Machikado Mazoku

After a strange dream of a mysterious ancestor, high school student Yuuko Yoshida wakes to see that she has grown demonic horns and a tail. Dazed and confused, her mother reveals to her a dark family secret: her family is descended from a Dark Clan that was banished to live powerless and destitute by their mortal enemies, the magical girls of the Light Clan. The only way to lift their ancestry's curse is for Yuuko to find a magical girl, murder her, and splatter her blood all over her ancestor's Demon God statue.

Fortunately for "Shadow Mistress Yuuko," a magical girl saves her from being run over by an oncoming truck. Unfortunately, Momo Chiyoda happens to be Yuuko's classmate at Sakuragaoka High and is much stronger than her in both strength and endurance. Taking pity on her wimpy assailant, the magical girl agrees to train Yuuko and help her unlock her dormant powers. Now, Yuuko must rise up and defeat her generous frenemy to save her family from the terrible grip of poverty.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

Yoshida, Yuuko Main

Kohara, Konomi Japanese

Chiyoda, Momo Main

Kitou, Akari Japanese

Hinatsuki, Mikan Supporting

Takayanagi, Tomoyo Japanese

Lilith Supporting

Takahashi, Minami Japanese

Yoshida, Ryouko Supporting

Oowada, Hitomi Japanese

Lady With a Dog Supporting

Koga, Aoi Japanese

Sata, Anri Supporting

Senbongi, Sayaka Japanese

Ogura, Shion Supporting

Suwa, Ayaka Japanese

Yoshida, Seiko Supporting

Ohara, Sayaka Japanese

Metako Supporting

Nanase, Ayaka Japanese

Nakamura, Shinichi Producer

Kobayashi, Hiroyuki Producer

Okada, Kouji Producer

Tanaka, Junichirou Producer

Reviews

Jun 27, 2024

Kcmichalson

Recommended

A pathetically weak demon girl fends off against mediocre magical girl and the magical girl can't help but pity her.

A setup for what is a relatively decent situational comedy. The episodes follow a pretty standard structure and the characters bounce off of each other well. The story is very slow and doesn't really go anywhere but that's fine for what is effectively slice of life between a bunch of schoolgirls. The characters are animated very well and have pretty good writing, even if their actions are at times counterintuitive. The art style of the show does feel a tad inconsistent at times, but the variation ... works out to its advantage in most of the scenes.

My main critique is just that the show really does feel like it goes nowhere for multiple episodes at a time, but as long as you're fine with a bit of filler you should be fine with this.

Reviewer’s Rating: 8

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May 12, 2021

Firechick12012

Mixed Feelings

Ugh, I really wanted to like this one. I passed it up when it first aired, but after learning a bit more about it, I thought I'd finally give it a try after I finished some shows. But let me ask you: Have you ever watched a show that, even though it has a small number of episodes, took you months to finish in its entirety for whatever reason? But you couldn't bring yourself to drop it completely? The Demon Girl Next Door, Japanese title being Machikado Mazoku, is one of those shows for me. Basically, a girl named Yuko Yoshida finds out she's descended ... from a family that serves a demon, Lilith, and they've been constantly defeated by magical girls over centuries. When her demon powers awaken, her family wants her to take on a local magical girl, Momo Chiyoda, so they can break the curse that another magical girl put on them long ago. But Yuko is weak and tiny due to being sick and living in poverty, and Momo, seeing how pitiful she is, would much rather be friends with her, though decides to train her anyway.

This show is mainly a comedy, and comedy can be very subjective. A lot of the show's humor comes from pointing out, lampshading, and poking fun at typical magical girl tropes, along with rapid-fire dialogue that never seems to slow down, bordering on parody. Normally I tend to like this sort of stuff, but MachiMazo really pours it on really thick. I watched this in Japanese first, and even with the subtitles, I found the dialogue to be really hard to follow. All the characters speak really fast save for some, and it felt to me like the actors were struggling to get their lines out as quick as possible rather than talking naturally. Many of the same jokes are constantly reused over and over. Hey, Yuuko is so weak she can't punch anyone hard enough! Hey, Momo is a stoic magical girl who's super strong and thinks Yuuko's weak attempts at villainy are cute! Hey, Yuuko's sister Ryoko idolizes her big sister so much she constantly misunderstands everything she does! Hey, Yuuko's demon outfit is skimpy and revealing!

It doesn't really help that the story meanders a lot, and often times, it felt like the show was struggling to give the characters something to do throughout each episode. A lot of it just consists of misunderstandings between Yuko and Momo, the two leads, or just them messing around and not doing anything to progress the plot. The characters don't really fare much better, as they're all either generic or are just made up of one gimmick and nothing else, with Shion and Mikan being the worst offenders, as the former is defined by her weirdness and obsession with the occult, and the latter is defined by the fact that she has a curse that causes bad things to happen when she gets anxious or flustered. That's it. The final two episodes try to rectify this and inject some genuine storytelling that does work, but unfortunately it doesn't do enough to save the show, as it comes so late that by the time the series ends, the audience really doesn't have much of a reason to care anymore. The show really should have tried harder to flesh out and develop the characters more.

For what it's worth though, the animation, while nothing noteworthy, is pretty crisp and sleek-looking, and the music is fairly good, too. But again, they're both nothing special. One thing about the animation did bug me, though: For some reason, the tops of all the characters' hair are a different color than their usual hair color. For example, Yuko's hair is brown, but the top of it has purple shading, and Momo's hair is pink, with the top of it being yellow. Everyone else has this weird quirk too, and I don't know if this was deliberate, or part of the art style, or something else, but it really bugs me to no end. It really says something when I find myself liking shows like Sleepy Princess over this. Oh, and the series doesn't really end, as it sets up plot points that are not gonna go anywhere because the anime is just a commercial for the manga. In all honesty, I found this show kind of boring.

Not one of the better comedies or magical girl parodies out there. But if you want something sweet that'll make you laugh, knock yourself out with MachiMazo. It may not be for me, but I'm sure it's someone else's cup of tea.

Reviewer’s Rating: 6

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Sep 28, 2019

SanaeK10

Not Recommended

Machikado Mazoku is incredibly cute and at times brings a warm smile onto my face.

Now this sentence doesn't explain my score on the show and you'll see why in a moment.

It's a cute show, don't get me wrong. But the contents and delivery of said contents are difficult to swallow. The direction and pacing are all over the place. Sometimes its too slow and scenes/jokes drag on for far too long, and other times its too fast giving you hardly any time to take in the information. The story itself (or premise at least) is cute but it's nothing special. Honestly most of these slice ... of life with fantastical elements type show have some basic structure and predictable plot elements to them, with the delivery and execution of its contents differentiating them from one another. Like, Endro had a very similar premise (with a switch in perspective), but that show at least felt good to watch and was pleasant to sit through. Machikado on the other hand felt downright claustrophobic at times. The characters are fine, but I never really liked Shamiko. Her being the tsukkomi to most situations just boil down to her explaining what just happened to the audience. A very lousy way of setting up jokes. I quite liked Mikan breaking up the monotony but she appeared far too late into the series by which I was already exhausted. Similar shows would typically incorporate characters like these somewhere in the middle as that's usually the point where they would exhaust the standard jokes and setups with the existing cast. In either case, the narrator is surprisingly my favourite character of the bunch. His optimistic "Ganbare Shamiko!" never fails to make me smile and out of all the cast, he is the only one to receive any payoff by the end of the show. The music was surprisingly nice, although maybe I tend to notice it more since I usually zone out watching the show and start paying attention to the background elements.

I deliberately didn't include any paragraph spacing just now to demonstrate how it felt watching the show.

4/10

Ganbare Shamiko! May you receive better adaptations in the future.

Reviewer’s Rating: 4

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