This is the manga adaptation of a light novel series that also received two anime seasons and a film. I have already seen the anime and am quite fond of it, and thus this review is going to be from the perspective of someone that had already seen the anime and liked it but was looking for more media related to it.
The best part about this series is the good and likable cast in a story that has a solid combination of action, romance, and ecchi. And this still has all of that since it’s following the same story pretty closely for the most part, but it feels like it didn’t come through as well as it did in the anime. The main issue is that it all around was lacking in intensity compared to the anime, wherein the action is less cool, the romance isn’t developed as well, and the ecchi is more subdued. As a result, I think the characters don’t come off as well as they did in the anime either. Part of the reason for this is that in general it didn’t frame things as well as in the anime and didn’t manage to pull of the right atmosphere. The other main reason is probably the pacing. The first season of the anime adapted three volumes of the manga in 12 episodes and I think it was paced pretty well. The manga adapts those three volumes in 9 volumes of manga, which comparatively is just too slow.
Thus, in addition to the anime having much more content than the manga due to it extending far past where this manga ends, it also coveys it’s story much better, and thus largely I think the anime was better than this manga. I should emphasize though that that doesn’t mean that this adaptation is bad, it’s rather solid, just not as good as the anime, so if you just want more Shinmai Maou in manga form this’ll work great. On that note, I should note that the major exception to everything I wrote is the ending to the manga, which is an original ending that veers from the original story with a plot that doesn’t really have any substance in and of itself, but that speed runs relationship development well beyond where even the anime ended and also ramps up the intensity of things immensely, so it may well be worth reading the manga, or at least the final volume, for that alone.
The art in the manga I thought was a mixed bag. It’s pretty amazing when it seems the mangaka was really trying, such as with the color pages, but there are also parts where it feels like the mangaka really wasn’t trying and the art isn’t all that good, such as the various side stories, though most of the manga is in between those and is overall decent enough. The character designs are still the same as the anime and LN though and still awesome, though I don’t think they came across as well at times.
