It was a fun show that, I thought, would stay afloat if it didn’t (a) become to repetitive and (b) try to take itself too seriously.
Sadly, it accomplished neither of those things.
Iruma, the character, too often falls into the “Idiot Houdini” archetype, the “good natured but untalented MC who climbs his way to the top despite lacking any sort of talent, thanks to Deus ex Machina”. That type of character generally walks the thin line between endearing (Forrest Gump) and irritating (Jar Jar Binks) and the plot of Marimashita! Iruma-Kun walks the same fine line: at first the show is dumb but endearing, but as Iruma stumbles his way to an unwanted and undeserved success over and over again it becomes tremendously irritating to watch.
However, if there’s anything more undeserved and unneeded in Marimashita! Iruma-Kun it’s the length of the show. This didn’t deserve nor did it need twenty three episodes to tell the story and like most assets in life who are both undeserved an unneeded, they ended up being thoroughly wasted.
It’s no wonder then that the pacing in this show is horrendously inconsistent. Things move at a good speed for the first half of the show until it hits a tedious wall known as “the Batora/School festival arc” which simply goes on for too damn long until by the end of it, it’s hard to care anymore about what’s happening with the arc and what will happen to the show moving forward. If you felt that the best thing that could happen to the show was Kirio blowing up the entire school, trust me, you are not alone.
The biggest attractive to Marimashita Iruma-Kun it’s the colorful, interesting cast of side characters who range from trope-defying to functional to the story. Asmodeus is the perfect complementary sidekick to Iruma, his general story arc (a powerful demon who is destined to do great things but prefers to take a secondary role and support someone who he deems more powerful) is perfectly symmetric to Iruma’s arc (a demon with absolutely no power who would prefer to stay low-key but is pushed to the forefront at every single chance). Clara is a complete energy ball who continuously generates laughs which are never at her expense. Amerie is an decently written love interest, a strong female character revered by his peers for her power and demeanor without a single trace of the tropes and fanservice that at times plagues the shounen demographic. Sullivan and Callego-sensei both play their roles to perfection and add laughs to the story and the story even nails the comedic timing with some tertiary characters like Sabnock and Kamui.
Sadly most of these characters take a back seat by the second half of the show which seems to focus on annoying secondary characters turned antagonists (Kirio) and probably the weakest character of the show: Iruma.
Overall, Marimashita! Iruma-Kun was a show that had good, fun, lighthearted moments but proved to be too repetitive, long, inconsistent and filled with bad decisions in terms of storyline to be able to fulfill its potential.
