Review: Demon King Daimao

Anime:Demon King DaimaoGenre: Fantasy, HaremAge Rating: Teen+Studio: ArtlandMusic: Tatsuya Kato

Author: Shotaro MizukiDub/Sub: DubEcchi Level: Karube Shrine

Saw this one twice now, and I enjoyed it both times. It does a decent job in establishing the world the characters are in, but it could have done better. The characters are pretty awesome, and does well in going into their past and explaining why they are the way they are.

The story is actually really cool and involves Akuto Sai, an orphan boy who wants to one day become a clergyman to contribute to society. Unfortunately, his aptitude test pegged him as being the next Demon King, making everyone in the school (aside from a select few) terrified of him. Now he has to go through his training at Constant Magical Academy with people fleeing in horror, a girl of justice trying to kill him, a "little brother" who only eggs on the school's ire, an invisible airhead, a robot killing machine, and a teacher who wants his corpse for study. All of these characters add to the comedy of the anime and do a good job in keeping things interesting.

That being said, this anime has a bad case of "Well, that escalated quickly." The entire thing only has 12 episodes, and everything wraps up within those episodes. It feels like an entire book forcibly crammed into a tiny series. When you get into the later episodes, there's a turning point where the anime goes from another comical misunderstanding that leads to tension between the characters, then immediately jumps to "THIS IS THE FINAL BATTLE!" It's actually rather startling how fast the transition is.

The story itself is alright at best. But at a point there's a twist near the end with one of the characters that's out of place, and outright confusing. It felt like they really wanted to have a use for all of the characters in the final confrontation, so they just created a role and slapped it onto a character who didn't have one. To say that this made the ending sloppy would be a bit of an understatement. And on top of the quickly escalated ending, it feels as if halfway through this series, they were told Season 2 was cancelled and that they had to finish everything in Season 1 or not at all. On top of all this, there were a lot of plot points that were never resolved. These will be discussed in the SPOILER TALK section below.

Story issues aside, the animation is clean and works really well when not in combat. In combat itself, they rely on a lot of typical anime fighting tropes to get out of having to actually animate fight scenes, such as the "Overwhelming attack that defeats the target in a single hit." But, on the few occasions where combat is forced to take place without the tropes, it's really well animated. So I guess they were saving the quality for clutch moments.

The music is wonderfully done and never really seems out of place, whether during high intensity moments, or just fun lackadaisical times where someone is inevitably accused of being a pervert. The dub is also on point. There was only one voice that was noticeably questionable, but once you get used to it, your brain will adjust to it just being a result of her air-headed nature.

TLDR: This series definitely could have benefited from another season, or even just six more episodes tacked onto the end to help iron out some of the weird pacing issues. But as it is, it's a decent anime to watch if you need to kill some time, or watch exclusively for the fanservice. But, if you're like me and can see all the glaring issues it holds, or are bothered by story inconsistencies, then I'd give it a pass. You won't be missing much of anything new, and they left a lot of the conclusion of the story to the imagination of the readers, so it wasn't really all that satisfying.

RatingsAnimation: 7/10Music: 9/10Story: 4/10World: 6/10Comedy: 7/10Overall Rating: 6/10

SPOILER TALK BELOW!!! IF YOU DO NOT WISH TO HAVE ANYTHING SPOILED, DO NOT READ ANY FURTHER!!!

Best Girl: Junko Hattori. Not really sure why, but she was the one I found myself most connected with in the anime. Her style of underwear may or may not have a fractional decision in that.

So, I'm just gonna machine gun the questions that were never answered, as well as the problem parts I saw throughout the anime.

1. Who the fuck is the woman that left him on the doorstep of the orphanage?
2. What was the purpose of the "Principle of Identity?" Was it really just created to give Kenna purpose?
3. If Kenna wasn't the one who received Akuto's bird hairpin when they were kids, then who the hell was?
4. If Boichiro created the Brave program to counter the Demon King, then why the hell didn't he use it himself instead of just leaving it in a goddamn cave for some kid to find?
5. How the fuck is Boichiro a time traveler? Why wasn't that more elaborated on?
6. How the fuck did the Principle of Identity get reborn into a new body?

Ugh... this series makes my head hurt. I really wanted to like it, but it did little to try and make me understand anything about what the fuck was going on. Still, I do love it for what it is, and would have probably loved it even more if they'd thrown an extra season on to soak up some of the nonsense that they tried to cram into the last few episodes.