Reviews

Jun 19, 2010
Mixed Feelings
Is it just me, or is the playback rate at 200%?

'Ichiban Ushiro no Daimaou (The Great Demon King in the Very Back)' is set in an elite magic school where aspiring magicians learn to control their mana. The initial setting is very similar to 'To Aru Majutsu no Index'. One day, a transfer student (Akuto Sai) arrives. New students are required to go through an analysis by the "artificial spirit", which predicts future occupation with 100% accuracy. Surprisingly, the artificial spirit predicts Akuto will become the next Demon King. Once dreamed of becoming the High Priest, Akuto must spend his school life with the burden of becoming the ultimate evil while his true powers awaken, going through one misunderstanding after another.

Story:
I actually found the original setting to be very intriguing. My impression after the first two episodes were... it's good enough that it didn't even have to be ecchi. The setting itself had the fantasy, opportunity for interesting story development, and possible obstacles all built in. It even had a super cool background where Akuto's self-introduction sounded like the real demon king that appeared 100 year ago.

I haven't read the light novel or the manga series, but from the anime, it seems like the title "The Great Demon King in the Very Back" comes from the fact that Akuto was given the seat in the very last row of his classroom. Sadly, the title of this anime series foreshadowed the pattern of story development... You would think Akuto will slowly become a dark presence in the back of his classroom while he tries to clear all the misunderstandings right? Think again. If I'm not mistaken, he hasn't sat in his seat since episode two. And so, the story jumped from one direction to another, random new organizations and villains appeared out of nowhere, and it eventually became mindless fights before the series ended, leaving me completely clueless. It actually got so bad at one point that Akuto threw a monster egg out of a window during breakfast, and the next cut was the crew outside at night in front of the monster egg, which grew exponentially. Really, it's one of those 突っ込み所が多すぎて "I don't know where I should begin pointing out the flaws".

Just like that monster egg, the story seemed to have an exponential acceleration in terms of pacing. The first two episodes had good pacing as introduction of the surroundings. Up until episode 7 was fast paced, but acceptable for slapstick comedy, but the final 5 episodes were packed with random events and explanations that seemed to go on and on without giving the audience time to absorb the story. The characters in the latter half actually started verbally describing the situation, and it wasn't even a deliberate slapstick joke.

I have to say the ecchi element was applied very effectively in this series though. Sometimes ecchi scenes were forced, like repetitive explosions stripping Junko or Keina getting naked every time she becomes transparent, but somehow they were funny every single time. Other ones happen more spontaneously, from skirts too short and creative camera angles that seem to focus on their panties. If there was a cameraman for this show, he was a major perv. This show is probably the closest to hentai category as an under-18 show can possibly get. It goes as far as giving a sea cucumber hand job until it squirts sticky white goo on another girl's face in a certain episode, and "classic tentacle hold" (you know the one I'm talking about if you've even seen an action hentai series) where one tentacle almost goes all the way in.

In the end, the story was a mess, and there were way too many loose ends and question marks unanswered.

Animation:
Extremely inconsistent.
The character designs are very good. Akuto has the obvious "mark of the Demon King" below his eye, but it keeps his appearance somewhat original, and he has that cool look and badass confidence that will eventually attract all the girls and create his harem. The girls are all hot, and there were abundance of fan service. Action scenes are pretty cool, and early episodes had really nice CG effects with magic circles and spectacular spells.

Unfortunately, they try to be "So bad it's actually good" with Brave and villains similar to something out of "Needless" or even "Scryed" about half way, and fails miserably. Monsters attracted by Akuto's powers looked like they're from late '90s demon hentai anime.
Perhaps it was caused by deadlines or budget, the animation quality noticeably degrades as the show go on.

Sound:
Voice acting is decent. All the characters sound like they should, and none particularly annoying. Considering the (presumably) low budget they had, they gathered a decent cast as voice actors.
Music score is disastrous. Although none of the pieces were out of place, the back ground music completely lack originality, and made absolutely no impact to the viewing experience.
OP/ED were average. They fit the series pretty well, but not especially catchy.

Character:
All the main characters were extremely likable, and had unique backgrounds. However, very few of them actually developed as the show had hazardous pacing problems. Junko remained an archetype tsundere to the end, and Fujiko was a SM queen who we don't know if she was a "S" personality who wanted to control Akuto or a "M" personality who wanted to serve under him. I feel Akuto and his henchman Hiroshi were somewhat well-developed, but the pacing made it impossible to pursue such deep issues such as responsibility, justice, morality, and all those things they wanted to explore.

I really liked Korone's character. An android with sense of humor done right is rare, and the character developed as much as an android could in a 12-episode-long series. She was also a very effective comedic device, and I liked how she gave Akuto the hardest time with her sexual approaches.

Enjoyment/Overall:
'Ichiban Ushiro no Daimaou' had a great potential to become something special. The show started out pretty strong, and had the slapstick comedy seemed to be working at first, but it was a downward spiral from there. As mentioned many times before, the pacing is far too fast, even for a slapstick comedy series. They tried to pack 20 episodes worth of material into a 12-episode, 1-season long series. Everything seemed to be twice as fast as they should be. I tend to read subtitle as future reference for fansubbing, but I gave up halfway because the characters were babbling nonsense at an absurd rate. Also, if you blank out for 3 seconds, chances are you missed an important explanation of the plot, a cool action scene, or even worse, a panchira.

Perhaps it would've been better if they added some more material and extended to a 2-season long series, but then again, it would've been even longer painful viewing experience unless they made major modifications to the story. Despite the worthless production value of this show, it's an enjoyable series if you shut down half of your brain because the characters had the charm and it offers good laughs from many ecchi jokes and misunderstandings Akuto had gone through in the first half of the series.

I feel the major problem was that 'Ichiban Ushiro no Daimaou' tried to be too many things. There was ecchi, comedy, drama, and tried to tackle the issue of right and wrong. The producers should've simply made it an 12-episode long ecchi-driven slapstick comedy, or 25-episode long action drama with a philosophical touch. Not both.
Reviewer’s Rating: 5
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