Kyou kara Maou!

Kyou kara Maou! revolves around Yuri Shibuya, your average Japanese teenager. One day, Yuri sees a classmate being harassed by bullies. Thanks to this intervention, his friend is able to escape, but unfortunately Yuri becomes the new target of the bullies in the process and gets his head shoved into a toilet. But instead of water, the toilet contains a swirling portal that sucks him into another world, largely resembling medieval Europe. There, he is told that he will become the next Demon King due to his black hair and black eyes, traits only possessed by the demon's royal lineage.

Yuri's arrival is met with some skepticism by some of the demons, who view him as unworthy to be their king. However, after Yuri wins a duel by utilizing his magical powers, the demons slowly begin to acknowledge him as their monarch. Yuri must now learn what it takes be a true Demon King, as he tries to keep the peace between demons and humans in this strange new realm.

von Bielefeld, Wolfram Main

Saiga, Mitsuki Japanese

Shibuya, Yuuri Main

Sakurai, Takahiro Japanese

Weller, Conrad Main

Morikawa, Toshiyuki Japanese

von Christ, Günter Main

Inoue, Kazuhiko Japanese

von Voltaire, Gwendal Main

Ootsuka, Akio Japanese

Murata, Ken Supporting

Miyata, Kouki Japanese

Gurrier, Josak Supporting

Takeda, Masanori Japanese

Shinou Supporting

Miki, Shinichiro Japanese

von Karbelnikoff, Anissina Supporting

Takayama, Minami Japanese

Morgif, Mullem Desoive Eligh Supporting

Sakurai, Takahiro Japanese

Simone, Jamie Producer

Urasaki, Nobumitsu Producer

Nishimura, Junji Director, Episode Director, Storyboard

Yamamoto, Hideyo Episode Director, Storyboard

Reviews

Nov 28, 2007

Toadychan

Recommended

My initial reason for starting Kyou Kara Maou! was the shounen-ai premise (boy is transported—or rather, flushed down a toilet—to another world where the laws are extremely different and ends up accidentally proposing to one of the Maou's sons; sounds like fun to me!) and I became a little disappointed when I realized it wasn't a strictly shounen-ai anime, or even one that focused largely on romance, but after only a handful of episodes I was addicted to the humour and characters and there was absolutely no return.

Kyou Kara Maou! is a truly hilarious anime, and it's filled with so many great characters that it's ... impossible not to have a few favourites. The characters and the interaction between them all was what made the anime so good in my opinion, and even though I must admit that the show has its share of filler episodes, I just adored the characters too much to really mind.

Despite the humour, however, Kyou Kara Maou! does have a serious story (once it kicks in) and some very intense episodes with a few plot twists and character back story that isn't so cheerful, especially coupled with Yuri's struggle to bring peace to this new world he's been crowned king of without resorting to war or fighting of any kind.

Yes, Kyou Kara Maou! is lengthy and probably a little cliché, but if you fall in love with the characters the way I did then you'll wish it had've gone on longer. I was sad to see it end, and it's absolutely become one of my favourite animes. If you like lighthearted anime with darker undertones that's full of great characters and don't mind the touches of shounen-ai (or crossdressing boys, for that matter), then I wholeheartedly recommend this series to you!

Reviewer’s Rating: 9

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Apr 21, 2008

Ranivus

Mixed Feelings

If you want to marathon a long anime and you don't like shounen-ai style anime, DO NOT START HERE! Hehe. If anyone knows me at all, you know darn well how much I dislike shounen-ai, and this show has it in spades. There is even a "reverse harem" for the main character. But its not hard core boy love like most come to associate with an anime labeled with "shounen-ai" its very mild and as such, isn't really that bad to watch for anyone who enjoys a decent adventure/shounen anime. The story evolves around a teenage boy named Yuri Shibuya. He's a normal teenage boy ... who loves baseball and enjoys normal things fifteen year olds like. But the story starts to progress when a bunch of bullies give him a swirlie (dunking his head in the toilet). In the toilet water, a portal opens up to an alternate reality where humans and 'demons' coexist. When he got flushed down the toilet I couldnt help but think of Inuyasha and how there was two coexisting dimensions in that show as well. To make a long story short, yuri happens to be a long awaited reincarnated king that is supposed to assume the throne of the 'demons.' Of course hilarity action and adventure ensues.

The story is standard fare, with Yuri progressing and learning new things and helping others. All that is good and everything but it takes about 30-40 episodes till the real story line unfolds. Very similar to Inuyasha, Yuri must prevent the opposing powers from collecting certain peices that will bring the end of the world. It's a very generic plot but the stories intertwined with the main story are wat make it fairly interesting. The "boy-love" comedy bits troubled me a bit at first but further down it became more and more funny rather than annoying and there were parts thats I actually laughed out loud. Another great part of this show is how it makes fun of itself. Knowing that they are doing an anime thats been done numerous times before, they made different rules and regulations in this alternate universe. Episode 1 will introduce you to some the hilarious laws. Theres even countless puns and gay jokes galore. For what they're worth they're all pretty funny.

It also helps that main characters all sound so macho and rough most of the time but also have a flipside/softside to all of them. Their macho side shows about 80% of the time, but their softside is just pure comedy gold in my opinon (personal favorite is Gwendal). But its not all males all the time (thank god), theres also a handful of woman characters in it as well. The girls all appeal to the male audience though with all of them having rather large breasts and beautiful faces. And a lot of the girls have their own silliness that makes this show such a treat.

The art and animation of the show isn't very impressive at all which is a little surprising considering that it was made in 2004 and having 78 episodes. But i guess its safe to say that the art and animation is about average for for that time frame. Background and static art are all detailed enough but has a nice amount of "haze" to keep the quality from going any higher than low. The characters are drawn pretty good, all main characters having that 'pretty boy' look and the girls looking too perfect. If there was a comparison to the character art i think it would be close to Ouran Host Club.

The sound and music are also mediocre as well, typical sound effects but nothing over the top. They're are pretty generic and im sure you can spot a few sound effects from other anime. The music is also very average/below average. Nothing very memorable about the music. And im not too fond of J-punk as the opening song (and its on ALL episodes) The ending songs do switch up at least and I did find Arigatou~ by BON'z (eps 40-on) to be pretty catchy and nice.

Overall this is, at best, an average shounen/comedy with nothing really memoriable or worth putting on my "favortie anime" list. Its also best if viewed in short sets instead of a 3 day marathon. If you don't mind your comedy having naked boy's, boy love, cross dressing, gay love triangles, and other homosexual tendancies worth laughing at (think Darma and Greg), watch this show. But if you dont want to waste your time watching an average show with a dash of shounen-ai then dont watch this. By the way, if you take out the fillers this show can easily be 15-20 episodes (yes thats how many fillers it feels like that are in there)

For a shounen anime, the main part is the path to the end not the plot. Unfortunately path they set isnt as memoriable.

Reviewer’s Rating: 5

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Nov 14, 2024

Maou_heika

Not Recommended

"I'm surprised that a novel with so many plot holes was made into an anime" - series editor GEG

It's just your typical isekai where MC gets flushed down a toilet and ends up in an isekai resembling medieval Europe and turns out that he's overpowered and everyone he meets just falls in love with him. The plot with the boxes had potential but the BL aspects that focus on and romanticize a toxic relationship between Yuuri and Wolfram ruins it all.

Art and Animation:
Even considering that the anime is made in 2004 both art and animation are abysmal. Looks like they wasted their entire budget ... on drawing Wolfram's pretty face. The characters look terrible when the camera doesn't focus on their faces, art style keeps on changing from episode to episode, sometimes they have these huge eyes other times there's just too much shading, sometimes they look like sticks other times they might have some volume. Similarly animation doesn't have any consistency and keeps on changing throughout. The action scenes are very poorly animated, background looks like it was animated in power point.

Setting and Story:
The setting in itself is quite absurd, why would any sane person want to put a 15 year old who knows absolutely nothing about the kingdom or politics on the throne!? The first episode mentions that Yuuri's soul had to be sent to Earth since there was impending danger to his life in their world but then nothing of that sort ever happens, looks like they entirely forgot about it. At first it's shown that the demons are equally responsible for the conflicts occurring in their world and that is the reason Yuuri agreed to become the king but later it turns out that it's only the humans that are evil and you have the king of the main opposing kingdom who is a one-dimensional character that is evil simply for the sake of being evil.

More than half of the series is just filler episodes and the pacing is quite bad. You'll most likely be questioning if this even has a story or is just episodic since the main underlying story doesn't start until the end of each season. Most of the episodes follow the same formula where the cast gets into trouble and in the end Yuuri unleashes his powers and solves the issue. Junji Nishimura did try to put in a lot of anime original explanations to fill in the plot holes from the LN but it still wasn't enough. For example the scene where Wolfram catches Yuuri from falling, it was physically and logically impossible for him to reach Yuuri given his only clue for searching Yuuri was the name of a continent and it happened in the middle of an earthquake.

Characters and Relationships:
Healthy relationships are built on respect, communication, and consent, this is something this series simply doesn't seem to understand. The author did mention that she's very bad at writing relationships and it clearly shows.

The MC Shibuya Yuuri is your run-of-the-mill goody-two-shoes, he's cringy and practically useless as the king and leaves all the political stuff up to Gwendal and Gunter while preaching about the superiority of peaceful Japan. Then we have Wolfram who is the most insufferable character in the series, he has too much pride, starts off as being racist and is overly obnoxious. Wolfram gets engaged to Yuuri due to a mishap, he hated Yuuri at first but then magically fell in love with him for no reason what-so-ever. He's overly controlling, extremely jealous and both physically and verbally abusive towards Yuuri and Yuuri being a spineless wimp just tolerates all of Wolfram's abuses and doesn't put an end to the mistaken engagement simply because he doesn't want to hurt the feelings of his abuser despite claiming to be straight throughout the series.

Conrad is honestly one of the best characters and the sole reason I don't drop the series, he's kind, caring and very loyal to Yuuri to the point he'd sacrifice himself for Yuuri's sake, his sad and dark past simply adds to his character. He's one of the most fleshed out characters if I say so myself.

Then we have Gwendal and Anissina which is yet another toxic relationship with Anissina being an obnoxious feminist who constantly complains about all men being useless even though she herself isn't any useful. Gwendal is one of those characters that I actually like, he's tough on the outside but soft on the inside and likes everything cute. Unfortunately, just like Yuuri Gwendal doesn't have the guts to tell Anissina off.

Speaking of bad relationships how can we forget Hube and Nicola, Hube is a middle aged dude who impregnated 15 year old Nicola and then abandoned her, thanks to Yuuri's intervention they do get together in the end but I can't see their relationship as flowery as the series make it out to be.

All the female side characters are just fujoshis, including the Wolfram and Yuuri's mothers who try to constantly get these two together. And speaking of Wolfram's mother, Celi, she was the queen before Yuuri but only ever cared about sleeping around with multiple men instead of ruling the country which lead to a tragedy. She never even intervened when her third son was treating her second son like an untouchable for years together. The series falls pretty low and even uses a 10 year old to try and get Yuuri and Wolfram together because who can say no to a 10 year old cute girl, right?

Conclusion:
This series has too many fillers, lots of pacing issues, inconsistent and bad art and animation, flat characters. It truly deserves to be flushed down the toilet!

Reviewer’s Rating: 1

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	Poll: Kyou kara Maou! Episode 1 Discussion Elfana - Sep 28, 2010	6 replies	by Kingdom_64 »» Dec 30, 2024 7:21 AM
	Yuuri x Wolfram is not representation, it's abuse Maou_heika - Dec 14, 2024	1 replies	by Momorisen »» Dec 14, 2024 12:29 AM
	Worth Watching? dustinator1991 - Apr 5, 2024	15 replies	by LeonhartAugust »» Aug 21, 2024 6:16 PM
	Conrad's Birthday (It's official now!) Maou_heika - Jul 28, 2020	5 replies	by Maou_heika »» Jul 28, 2024 8:05 AM
	Poll: Kyou kara Maou! Episode 31 Discussion Rasco - Jun 6, 2010	7 replies	by Areliase »» May 4, 2024 1:50 PM