Ichiban Ushiro no Daimaou
Demon King Daimaou

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Due to a lack of reviews for this light novel I thought that I'd give my thoughts on Ichiban Ushiro no Daimaou in an attempt to make future readers understand a little bit about the series. Before I begin the review I'll say that the anime adaption went from volumes 1-6 and if you feel like skipping the parts that you already know about then i recommend starting from Volume 7. In saying that, it's probably a far better option to begin from the beginning like I did.

Story - 8/10 : The premise for this light novel series is one that you'll often see. ... Sai Akuto is a demon king who has transferred into a magical academy and from there his wonderful adventures begin. This story is built on the foundations of the Ecchi/Harem genre but by the end of the story I felt that the novel managed to surpass its own foundations even if it did retain its unnecesary fan service. The story starts out fairly weakly and for the most part stays like that as the basic school premise restricts any form of creativity and prevents the story from escaping its cliche bonds. The story however, does begin to pick up pace considerably after Volume 6 as the novel turns its attention from a school to a global issue and the theme of a "story" or "fake world". This is where the novel begins to shine and I felt that the writing turned up a notch with the story becoming more complex in the face of more universal themes and ideas. We have an especially metaphorical ending with Volume 13 reaching completely different grounds to the rest of the story in its attempt to convey its ideas and themes to the reader. The story becomes muddled in this section and instead turns towards a view of the world from a god's perspective. It's enjoyable storytelling for the most part and represented a huge change in pace for the series. For the most part this novel sticks to its foundations and only begins to escape its own shackles in the latter half of the series so it can be a fairly lenghty wait.

Art - 8/10 : I've never and will never expect art in a light novel to be anything special. It is not a necessary part of the story and is really only useful in putting a face to a character or creating an image of a scene. Ichiban Ushiro no Daimaou however, has some great even for a novel. The characters look great and some of the drawings are plain hilarious with many a comedic scene being converted into art. The art was helpful and pleasing to look upon and therefore gets a good score from me.

Characters - 7/10 : Once again shackled by its own genre, this light novel series failed to create characters that were three dimensional and instead opted to continue along the given path of a harem series and gave us some typical characters with a few twists. Sai Akuto was probably my favourite because he was by far, the most fleshed out character and had a unique way of looking down upon the world. I quite enjoyed having Akuto's view upon the world evolve as the series progresses and his mentally slightly shift in the wake of a far more serious problem that occurs in the latter half of the series. It's his evolution and retention of his former characteristics that make him so unique at the end of the story that he transcends the characters below him to become a truly three dimensional character albeit with some cliche elements inside him. I wish i could say the same of the other characters. Many of them felt muddled and were either one or two dimensional and I lacked the connection with them that I had with Akuto. That isn't to say that I didn't sympathise with them or didn't sympathise with them. I'm trying to say that their cliche characteristics really threw me off from completely liking them. Yes, they are great characters and I enjoyed reading about them but their lack of dimensions meant that they were sub-par at best even at the end of the story.

Enjoyment - 8/10 : Ichiban Ushiro no Daimaou was a great read for me. You will hear talks about light and heavy stories in the series and if you've read it you'd understand that for a good part of the series (probably volumes 1-11) the story was extremely light until Volume 12 where the story became extremely heavy in its attempt to convey a message. I think the author mentioned a bout of depression and panic disorder which clearly showed in his writing. This is by no means a bad thing and in fact I throughly enjoyed the latter half of the series. I felt that the sudden shift in pace was oddly jarring and threw me off for a bit before drawing me back in. Overall though, the series really drew me in and held me tight until its final moments where a satisfying yet saddening ending ensued leaving me, like usual, feeling a sense of emptiness at finishing another series.

Overall - 7/10 - Simply put, Ichiban Ushiro no Daimaou, presents a great theme and presents par if not good characters in a fictional world (pun intended (you'd need to finish the series to understand that one) ) full of magic. It falls flat however in the blindingly obvious shackles of the Ecchi/Harem genre that prevents the story from ever davancing beyond its light theme. That is, until Volume 12. You will find yourself jarred by the odd change in pace but I found it delightfully pleasing reading something that didn't advanced far but sent across such a deep message (volume 13).

It’s hard to decide the final rating of Ichiban Ushiro no Daimaou. It has a good start. It has a great finish. But it has incredibly mediocre middle part that drags the whole novel down.

So, I’ll start with the good parts. Because there are in fact different reasons behind the quality of the start and of the end. First, the start. This novel is a harem one. It doesn’t hide the fac. But being a harem i also not the one thing that’s keeping it marketable.

Unlike vast majority of harem fiction, the protagonist here isn’t a blank state that’s cowardly and intentionally avoids ... human interaction that boys his age would naturally crave. No, this time the protagonist is the one that carries the novel. This time the main characters is the main interest. Sure, he does reject advances, but this is not just so the story doesn’t have him pick one of the girls, it’s because he’s present as religious and righteous type of person, so for a change decisions like these make sense for the character of the MC. Worry not though, as that too is a subject of development. Very surprisingly for what is a fanservice harem on a surface, the themes of religion and morality (and cult of personality) are a focus, and critically so.

The ecchi scenes are in contrast of more seriously written more philosophical sections, and as much as I would prefer it without the ecchi parts, this is still at least passable for sure. The novel raises some interesting points about fabricated authority, subjectivity of morals and the difference perceiving by majority could make even if said majority is misinformed. Sure, you might call this a reach and just finding deeper meaning than which was even meant. But given how the last portion of the novel plays out, I believe this was very intentionally written like that by the author.

The ending – it’s difficult to reason about its qualities without spoiling it at least partially. Just the notion that the ending is something else might be considered a spoiler, as I certainly didn’t expect this would be the turn the story takes, and the shock definitely increased my enjoyment. Without saying too much, I’ll just mention that the more interesting conversational part that are spread through the previous volumes are distilled into an undisputedly main focus as the story theme becomes very real and very meta. Especially in context of usual content of novels with the genres of Daimaou, Daimaou ends up a unique work. I’d even call it experimental.

Now, the worse part, that’s unfortunately like half of the novel – the middle. It’s just… not so interesting as the initial volumes that introduce the content or the final volumes that function as the punchline of its themes. Most of the middle volumes I would call even useless, meaningless, just a padding. It is for this reason that I wouldn’t shun those who decide to skip them, skim trough them, just read the synopsis. You’re not missing out on much, but you would be messing valuable content if you dropped the novel completely instead of fast-forwarding to the final portion. As I’ve mentioned, the conclusion is on hell of an experience.

To summarize – interesting start with foreshadowing of what’s to come, boring middle, unforgettable finale.

I don't even know where to start with this series. Ichiban Ushiro no Daimaou is a novel that pretty much tries to force you to like the jerkass protagonist it has, a totally unsympathetic demon overlord who's infinitely more powerful than everyone else in the cast and who's constantly praised by all the girls despite showing no calms on killing their family if he wants to for no real reason. Hiroshi, a member of the main cast who serves as the foil to Akuto, is called "the hero of the story" by many in-universe, and for a very good reason, he's much better written and ... interesting than Akuto ever was, and he should have definitely been the MC if the author didn't want all girls to be sucking a jerk's dick, which is what all female characters on the series amount to. The series doesn't even know its identity, constantly changing between being dead serious about themes like the freedom of robots to having jokes about high school girls going around with a dildo on their school. The surreal metafictional elements that pop from time to time before overtaking the series completely by the last books is either a curse or a blessing depending if you like metafiction, but one thing is for sure, it wasn't replacing any plot because this series doesn't have any real story beyond "let's have our massive jerk of an MC fight Hitler wannabes so he can appear as the ultimate hero" and being borderline episodic on that matter. Even the bittersweet ending gets worse because the only likable characters are the ones who end up suffering while Akuto gets his dick suck even more, even by GOD IN PERSON! Overall, this novel had a nice premise, but its execution was just horrible and left a lot to be desired. In all honestly, unless you're an edgy 12-14 years old, this novel isn't for you.