I will try to keep this review spoiler-free, but I can't promise you anything, so tread carefully.
The review will divide into two parts:
Quick review = I will give you a rough explanation of what this series is about (genre, plot, location, similarity to other books, etc.). Quick review is for people who decide if they will watch anime or read the entire manga on a short amount of episodes/chapters.
Standard review = I don't have to explain that.
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Without further ado, let's go for the "quick review":
1, MG is an ecchi genre. Lewdness is "tame" at beginning, becomes more daring as we progress. There's an effort to build the characters to be something more than just fanservice objects, like it is with Highschool DxD.
2, Maou Gakuen no Hangyakusha is as you may already guess about devils (word "Maou"). The main protagonist Morioka Yuuto is the devil king candidate of Lovers Arcana. He's the first human candidate, now preparing for the upcoming "devil king war" (the winner gets the throne, everyone else dies on the battlefield).
3, MG like a lot of other ecchi genres has a school setting. The primary location of Maou Gakuen is Ginsei Academy. An Academy exclusive to devils. LN volumes 1-3 are primary set at Ginsei Academy. Volume 4 is mostly primarily elsewhere.
4, Bit more info about the candidates: All candidates have his/her own Arcana. Every arcana has its unique signature magic as well as unique "ultimate abilities". Every Arcana has a "nemesis" Arcana ( Random example: Arcana of Tower performs badly against Arcana of Lovers).
5, The story, as I already mentioned is about Morioka Yuuto. In the beginning, he is a pretty standard ecchi character regarding erotic stuff, braveness. His character grows up quite well in the Light Novel series compared to other Ecchi series.
6, If you are a fan of Highschool DxD ( I've read all the 25 volumes, and I am up to date with Shin), I can recommend you to try Maou Gakuen. You will find similarities between DxD and MG. Both titles have their own unique identity.
7, MG is from Kuji Masamune (author of Masou Gakuen HxH), so if you enjoyed his other works, you will likely enjoy going into Maou Gakuen.
8, Maou Gakuen chapters have a monthly release schedule. Unfortunately, the chapters are a bit short to my liking (Usual Maou Gakuen chapter is around 15-30 pages long, I'd like to a see longer chapter coming from monthly release, maybe it's a limitation from publisher, not sure about Dragon Age policies, might correct me in my comment section on profile, would be most appreciated), more on that in the standard review
Quick review end. It might be longer than the Standard review. However, The Standard review is going to expand with new chapters. "Quick review" will remain the same.
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Standard review (last updated 05.07.2022):
Twenty-three chapters read. Let me show you a quick data table I did when I got past chapter 20.
How many pages Maou Gakuen chapters usually have:
1-10: 1
11-20: 7
21-30: 11
31-40: 1
41:50: 0
As I mentioned, the current length of manga chapters is not exactly to my personal liking. Maou Gakuen Light Novels aren't exactly the lengthiest of books, my guess is they are "medium-sized" compared to others (non-ecchi title included). The point is that these short chapters are sort of artificially prolonging Maou Gakuen manga. I can confidently tell you that never would I have expected we'd be still adapting LN volume 1 in chapter 23. When the series originally began to release, I always kept a close eye on the fan translations to be up to date (there isn't any official ENG version just yet, sadly, I don't have time to learn Japanese). Time passed and I got bored of waiting for these short chapters and nowadays, I usually check once per 3 months or even longer. My golden standard for any manga series that releases chapters monthly would be 40-60 pages if I could influence it. MG chapters often felt slow, sometimes I wondered why two chapter with a same theme were split into two while you could have one 35 page long chapter, I got this feeling around chapter 10. I feel longer chapters could help tremendously, maybe add some manga original side stories from minor characters into the kettle. Thirty days is quite a while after all, you want to get a good chunk of content thrown at you, rewarding you for your wait. Again it is likely due to the Dragon Age policies, I will complain about it regardless, because it is stupid.
Art: It's a pretty decent art style. I think Gelatin did good character designs. Fight scenes were relatively entertaining to read through. Overall, it's really solid.
Story: As mentioned, Morioka Yuuto is the devil king candidate of Lovers Arcana. He's the 1st ever human candidate to compete for the devil king throne. Yuuto enrolls into Ginsei Academy. Devil king candidates are studying and preparing for war, are training and building their peerages in Ginsei Academy. They can kill each other even before the "Devil King War" starts. 1st day in Ginsei Academy, Yuuto meets Lizel Himekami. She helps Yuuto during his conflict with a devil student, later joining Yuuto's peerage as his queen along with Yuugaoze Miyabi and Koiwai Reina with the ambition to make Yuuto the 1st ever human devil king.
It's a good story. Unfortunately, it is stretched out by the short manga chapters. I feel many of you will feel as underwhelmed as I did while reading new chapters every month.
Characters:
Maou Gakuen no Hangyakusha has four protagonists. They are entertaining in general. When we're talking about all of the characters up until now, I like most of the characters, with exception ( or maybe /s) obviously, this is very subjective theme, so I won't really expand it any further. Generally positive opinion.
Yuuto might seem OP in 1st few chapters. From Light Novel experience, I can say he's not the overpowered "I calculated everything, I was planning this all along" type of MC (not even close to OPness of Kirito, Shiba Tatsuya, Ousawa Akatsuki). He will find tough and entertaining opponents.
When it comes down to character development, MG does a good job. Yuuto is constantly training, emphasizing his desire to close the gap between him and the other candidates.
Villains:
When it comes to villains, I always have high expectations, so how does MG fare?
Volume 1: Well, our 1st villain is the devil king candidate of "World" Linel Aspite. As a 1st villain, he is okay. I thought I'd have more to say about their fight. Well, I have one thing to say, there was way too much talking and reactions during the fight in my opinion. Now, some nitpicking: The confrontation lasted 4 chapters, whether you take it as a positive or negative is up to you. My guts tell me it was too long. Let's be honest this was a "tutorial boss fight", and not many spells were used. Basically, Aspite was smashing the floor with Yuuto for 3 chapters, then got rekt in chapter 23. Otherwise, it was an alright confrontation, enjoyable.
Rating:
When I reviewed the first ten chapters, I thought Maou Gakuen no Hangyakusha manga would stand at a solid 8/10 by now. Unfortunately, this series is slow, too slow in progressing. 24 chapters to adapt a single LN volume is scandalous. I think many people dropped this series because of how slow the story was adapted. Back when I wrote my review, I thought even 18 chapters was an overkill. I hope Maou Gakuen decides to start releasing at least 30-40 page chapters consistently, if possible with the publisher ofc. Should manga progress with the current tempo, we'd get over 100 CHAPTERS covering just 5 LN volumes, that's insane in a bad manner.
6/10. It's not a bad series at all. I recommend you to try it out. Maou Gakuen already has a good amount of content to point, where you can make your own decision whether you like the series or not.
