways of a new life while trying to ... find a way back. It should be a comedy goldmine, but the amount of missed opportunities for comedy far surpass the actual comedy in this anime.

Hataraku Maou-sama! is a schizophrenic show split down the middle between comedy and action. The action parts contain no comedy, and the comedy parts contain no action. Heck, even the comedy parts sometimes don't contain comedy.

The brunt of the comedic weight in Hataraku Maou-sama! is carried by Maou's henchman Ashiya. His fish-out-of-water coping mechanisms are a joy to behold in the early series, and his reactions to seeing the changes in his master are a treat. Unfortunately, Maou himself skips right past the fish-out-of-water stage, jumping straight into overzealous fast food worker mode, and a huge goldmine of comedy is seemingly boarded up by the producers. As far as the plot development goes, Maou again comes short as a character because his true motivations are questionable. The writer expects you to take Maou's motivation to 'become a good guy' at face value.

Enter carbon-copy arche-tsundere Emi Yusa. Maou's mortal enemy. She has followed Maou from Ente Isla, and begins her existence on earth stalking Maou and conspiring to finally dispose of him, but seeing the changes in his personality, starts to have second thoughts. At first, Emi seems to be an interesting character with promise for a lot of depth, unfortunately that promise has so far been a false dawn.

The character development of Emi and Maou are exceedingly symmetrical and predictable. It feels overall like a waste of time that the producers would devote such an exorbitant amount of screentime to this dynamic. The two need more real conflict eventually or become entirely dried up as a plot anchor.

About halfway in, the show started boring me and I became conscious to that fact. Luckily, the arrival of Kamazuki Suzuno, a new character, saved this anime from becoming the first anime I'd ever dropped. Kamazuki is all the things that the rest of the cast aren't. Funny and deep while advancing the plot, and despite seeming to be unimportant to the main plot, she pretty much steals the title of 'main plot' with her backstory and character development for me personally. Her arrival livens up the rest of the cast as well, especially the one-dimensional dere-dere Sasaki Chiho, who takes her to be her new rival in love with Maou.

Which brings up another point, why is this even tagged with 'romance'? Chiho surely displays intentions of romance in the show, but Maou himself seems utterly asexual. It takes two to romance.

At the end of the day, I have high hopes for this show to get a second season, because Kamazukis arrival in the anime has given me hope of the potential of this anime. She could very well become the glue that finally sticks some sense on to the rest of the group.

And hopefully, if it does get another season, Emi and Maou's characters stop being so utterly boring.

What happens when you take the most devious, evil being in the universe, zap him of his power and force him to live like a normal person in the hustle and bustle of normalcy? Hilarity ensues! White Fox’s (Steins;Gate, Re:Zero) 2013 release has probably one of the most unique premises in anime history. King Satan himself has been transported to earth along with his right hand man, Ashiya and ends up working at a fast food chain so cleverly coined “MgRonalds” while warding off heroes and other nemeses from his past life in Ente Isla. Yeah, sounds pretty interesting to me! Unfortunately, past some situational ... comedy mixed with supernatural elements, The Devil is a Part Timer lacks consistency and ends up as an overrated title with lots of pondering of what could’ve been.

The way the series starts off actually made me think I was watching the wrong show. Demon lords and valiant heroes battling with their magic and might within a mystical land. I was honestly confused. But no sooner did I get used to this scenery then it was flipped onto its head and into present day. The seemingly invincible King Satan now made vulnerable by his mistaken transport to earth. This juxtaposition perfectly embodies the deconstruction archetype, and to see a comedic approach on the subject was refreshing. The plot isn’t anything 2deep4u, but that’s honestly one of the weaker areas overall. Instead of being straight comedy like Nichijou or Cromartie High School, this anime unfortunately makes the mistake of continually teasing a plot, only to never make good on that suggestion. It never really goes anywhere, and as a result begins to rapidly peeter out by the end of its short run.

I’ve said in previous reviews that comedy is very subjective. The good thing about this series is how universal and digestible the humor really is. There are no Japanese references the Western audiences may find difficult to understand, nor are there many overly complex jokes present… just pure, situational comedy. At times it almost reminded me of a sitcom during some of the stagnant still scenes. The bad part of the comedy is how unrealistic it seems. I get the satirical nature of what the writers were trying to accomplish, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t think about how Satan would’ve really behaved like in the same situation. I wish the writers would’ve made it a tad darker with regard to Maou instead of the conformist approach.

Another part to point out is how much stronger the first half of the series is than the second. As more characters accumulate, the presence of Satan and his pals seem less out of the norm and more commonplace that their situational humor begins to falter. Not to mention I didn’t care for anyone outside of the main four (Maou, Emi, Shirou and Chiho). Stringing these characters along on earth mixed with a few cameos probably would’ve proved more effective in the long run.

From a character perspective, there isn’t much development outside of what you get in face value. There’s not much growth with the exception of Emi and characterization is done mostly through the comedy. The main four were always enjoyable, and I think the writers just ended up stretching themselves too thin when the secondary characters were introduced. For being evil lords or powerful heroes from another world, they seemed to give up pretty easy when it came to living on earth. And of course you’d want to live with someone you just tried to kill right?

The art, being that it is White Fox was rather attractive as always. Nothing too extravagant as far as detail goes, but just enough to get the job done. It’s one thing I’ve always given kudos to this studio for. The fight scenes are crisp and rendered well, and I can’t think of any instances where the animation was inconsistent. I also wanted to make a mention of how accurate many of the environments were drawn concerning Japan. Some shows don’t seem to get that right.

Sound is solid, but nothing to write home about. The OP is a generic JPop teen song, with quick beats and loud electronic tones while the ED turns it down a notch with a slow ballad accompanied by a revealing image of one of the characters. Pretty standard stuff here. The rest of the soundtrack I didn’t even notice to be honest, and I don’t know if I consider that a good or bad thing. The English dub is pretty stellar though, with Josh Grelle (Maou) and Tia Ballard (Chiho) earning full marks for performance.

All in all, The Devil is a Part Timer is not a bad show… it’s just not as good as I expected. Considering its popularity and rating I expected to find the next rare comedic gem but instead I was left with a lackluster run-of-the-mill show with a few funny jokes. I’d still recommend it, especially to fans of more recent anime (since the comedy would probably be more attractive). Don’t expect to spit your food out from laughing so hard and you’ll find a show worthy of a watch. Thanks again for reading!

I would say that Hataraku Maou-Sama tries too hard to be what it's not. It's meant to be a comedy but there are many scenes inside which try to make it seem like there's some deeper plot/reveal when everyone knows that there obviously isn't because the style has made it clear that the anime doesn't take itself seriously at all.

Story: 3/10

I don't know if you can call anything in this anime a "story". Sure there were some minor conflicts about, but most of it was just routine. I would give the story 3 points just because there seemed to be 3 major arcs where there ... was any form of development, namely the first encounter with Lucifer, the second encounter with Suzuno and the third encounter with Archangel Sariel. The others are rather filler, or small and don't add much.

Plot wise, I have nothing to say much, because nothing including their powers makes sense and nothing is expected to make sense anyway.

Art: 6/10

Art was generally pleasant, I like the bright colours, but it was mediocre at best and nothing really stood out to me.

Sound: 4/10

There wasn't actually any good sound in this anime. I didn't like the OP or EDs, I thought they were very mehh and skipped all of it entirely. Background music was okayish.

Character: 5/10

There is some extent of character breath on Maou's part, but still zero depth, and even less for the rest of the characters. Depth of characterization was strongest when the three main females were talking in out about Maou, and that was honestly not very strong anyway. The character cast is interesting though, but it was very undeveloped for Urushihara, Orba, Ashiya.

Enjoyment: 8/10

Definitely, one of the higher points for this anime. It was quite slapstick in nature for the first few episodes (tripping, falling, accidents...etc). Funny remarks like how characters diss each other, and things like "Damn I wish the elevator was working", I found the Mg Ronald and Sentucky Fried Chicken conflict incredibly hilarious, to be honest. I particularly remember the part with "Double Quarter Pounder Burger" and "McRonald Burger", that was quite classic.

I love how the show ends up not even taking the serious fights seriously, and how Maou keeps going on about the things that absolutely dont make sense. Oh yes, not to mention the poor little Dullahan bicycle. Definitely, one of the funnier animes out there, but I thought it could have made me laugh a lot more. Most of these humourous things lasted only briefly and was never built-upon to become a solid comic series.

Besides humour, I also enjoyed the action scenes with Maou, but I was sad that it didn't amount to much.

Overall: 5/10.

This isn't a great anime series, it's probably only worth your time if you seriously have nothing else to watch (like I was, and ended up watching something like this). But it can possibly make you laugh, because of all the funny scenes in it. So watch it if you have some spare time.

When I saw this title on Netflix it immediately got my interest based on the title alone. "The Devil is a Part-Timer" seemed like is was destined to be good based on just the concept of putting Satan in a working class work. However, as I was watching it I realized that instead of providing some fun takes on the usual mundane nature of everyday life, the show itself was just mundane. Despite an interesting premise the show never really ever become enthralling and the main problem is the characters.
The Devil himself is just boring and not very interesting and as the show goes ... on you question how he could have been a demon commander. He never does a single bad thing once there on Earth, in fact, he's a stand up citizen. I can't understand why they went this direction because it never feels like your watching the Lord of all Demons, he just seems like a normal middle class worker and that bothered me to no end. The other characters characters don't fair much better with Emi being embodiment of a annoying tsuendere, Chiho obsession with Maou being more odd then endearing and the rest of the cast failed to leave much of an impression.
I'll admit that at times the show was entertaining but it failed to ever be engrossing. I never cared about the characters or their problems and while the premise is interesting the show fails to ver capitalize on it in any interesting way. There is a lot of good anime on Netflix but "The Devil is a Part-Timer" is not one of them.

This is probably very individual to me, but I just wasn't a huge fan. It was funny for sure, and a lot of the characters are very charismatic, such as Alciel and Lucifer, and they along with Satan have some of the most enjoyable slice of life scenes I've seen.

However, the slice of life aspect being on the backburner is what hurt the show most. When I saw this was a reverse isekai I was excited to see how the devil and his followers would adapt to modern Japanese living. Instead they are completely settled by the second episodes and the show becomes more about ... the war and politics on Ente Isle being moved to Earth

The "love triangle" was also extremely contrived. Chiho is as multifaceted as a sheet of paper and has no nuance in her character whatsoever, which is a shame because as the lone human in the group she needs to be the audiences goggles for how the characters are viewed, and with Chiho they are rose tinted towards Sadao with no other interesting thoughts or feelings. Emi seems to be the moral center of the story, wrestling between the terrors of Ente Isle vs the fast food worker on Earth, I'm not sure why she needs to be roped into a "haha Emi loooooves Sadao" every episode

The parts of the plot centered around the plot the church/Olba/Sariel also wasn't fully baked. They don't reveal the churches intentinos or actions until too late in the story for them to seen as anything other than an obstacle. There are no peeks into what they (or anyone else) are really doing on Ente Isle and the church is just no a well fleshed out opposition.

I gave this a 5/10, although this review reads far lower. The reason for that is simple: when the show followed its premise of "The devil works a fast food restaurant" the show is fantastic, but everything has to have action and complex world building (even if it feels senseless at times) to try to sell toys and merch, and as such simply does not spend enough time on what would make this show great: watching a bunch of people from some crazy fantasy world try to act like normal people.

Anime. Comedy.

For me, those two dreaded words have slowly warped in meaning over the years, once instilling excitement and anticipation and then slowly drying up into a well of disappointment and crushed expectations. As I took recommendation after recommendation I figured that surely, eventually, I would find a show that clicked with my sense of humor and leave me crying tears of sweet mirthful bliss. Comedy is all personal, remember, so I'm not bashing any of these shows for those who enjoyed them, but these were my personal reactions. Noazki-kun didn't quite elicit a confession of love from me. Cromartie High was a little ... off-the-mark. Detroit Metal City got me to nod appreciatively, but never actually laugh. Konosuba just made me wish there were more D&D episodes in Community. My recommendation list stretched thin, I finally turned to the looming behemoth, the all-mighty and universally revered Gintama, and after three separate attempts to watch it I finally collapsed 20 episodes in, bored out of my mind. Craving the sweet release of mindless, hilarious entertainment, I crawled back to my roots and checked to see if The Devil is a Part-Timer was still on Netflix.

It was. Could it stand the test of time? Well, it was worth the risk. The answer?

...Kindof? Let's take a look. But before that, let's talk comedy.

The greatest comedies all have a few things in common. First off, they HAVE to be innovative. Comedies of course dry up when they recycle the same humor over and over (helllooo One Punch Man) but just presenting different types of humor isn't enough. Shows have to be imaginative, constructing new and unheard-of situations that belong solely to them. Gintama is pretty stellar at this once in awhile, but it suffers from a lack of consistency, which is something else great comedies have in common. Dud episodes stand out a lot more in comedies than other shows, as you can kind of ignore weird filler in a plot but when your objective is face-value entertainment, 20 minutes of boredom will snap you right out of a laughing mood. The best comedies though aren't just consistent and creative, they have strong central casts that have uniquely compelling dynamics and garner strong emotional ties from their audience. This is something anime comedies usually do well, as most 'comedies' are actually really just feel-good and often random slice-of-life shows. That feel-good feeling is crucial, as it elevated the impact of the jokes if you also CARE about the characters, and is often enough to get you through the slower parts. Finally, and this is the one that nearly every comedy, anime or not, fails at, there's propulsion. By having a status quo that actually shifts you dramatically increase investment in the character's lives, create a plethora of opportunities for fresh humor, and introduce another level of investment as people will now actually care about the plot. Unfortunately, most shows will excessively spam the 'reset' button at the end of each brief story arc, forcing everything back to exactly how it was, or, in the case of American sitcoms, they'll just have all the main cast take turns dating each other to the point where these romances cease to mean anything. This ploy makes sense: once you have a formula that works, messing with it too much can be dangerous, especially as it can muck up that comfort of reliability so many viewers crave. However, only those comedies with propulsion to their story line truly rise majestically above the rest to become real masterpieces.

So where does The Devil is a Part-Timer stand in all this?

In a bit of an odd place, truth be told.

'Hataraku Maou-sama!' or 'The Devil is a Part-Timer' is a glossy 1-cour saga following a premise that sounds extremely anime. The Demon King, referred to often simply as "Satan", finds himself cornered by the forces of Good and decides to flee the generic fantasy realm of Ente Isla with his trusted remaining general. Whoops though, they end up in Tokyo, looking like regular people and missing nearly all of their magic. A classic blunder. While I guess this is technically a nifty spin on the isekai genre, this endearing set-up isn't exactly revolutionary, and so as usual a lot of it comes down to how it's handled. From the beginning the show really leans into the contrast between the two words, focusing on the difference between the mundane streets of Tokyo and the mythic kingdoms of Ente Isla. Though it may be a generic world, Ente Isle seems to be fully-enough realized to act as an actual counterweight for the show's Japanese adventures, a gimmick that pulls a lot of weight. What also helps is how utterly serious everything in Ente Isla is: from the dramatic lofty church music to the stern faces of every lord and king we get a glimpse of, this is a place perpetually trapped in the dramatic stakes of a Tolkien story, something that goes a long way towards making Satan's bumbling adventures in Tokyo that much funnier.

However, while the contrast with Ente Isla is great, there isn't enough of it. For a show entirely predicated on the humor derived from putting medieval mythology into a modern setting, the mythology gets under-served. There's a thin trickle of problems that make their way over to harass the devil, but there's not enough focus on establishing these elements in their home world first. By the time characters arrive in Tokyo they've usually already pretty much instantly normalized their surroundings, and their mythic auras are curtailed before we get the chance to see them shine. What I'm really trying to say here is that I feel as though Ente Isle could have been an absolutely phenomenal source of drive for the story as a whole, with consistent cutaways to a slowly-mounting crusade intent on the final eradication of the Devil juxtaposed against him trying to handle tough customers as a cashier. The slow stream of scouts and assassins slowly mounting into a full-on clusterfuck war would have given the show the kind of overarching storyline that it really craved. As is, the show is kind of broken into somewhat-detailed but unrelated arcs that give temporary senses of direction but ultimately fall into that classic, horrid pitfall: they reset to the status quo at the end, at most adding another character to the main cast but never truly altering the dynamic. It's a bit of a bizarre dance because the truth is that what makes the show so compelling a lot of the time is the fact that it's clearly straining against this urge. There are multiple moments where characters have straightforward emotionally-charged conversations out of nowhere that directly and explicitly shift the future nature of their relationship. However, these shifts are clearly holding back, wanting to push the show forward but afraid to change too much lest the magic formula get shattered. The show asks some big questions about the contradictory natures of its characters, but, ultimately, it is afraid to give a real answer to any of them.

Speaking of the characters, the show for the most part triumphs with its main cast. Establishing a cast dynamic easy to invest in and open to lots of options can be quite difficult, but Satan and his general Alciel provide a rock-solid core by presenting a duo that is capable, endearing, randomly ignorant, and most of all mysterious. The cause for the shift in Satan's attitude upon arriving in Japan is one that plagues both the viewer and the rest of the show's cast, and the fact that we never see what he was really like back in Ente Isla adds to the confounding nature of his personality. On top of being intriguing, Satan and Alciel capitalize on their dual existence in everything they do, often relapsing into old speech or the fictional language of Ente Isla, framing their daily lives on a grand scale (they refer to their apartment as the 'castle', most dilemmas as 'battles', and their bicycle as 'Dullahan, the Trusty Steed'.) Though the depiction of their adjustment to Japan is rushed, the do the premise justice on a constant basis. The problem is that they are constantly degraded, both in-show and on a meta level, by the show's single most obvious problem: Emelia Yusa, the Hero. Framed as a foil to Satan, Emi the angelic legendary hero whose quest is the slay the Devil is riddled by every bullet the demon pair managed to dodge. Unsubtle, obnoxious, and cliche, Emi serves essentially to remind us that the Devil is supposed to be evil, and outside of a few scenes with legitimately earned dramatic weight she is written as an emotionally-volatile tsundere identical to every other character of the archetype. Her rampart immaturity, lack of confidence, and general inability create a mockery of the fantasy-real world dynamic that sabotages the self-serious vibe of the other world and actively detracts from the atmosphere-based humor by making Ente Isle seem like it's filled with samey high-school girls like anywhere else. Coupled with her complete lack of any traits, ticks or struggles indicating she used to live somewhere else and the fact that her already eye-rolling contributions to the humor are repeated as many times as possible, Emi is the show's most poorly-handled element. Her irreversible entrenchment at the heart of the show is the greatest thing holding it back.

The ACTUAL highschooler, on the other hand, is a totally different story. The show's token character that's actually from Japan is Satan's bubbly co-worker Chiho, and the weight that Emi drops she is more than ready to pick up. Endearingly earnest, simple, energetic, and adorable, Chiho is the foil Satan deserves. She's brash, she speaks her mind, she's strikingly more competent than the actual hero, and she's unabashedly a totally standard teenage girl who loves to dress up and go shopping and hang out with her friends and just also happens to be friends with Satan. Chiho's reckless involvement with the elements of Ente Isle and her endearing and wholesome relationships with both Satan and Alciel make her the light of the show, and the occasional melancholy the show dips into capitalizes on the bittersweet divide between her rather ordinary life and the grand scale of the world of Angels and Demons that she brushes up against every day. The show is honestly worth it just for Chiho and Satan's interactions, which is exactly the kind of dynamic that carries good comedies. Chiho is a complete success.

Finally, I want to touch on consistency and innovation. The show has one or two episodes that are actual duds, but the main problem is that it peaks around episode 5 with the resolution of its first arc. After that, the show stays funny, but it finds itself unable to mount a scenario to riff off of as compelling as its first one and suffers from an overall slight decline in the consistency of its humor. This of course is tied to the show's innovation: while several of its later episodes stand out as creative and uniquely enjoyable, the show's second actual arc is simply a re-spun version of its first one, utilizing several of the exact same details and gimmicks and, in spite of a new antagonist, it begins to feel rather cyclical. On top of this, the show dips into cliche comedy territory once or twice, yanking out the pool episode and haunted house episodes with no real unique characteristics, a sign that perhaps the creator was running low on ideas. The show never becomes truly repetitive, but it oftentimes fails to push its own limits, seeming to take the 'safe' route. While the second half does still have some real stunners and certain relationships continue to have meaningful development late into the show, a general decline in creativity and consistency makes me wish for what could have been if just a little more thought and effort had been put into expanding the story.

Overall, that's about how I feel about the show as a whole: that just a little more thought and effort could have tipped this show into the territory of truly great comedies. It half-succeeds at just about every criteria I laid out for great comedies, presenting reasonable consistency, a mostly-endearing cast, the makings of a driving overarching plot, and an acceptable amount of creativity, but never truly masters any of them. Considering when I watched it and the realness of the merits it DOES have, I'll always consider it a classic, but it will never quite reach the heights of stuff like Scrubs or Community or the Ranma 1/2 manga.

HOWEVER.

If you are looking for specifically ANIME comedy, I cannot recommend this show enough. I've watched just about every anime comedy that's been highly recommended to me, and I've enjoyed few of them enough to even finish them. The fact that I was still laughing out loud fairly often at this show when I had even already seen it before is extremely unique for me among anime comedies. I completely and totally understand the drive to seek out things that are specifically anime: while I would say "just go watch Community," there is an itch in all of us that only anime can scratch, and if you're feeling that way and wanna laugh and unwind with something fun, The Devil is a Part-Timer might be one of your very best bets. This show is no masterpiece, but it is very watchable by any standards, and if I were just comparing it to other straight anime comedies it's probably more like a 9. I'll keep trying those recommendations, but for now, I'm at least happy to know I can come back to this one.

Hataraku Maou-sama is sort of about a demon king from another fantasy world is defeated and teleported to our world in Japan. He needs money so he becomes an employee at the royalty-free McDonald's. That's what the show's synopsis would have you believe, but really this show is a whole mess of other things.

STORY 3/10
The story is the weakest part of the entire show. I read the description and I rightfully thought this was going to be an up-beat work place comedy about someone trying to adjust to another world. And I was right... for only 1 episode. I would've much preferred it to be ... just that, but instead we got a romantic, action, comedy, fantasy. Those 4 elements rarely ever work together, and this is no exception. So many conflicting tones and side plots are being juggled against each other to the point where at times, the comedy is completely absent.

CHARACTERS 8/10
Entertaining at best. The shows' characters are very diverse in terms of personality and roles. By the end of the series, there are only 6 important characters, and they are entertaining to watch, impact the story, offer good comedy and get plenty of attention. Emilia is your standard tsundere, and when I say standard I man standard! She's a generic tsundere and if those piss you off, you might not enjoy this as much. My only other complaint about these characters is their arcs, or lack Therof. Emilia has an arc, but it takes too long for it to happen, not to mention it's obviously going to happen. Maou's arc happens within the first episode, which is WAY too fast. He's supposed to be Satan, so he should at least act like it and learn how to be nice. Disappointed to not see that happen. No one else has arcs.

ANIMATION & SOUND
The animation is the best part of the show. It looks nice, pretty, shiny and new. The few action scenes spread out through this show (yes, there are action scenes), looks awesome! Despite my complaints about the exsistence of action earlier in the review, I at least loved how they looked. The sound is also good. I watched this in English, with the dubbed cast. For the most part, they're really good. Emilia's voice got on my nerves eventually, and I couldn't get enough of Suzuhara's voice.

OVERALL
In the end, this show feels like a mixed bag of good and bad. Did I enjoy this show? Ehhh, it could've been much better. Was this show good? I mean it's not bad. It's not great and it's by no means horrible, but I was still disappointed by all these different genres fighting each other for dominance. So should you watch it? It's short (13 episodes) so it won't eat up much of your time, but then again, that's 6 hours you can be watching something like Baccano.

This is spoiler free, so if you’re interested and don’t want to be spoiled, read on.
Hataraku Maou-sama. AKA The Devil is a Part-timer, really had me from the get-go.
Whether or not it really kept my interested throughout the remainder of the series, is another question.
The story-line itself sets up the anime perfectly for many hilarious jokes and characters. This was executed well, all up until the half-way mark of the season. From there, the story that unfolded really lost its charm. The characters began to become annoying, the plot became incredibly uninteresting, and all in all to put it bluntly: it became a ... train wreck. I have absolutely no idea how they could stuff this up, but it happened alright. A show with such potential to really grow its characters made a plot hit a wall once it reached around episode 6.

Story: 7.5 -ish
It was very clever. The humour for the most part was funny enough too.
So basically the Satan, the Demon Lord, flees his magical world to come to earth, where he needs to fit in in modern day Tokyo. In order to do this, he needs to firstly find a job, where he is made to work at McDonalds, (MgRonald, but who really cares).
This sounds awesome, and it really was a clever concept from the beginning.
The humour throughout the series remained funny, which was a plus, and the morals that the anime tried to send across was also sort of done decently. With the bad stuff aside (I will get to that later), let's just talk about how promising the first half of the season was.
It was really enjoyable to say the least. It really seemed like that this anime was headed in the right direction. It had all the right ingredients: legitimate backstories, polar opposite characters put in a hilarious situation, a little bit of action and humour. It really seemed to give you feels.
Everything seemed like it was setting up something quite epic by the end of the season, but I will warn you now: THIS DOES NOT HAPPEN. By the half way mark, this anime takes a turn for the worst. We are introduced by such uninspired characters and begin to follow a story line that seems completely unrelated to the fantastic concept they began with. Sure, Maou still works at Mcdonalds, but really, the intriguing part of the plot spiralled down. All that interesting backstory of the central characters were lost and instead replaced by other character relationships that – let’s be honest – we don’t give a flying hoot about.
Alas, I am still giving Hataraku Maou-sama an 7.5 in this department, as I really just loved the entire concept of the anime. It was unique, and definitely had it’s funny moments. How it was executed on the other hand, really wasn't to my personal liking.

Character: 6.5
Many of the characters at the beginning seemed to have much more depth than they showed by the end of the season, and this depth (especially for Emi and Sadao) was something that I was just disappointed to see not go any further.
But what really frustrated me most was Shiro.
O.M.G this girl was annoying.
At first I thought that she was funny and cute, but at the end of it, you will realise just how unnecessary she is as a character.
I really thought she was throw away at the beginning, but when she was constantly there, I realised just how useless she was. I have no idea why on earth she was kept on the show, as many other characters within this anime were so much more interesting. IT MADE NO SENSE. If the anime didn't put time into investigating her character (what was there to even investigate in?), the focus could have been shifted to more important, more interesting things, like: what happened to the magical world of Ente Isla? Who are the two other characters that seemed mystical?
Unfortunately, not only that, but the MC himself needed even more substance. I get that he is Satan the ‘Demon Lord’, but his change of character probably needed more explanation. There was a little bit, and it seemed to flow at the beginning, but by the end, IT WASN'T ENOUGH. And perhaps this is where you are meant to find humour in his 'surprising' personality, but in a sense, I felt as though this anime wanted to be taken somewhat seriously about moral values, to some extent. If it did why go about it in a way with hardly any explanation? Furthermore, there were a lot of useless characters too, not just Shiro.
In saying all of this, I suppose there are good characters too, even if they may appear rather generic. I liked the MC and his sidekick, I liked Emi and he unforgiving nature. I liked Lucifer who was really just hilarious, and I even wouldn’t mind Shiro if they didn’t make her a central character, she could be added just for a few laughs. If the story was just based around those 4 characters (not including Shiro), I would be happy. The interaction between the characters played out well at least. Many of them seemed to bounce off each other in a realistic manner, and this had me laughing throughout.

Art: 6
It was never too flashy, and honestly it wasn't too memorable either.

Sound: 5
Okay. So I really didn't like the OP or the ED. It was unmemorable and I skipped it every time. From memory, they had to change their OP within the first few episodes, as if they hadn't fully decided what to go with. Don't ask why, because I have absolutely no idea.

Overall: 6.5
I did like The Devil is a Part-timer to some extent. It was funny at times, and the story (at the beginning) was really well thought out. If it wasn't for the annoying characters and the direction the anime headed down past episode 6, I would probably give it a different rating. But honestly, with such an original concept, I really expected more than how it was followed through. If you are looking for an anime just for the laughs, why not give Hataraku Maou-sama a shot? But if you really want to get invested into the characters and the story, perhaps not.

Well, shows around this time seem to have the same style of sound and graphics then all the other anime out there. Same sort of design of characters, same sort of moe fan based humor, same this and that. It’s only the true anime, the ones with a lot of heart put into it that stand out from the rest and make them high on the list. Does this anime rise higher then all the others? No… It’s just like all the rest. Don’t take this the wrong way but it just doesn’t do anything that any of the other shows do in this time.

The ... story line is a basic storyline, guy meets girl and laughable misunderstanding happens all around them with people think they are going out. Throw in one being the Demon Lord and the other being a Holy Knight, add a human girl to be the love triangle and we have a match. It’s not that different from Demon King Daimao except that Demon Lord Satan (They couldn’t come up with another name so picked a religious name, why not?) was a demon lord before the show started. There are also some other things that tie the show with Demon King but if I said anything more on that, it would be a spoiler as sadly there are not many episodes to this anime. I would like there to be more, I would because it was enjoyable but just not innovative and new. I felt like I was watching any other show from the 21st century in the writing style.

The artwork like any other show is really nice. Bright colors, comical expressions, slap stick, face distortion… ya, like I said, not very innovative. It just feels like every other like I could be watching High School of the Dead and this at the same time and sometimes ask where the zombies are in this. They blend in well and just don’t stand out in the mountain of anime that came out in its time frame.

The English voices are perfect for the characters but again, since it’s made by Funimation, there is Funimation’s voice acting all over it. I just give them props for not going with a lot of names that have been said way to many times. Josh Grelle and Felecia Angelle, Tia Ballard and Anthony Bowling… These are names that I haven’t heard very often in the main character list. I might be wrong to say this and people can correct me but normally I hear Monica Rial, Caitlin Glass, or even Vic as main voices. I was surprised to not hear Vic’s voice for Satan and though I do love Vic, it was refreshing.

I really liked this show even if it was similar to many other shows, and I wouldn’t mind watching it again. If your looking for new and exciting, this isn’t the one, if your looking for one that plays it safe, this might be your show. Now if only they would come out with season two so I can get a actual ending like the manga, that would really be nice.

Overrrated and misleading. Those words describe this anime perfectly. Okay so lets break it down shall we?

The story is this devil king guy who enters this gate and ends up in modern tokyo. Yeah like we haven't heard stories about people from fantasy worlds coming to our world before. Lets face it its cliche as fuck, however cliche doesn't necessarily mean bad.

Okay so when you read the description and look at the cover of this show then you are probably assuming that this is a silly, but nonetheless good comedy. However go into this show with the mindset that you will be laughing your ass ... off all the time and you will be dissapointed. I am not gonna lie this anime does have some pretty funny moments, but honestly it felt alot more like a fantasy drama than a comedy. Infact sometimes it was so serious that i was unsure of what kind of show it was. Now please dont get me wrong i don't dislike drama or anything (infact i love it more than comedy). However, when i read the reviews of this anime and looked at the cover i was expecting an anime that was funny all around, but that was not the case.

Alright lets move on to the characters. You have the MC Sadao Maou AKA the devil king, Shirou Ashiya or "Alsiel" as he is sometimes called. He is Maou loyal servant and was a general in the demon army. Then there is Emilia Justina who is known better as Emi or Yusa. She was a Hero in the fantasy world place and fought against the devil king and his armies. Lastly there is Chiho Sasaki or simply "Chi-chan" She is a normal high school girl who works with him at McRonalds.

Now there are a shitload of other characters in this show but i am not gonna bother mentioning them since that would take too long. So is there anything special about this characters? Well no not really, Maou is your typical i will dominate the world kind of guy, but i will say though that he seems to have grown more soft after coming the human world. His servant and roommate Alsiel is the kind of guy who is obsessed with pleasing his lord, though he does scold Maou when he wastes money on unnecessary things.

Next there is Emi who again is your typical " I will avenge my friends/family and punish evil people" kind of person. There is nothing unique about here. Finally there is the annoying, but cute Chi-chan who obviously has a crush on Maou though he is oblivious to her feelings. Again she is just the jelous, but cute high school girl character, nothing out of the ordinary.

Now its not that every character in this anime is boring, but then again there is nothing that makes them stand out either.

As for the soundtrack i have to say that this was one of the anime's strong points. The opening Song is really cool and i got goosebumps every time i listened to it. It kind of reminded me of the opening of SAO. The ending theme is also really good and relaxing.

So what is the conclusion? Well the show itself isn't bad, its just that it makes you believe that its a silly comedy that will make you laugh all the time when it isn't. Like i said before though that doesn't mean that the show is serious all the time and boring, but it means that its not exactly what you would expect. If you are expecting a show like "daily life of high school boys" or My Bride is a Mermaid" then you will be dissapointed. However if you go into show with a different mindset then you may very well like it. Think of this anime as a fantasy/drama with some action and comedy here and there. If you do that you probably won't be dissapointed like i was.

Comedy is notoriously difficult to translate outside of its time period or place or origin, largely because it relies on the tastes of its target audience and typically assumes that they have a certain level of cultural knowledge. Shakespeare's comedies, for example, can be rather difficult even for native English speakers to find funny because you will have to cut through the archaic language and sometimes even understand the fine points of early 17th-century English pronunciation. If an undisputed world-class master of storytelling has trouble getting his humor to resonate even within his own culture just a few centuries later, how hard must it be ... for a comedy to translate between two radically different cultures that developed on opposite sides of the globe? "The Devil Is A Part Timer" actually succeeds in doing this... to a degree.

-Story-

What would happen if Sauron, Dark Lord of Mordor, was dumped into the 21st century First World, had no magic or abilities beyond the average human, had to work a minimum-wage job to pay the rent, but still harbored delusions of grandeur? This series. 'Devil' works best when it has our main cast treating mundane everyday life like it's a colossal battle of good vs evil for the FATE OF THE WORLD ("I'm on the front lines of a fast food war!"). It's a good enough gag to at least get you through 13 episodes. The catch is the tone shifts where this show tries to weave in a serious fantasy story about events in magical world of Inte Isla- they don't work. Now having at least some basic semblance of a plot would be fine as an excuse to set up some comedic battles and give you an extra incentive to keep watching. And the first arc does follow this pattern, making it the better half of the show. However, the second half tries to significantly up the seriousness in a show that was running on 'Rule of Funny'- and it backfires. "Steins;Gate" also had a significant tone shift from comedic to serious halfway through its run, but it worked because the first episode had Makise Kurisu being murdered then mysteriously found alive and well, along with occasional hints and reminders that something deeper was going on until the second half started with a bang. The seriousness doesn't work here because at first Inte Isla is a completely generic fantasy world that could have come from any random D&D game- it's only mentioned in passing and only there to excuse why the main cast acts so abnormally. But then 'Devil' tries to make it far more important to the plot and even give it some development, all in far less time than was needed and all while still trying to regularly switch back and forth to comedic moments. In the second arc the comedy is diluted by too much serious material, and the serious material is undermined because it doesn't have enough time and development to actually be taken seriously. And the last episode is a filler. Ironically, the 'Story' score is hurt because this show tried to have a real plot.

-Art-

It's nice, it's colorful, production values are good. I don't really have much to say about it.

-Sound-

Go English dub on this one, verbal comedy works best in situations where there are as few barriers between you and the comedian as possible. Tone and inflection can make the difference between a dull line and a hilarious one, even when the actual words spoken are identical. And fortunately, the dub is very good. There's nothing really memorable good or bad from the soundtrack, it does fine.

-Characters-

The cast has three strong comedic characters in Maou, Emi, and Shirou- all recent residents of Inte Isla who embody the show's main gag of taking everything FAR too seriously. It has three weak characters in Chiho, Lucifer, and Suzuno. The first is moe with a bosom rather sizable for her age and can't provide any great gags (with the exception of one golden line from Emi concerning her... chest). Lucifer doesn't show up until the end of the first arc, and then does nothing for the second but still gets significant screen time. Suzuno is symptomatic of the show's attempt to get more serious and doesn't have any jokes worth remembering (although she did make a 'Lone Wolf and Cub' reference- always a good thing). Nobody else really worth mentioning except for Maou and Shirou's landlady, who only has brief screen time but squeezes in a couple OK jokes. In short, the main cast works well, but has to drag around significant dead weight in the second half.

-Enjoyment-

Strong start, but my interest began to fade down the stretch. It never bottomed out, but the serious plot wasn't engaging and the comedy didn't have enough screen time or variety towards the end to make me think this show really needed to continue. Though overall I still liked this series.

-Overall-

Should have stayed comedic, that's where the strength of 'The Devil Is A Part-Timer' lies. That being said, the jokes actually do translate pretty well and are rather relatable since they center on entry-level mundane jobs (we've all been there) rather than rehashing standard Japanese high school gags. Enjoyable, but also botched.

(This has been adapted from my reddit thread)

For many people, it is always difficult to go to a foreign land. Different languages, money, locales, and people make going to new places both exciting and daunting. Thus the stage is set for the Overlord in The Devil is a Part-Timer.

STORY

Our story begins in a completely fantastical land known as Ente Isla, where Dark Lord Satan and his demons wage war against Emilia the Hero and the Church. After these two titans of battle clash, Satan flees through the Gate, only to arrive in modern day Japan. Emilia, whose only purpose in fighting is to defeat the ... Overlord, gives chase.

What follows afterwards is actually a slice-of-life anime where our two protagonists and their compatriots learn to deal with the troubles of their new world. Namely, being human and having to work to earn money. This all seems rather simple. And to be honest, it is. But it works (pun intended).

One of the things I liked most about the story was how human it all seemed. Emilia herself is human, but watching her and especially Maou (the name he gives himself) having to deal with getting food, worrying about their finances, or helping out a local park were interesting mainly because their actions on Earth were in the completely opposite direction to what they were doing in Ente Isla. And this is true for the rest of the cast, such as Ashiya maintaining his complete devotion to Satan while keeping a strict eye over what was cheap enough to eat.

The show also incorporates the mythical side of their characters and the lore even though they live in Japan. Many of the arcs that the characters go through are ultimately related to the happenings in the world in which they originally called home. These parts as well were fine.

One of the main reasons why I picked this up was for the romance element. I will say that there are splashes of romance here and there (and it is pretty obvious that Emilia is tsundere early on) but I wish there was more romance to be had.

ANIMATION

When looking at another thread, I agree that the first episode had very good production quality. This was mainly because it makes the show out to seem as if what is going to be occurring is an action anime. So many of the fight scenes and designs/environments are nicely animated.

For the remainder of the show, the animation itself is passable, but nothing great or even good. It is average at best. This is mainly because most of what the characters do on-screen throughout the show is more commonplace activities, but there are moments when the animation does increase in quality (again, this is during the action sequences).

I actually liked the character designs. I think what I liked most about them were the use of color. Emilia's hair is a somewhat dark-red (as opposed to someone like Rias Gremory with her bright red hair), Lucifer is a calm purple, etc. This may also sound weird, but what I liked most about the character designs were their eyes. The animators went with more dull looking colors and no extra details. With Maou's orange eyes, Emilias dull green (I really liked her's), and Suzuno's baby blue eyes, they seemed kind of unique to me in a strange way.

CHARACTERS

This is easily the strongest part of the show. I think the best way to describe them would be "smart". That is, there really aren't many misunderstandings that take place and even when they do they are resolved rather quickly. Their "smart" behavior also comes from how they talk with one another. I think with the exception of Chiho, all of the main cast are 18 years old or older, meaning everything they say or do is more adult oriented. And this was refreshing when many anime tend to take place within the high school/pre-adulthood setting.

The two strongest characters are obviously, in this case, the two protagonists, Maou and Emilia.

Maou is probably one of my favorite MCs. He is kind, intelligent, and hard-working. On top of that, he can be a badass when he needs to. And for an MC in a potential harem he isn't even that dense (except for the gag with Chiho). It's sort of difficult to describe really. I think a lot of it has to do with the dichotomy between his human persona (really good guy) versus his devil persona (really bad guy). His evil side is especially cool because when he enters that state he is extremely overpowered, and rightly so (he is the king of the devils after all).

Emilia is also very fun to watch. I enjoy a good tsundere character, and she fits the bill nicely. She reminds me of a more angry and older Asuna of SAO fame. I enjoyed watching her interact with Maou and the other characters. She acts like a big sister to Chiho, she gets easily annoyed with Lucifer, and she has these rather complicated feelings towards Maou. Overall, she was definitely a joy to have on-screen.

As for the other characters, I liked them too. Ashiya, Lucifer, Chiho, and Suzuno all have their moments, and their personalities are fun and interesting.

The only gripe I have is that besides their base personality traits, there is no actual character growth. I would have liked to see more development within the first season in regards to Maou, Emilia, and the rest, but I guess that will just have to wait for season two.

SOUND

The OP for the show was not that good, but the ED grew on me. It's good but not amazing. The rest of the soundtrack is nothing special.

The voice acting for the show was nicely done by each of the cast members. There were no stand out performances, but I thought the actors/actresses did a very nice job.

ENJOYMENT

When it comes to most shows, I like them a lot. Perhaps it is just me being more open to everything, but I guess that's just the way I am. This is especially true when romance is mixed in, even if it is small. For Hataraku, there isn't technically a small amount of romance but it is also not the main focus. However, I still enjoyed the romance elements.

The show is also quite funny. This is mainly due to how well the cast interacts with one another. Chiho is also one of the funnier characters in the show due to how she over-reacts to most situations. Maou and Emilia are also great on-screen together, and I was always smiling when they were. On top of that, the writing is also nicely done. Much of the comedy comes from how serious Maou, Ashiya, and Emilia can be about the simple things in their new life, but it is all very nicely done.

One of the most enjoyable parts of the show is when Maou is able to fight properly. When watching it, you can definitely tell how strong and intimidating he becomes. This scene in particular (spoilers, don't watch otherwise) demonstrates well how scary he can be when he goes all out.

SUMMARY

Story: Fine, Dark Lord and the Hero deal with everyday life

Animation: Fine, nice character designs with adequate fight scenes

Characters: Good, cast works very well together but lacks character development

Sound: Fine, good voice acting and a good ED

Enjoyment: Great, some romance, pretty funny, and good writing

Final Score: 6/10

solid comedy with an amazing level of back story and good steady character development. This show balanced comedy with serious moral questions and a little drama in a very smooth way, not many shows do that well, most stick to being primarily one thing or another, like a comedy where they might have a serious episode or story arc over a couple episodes but sticks to comedy the rest of the time, very few writers have the skill to mix and balance a serious overall plot with a show that has episodic short sub plots and a gag comedy front. The devil is a part ... timer pulls this off though. You get the best of both worlds, each episode has a feeling of conclusion for that days antics, but you advance the main plot a little and want to see more, and the jokes keep a light tone to balance against the honestly morbid history and background of the characters involved. Overall, a very enjoyable series.
Now, on to specifics:

Story: 8
While not fresh or terribly unique, it's solid and well written.

Art: 6.5
The quality is on par with the majority of titles released at that time, it's decent, not outstanding, but not lacking in any way. Overall I rate it fair to good, but nothing stands out to give it more than that.


Sound: 5
While nothing stood out as being badly done, the music and sound effects felt generic, nothing in the way of memorable

Characters: 6
Of course, as with many anime, the characters all fall into one of the many steryotypical architectures. They have a little unique flare here and there, but their personality types have all been seen before. The real treat here is the way they play off each other, and how the types are grouped up.

Enjoyment: 7
I nearly put this at an 8, this show was very enjoyable as far as it went, but the way it just cuts off and ends with nothing in the way of a conclusion leaves you hanging.

Overall: 6.5
This needed one more season, it really did, the last episode wasn't even a proper ending, it just felt like another mid season episode. There was plenty of plot left, character development to go through, and history to explore, but none of that happened. It's obvious this was written intending far more, at a minimum another 12 to 13 episodes, but it didn't get there. A continuation would bump the first seasons score up to a solid 7 or better, but the way were left with a completely unsatisfying lack of resolution hurts the score pretty bad.

Really, it was a good show, and I had hoped for more, but as it stands, I am left somewhat conflicted. I enjoyed watching, I wanted to come away maintaining that feeling of enjoyment, but it was half done, so that enjoyment has been overshadowed by disappointment since a second season is clearly not happening. Still worth watching, but know up front that if you do like it, you will not find satisfaction in the end.

kxReview: Hataraku Maou-sama

Hataraku started very well with tons of action and fairly good comedy but it just doesn't have a focus in my opinion. The comedy here is well done and you'll find yourself chuckling here and there. What really really disappointed me however,is just how the story tries to fit so much and ends up not fitting anything. Example, they introduce 2 characters and just never used them for anything but a small dialog partly in the end.Another example, the introduce a bad guy but they didn't explain his motivations that well, like the writers just needed a bad guy to exist for no ... apparent reason. They also underdeveloped the main cast by introducing new characters before the development occurs. It was like getting cake then being served another cake before I could taste the first cake.And then another cake is given, and now I have 3 cakes and another cake comes and I just don't know whats happening and I can't pay for any of these cakes and *cough cough...(Lets get back on track) That kinda pissed me off since most of the characters would have been interesting because they aren't one dimensional. Maou is a Dark Lord but hes not as evil as the people in his old world think he is, but we never got to know why he was like that in the first place. Or why and for what the end-game bad guy wanted to do what he did to Emilia. It just felt lacking. Don't get me wrong however. Hataraku isn't a bad anime. I just wished it was better executed.

As for the ending, i thought it would go for a what I call, sizzle ending. Sizzle ending is when they end the fight scenes and main plots the episode before, and then try to cover some loose holes and end some of the minor plot points on the final episodes. Like cutting of the loose ends and showing what the characters are going to do now that the main conflict is over. Hataraku's ending was kinda what I call filler. I didn't cover anything and I just wasn't what I wanted.

I recommend Hataraku Mauo-sama if your looking for a good comedy with fun characters. Just don't expect to much for what it seems to go for in the first episode.

Story - Basically you are first shown a war taking place in an alternative world called Ente Isla between the Demon lord Satan and the Hero Emilia, Satan and his most loyal general Alciel escape through a gate to modern day Tokyo, eventually Emilia follows. Due to the lack of magic Satan and Alciel change into human forms, and are forced to take on fake identies to survive. Maou (Satan) decides to take a job at a "MgRonalds" franchise restruant while Alciel does house duties.

Art and Sound - The OP is nice and catchy, but otherwise nothing really that sticks out, or is worth mentioning

Character ... - The characters are unbelievable, and I mean unbelievable. I do get fustrasted over the concept of Maous' character, he is far too nice compared to this supposed evil demon lord that he is supposed to be. To be honest all the demons (Maou, Alciel, Lucifer) seem far too nice. I mean how can you expect people to believe that these demons are as evil as are stated when you don't even see it.

Enjoyment - There is a lot of comedic momments, and a few good action scenes. that is why I have given this an overall score of 5, without those momments, then the score could easily be 2.

Story
When it comes down to it, The Devil is a Part Timer manages to present some good ideas and scenarios, but is so caught up in its fictional world of Ente Isla that it falls apart and becomes less of the slice-of-life/comedy it should have been and more of an uninteresting action show. In fact, by the end it almost feels like it’s become a harem anime. The Devil is a Part Timer doesn’t know what it wants to be and suffers because of it.

The plot starts in Ente Isla where the Dark Lord Satan and his army is ravaging the lands and mercilessly killing ... people. There is a church and an inquisition and God and all kinds of other fun religious stuff, though none of it is fleshed out much because before you can get a feel for this fantasy world, you’re in Tokyo where Satan—calling himself Maou—has become an employee at a McDonalds. These slice-of-life portions in which Satan is acting like a normal human are entertaining and rife with good comedic moments. The romance between a high school girl working at the McDonalds and Satan is a good thread for the series to run with, which you’d hope would develop characters and push the story, but the romance, sadly, is put on the backburner.

Instead the series focuses more on various characters from Ente Isla coming to Tokyo to cause problems. This should have been expected from the beginning, but there is no build-up to this happening. By the time Lucifer shows up, you’re expecting the series to be centered on Satan, his loyal servant Ashiya, and Emi the Hero. The series falls apart at this point and never truly recovers. It goes back to slice-of-life, goes to action portions, cuts back to Ente Isla for some reason. It’s such a mish-mash that it’s hard to find one aspect truly enjoyable.

One thing the series does do right and I could pick out of the mess of ideas was the comedy. The series remained pretty funny throughout, though much of the comedy came from one specific character. And I guess the idea of angels and devils working for fast food chains is pretty hilarious.

There’s not enough going on in the story and writing to truly give the series much credit.

Animation
Good animation throughout with pretty good character models and richly detailed backgrounds. The fight scenes are pretty fluid as well.

Sound
The opening song is really catchy and all the other music certainly wasn’t bad either.

Characters
Despite the large cast, none truly stand out from their respective counterparts. Emi is a good tsundere character and I enjoyed her development as she slowly grows to like Maou. She still calls him her rival and treats him like garbage much of the time, but there’s steady development that I would love to see more of. The other romance, between Maou and Chiho, is cute, though one sided and ultimately not satisfying.

Ashiya is the only other character really worth mentioning because he’s the character who makes the series funny. His constant frugality and going home to get his cloak before appearing at a big battle is hilarious.

The other characters are forgettable and uninteresting.

Overall
The Devil is a Part Timer contains a lot of good ideas and scenarios but fails to create a cohesive bond between many of them and, because of that, fails to deliver anything solid. The comedy is worthwhile and a few of the characters are interesting, but everything else is flat, generic, and ultimately unmemorable. I can’t even write a real in-depth review because the show itself doesn’t have much depth. I enjoyed some of it, but the rest is easily forgotten.

There are no spoilers in this review. I give this anime a 5.6.

For those looking for a brief summary, skip to the “Overall” at the bottom of this review.

Story: 6

This anime took the classic story of someone trying for world domination and made it into a comedy. It definitely had potential but after the first few episodes it became literally just another harem anime. By the 7th episode I wanted to drop the anime but held out until the end and regret it.

Characters: 4

What threw me off about this anime were the implausible characters. The only person who got a backstory throughout this ... entire anime was Yusa, and an excellent one at that. Unfortunately, they took any hint of drama that would have given the show substance and ruined it with poor comedy. I had a few laughs, but the 1-dimensional characters and poor execution of the plot made this anime feel like the creators of One Punch Man tried too hard to make a serious anime and fell into their satirical ways halfway through each dramatic scene.

Art: 7

The art was decent. Nothing amazing, but at least not as terrible as the characters.

Sound: 6

The sound didn’t stand out to me either. I’m just giving it less than a 7 because of my sheer disappointment with this anime.

Overall: 5.6

The story was world domination with a nice twist. Unfortunately, the 1-dimensional characters ruined any chance this story had of succeeding and the poor comedy took out any morsel of substance this show had. It felt like the creators of One Punch Man tried too hard to make a serious anime and fell into their satirical ways halfway through each dramatic scene. Art and sound were decent but nothing to brag about. Even if there is a season 2, I will not be watching it. Huge disappointment.

This is the most overrated show I have ever seen. That sentence really encapsulates everything about this uninspired, poor in almost every sense, drivel. Now to be fair to this show, it is rather old, which means I can actually excuse some of the overused tropes and unoriginal premise but only to a point. Rating this show back when it released I may have given it some praise, but today I really struggle to.

I'll start with the technical bits, art and sound. The OP and ED are really terrible, screechy, full of broken English in an attempt to sound cool, and entirely made of ... reused footage or still images panning upwards or downwards. I am fairly sure the production company knew this, as the OP doesn't show up until episode 3, and the ED visuals actually change halfway into the season (presumably somebody realised having the ed start with a close up of a high schoolers foot was a little too strange). The voice actors generally aren't awful, certainly nothing to praise, specifically with the character of Emilia a lot of her lines seemed to convey the opposite emotion of what was being said, and often contrasted with the animation on the screen. The character voices all feel quite bland, except for Chiho. That brings me nicely to the art, which is also incredibly bland and stale, all the designs feel washed out, hair colours are all dark, same with the eyes and the emotion on the characters faces just does not look right (again, except for Chiho). The "art style" of the characters faces, particularly female characters, when they get upset or angry looks like something I would expect out of a low budget western cartoon. It isn't that the studio is incapable either, the scenes that take place on Ente Isla in the first episode look pretty great, and the transformed character designs are equally awesome. Why they couldn't just put some of that effort into the majority of scenes I will never know. As for the action, it isn't the focus so it puzzles me why they try so hard to make it look flashy, but it ends up with me just reminded of early dragon ball super and its hilariously bad animation. The characters faces are also wonky in a lot of shots, not just ones that last for a couple of seconds either, but long panning shots with characters centre frame with hardly any discernable facial features. The last thing that really annoyed me is how the first action piece takes entirely within a magical barrier of sorts, which for some reason is represented by a greyish filter over everything which makes it even duller than usual.

The story is also quite lacking. I am most disappointed with how the series skips over the characters getting used to modern life, it just time skips and they have jobs and understand technology, which could have all been used to comedic effect. Many things are also left unexplained, why is the dark lord suddenly good? Who knows. Why doesn't he just go and get more magic at any time using humans negative emotions? Plot I guess. To keep the dark lord weak, they use the exact same excuse of "Gotta repair the city which uses all my power" I don't even know why he has to be weak, shows like Saiki K and one punch man prove that characters with crazy powers can still be perfectly well written, and actually adds to the character. Instead, the show insists on taking itself seriously by trying to keep stakes high, it is honestly just sad to watch, because nobody cares and there is no tension. It tries so desperately to be an action show instead of a slice of life comedy which is what everyone expects from a title like this.

Finally, the characters, which really should be the highlight of a show like this (I suppose they are, but that isn't saying much) are totally boring. None of them have any personality, they occasionally spill out big speeches but that means nothing at all since they are literally just single character traits given a body. I am not talking tsundere, yandere, those typical character types, I really mean they are as bare-bones as you can get. Characters will go through life-threatening situations and save each other, but will not change at all. I suppose Chiho and Rika would be the most interesting as they aren't so boring, but one of those two appears in like 2 episodes so it isn't saying much.

Just a final note, this should be 12 episodes. The story is wrapped up in 12 and the 13th is just some strange filler episode. Cmon, you do not need filler in seasonal anime, that's just ridiculous.

So in closing, it really is not that good, some problems can be forgiven as it precedes a lot of the typical isekai trash it seems to have inspired, but it is nothing more than mediocre at very best. I am intrigued by season 2, I hope it can fix the biggest problems I have with the series, however, it will no longer have the excuse that it is old so will likely end up rated even worse by me. Thank you for reading.