Hataraku Maou-sama!

[MFauli]

Agreed. It feels like we've been having the same discussion each week.

- The Maou is pathetic, he's not evil enough now that he's here, etc.

It's a comedy ffs. Of course the situation is ridiculous. That's why it is funny.

The demon lord is more interested in getting money than doing evil. He's more interested in the happiness of his adorable co-worker than making her his slave. He's powerless, the hero is powerless. The Hero acts more like an ex-girlfriend who broke it off but gets super jealous when he's with another girl and not obsessing about her all the time the way she continues to obsess about him. The two keep calling on each other when they're in trouble, despite how much they hate each other. The new girl gets feisty when the "ex-girlfriend" wants to butt in. The demon lord keeps getting dragged into the police station, but sits quietly and obeys the rules.

That's funny. Stop pretending this series is anything other than a comedy.


So maybe for some of you, your suspension of disbelief has been ruined by the opening of the first episode (anime original I found out btw). Can't the lot of you come up with some other reasons that you think this series sucks? I can only retort to those kinds of arguments the same way each time.

And episode 4 proves you wrong.

Is this a comedy anime? Personally, I haven´t laughed once in all those episodes so far. Maybe chuckeld a bit during ep1 when the world change happened with all its consequences.
But now we have an event like that: A magical being presenting itself in broad daylight, destroying its surroundings, not giving a shit about this magic-less reality, and following an archetypical villain´s plan.

THAT is why I´m still bitterly disappointing in so many things about this show. The premise is fucking A-awesome. The most evil being slipping into our normal world, (mostly) without his powers, having to deal with a human being´s everyday life. What we got is an EXTREMELY non-sensical mishmash of harem-and general anime-tropes, without any cleverness, without characters that make sense in themselves. You say we should just accept it? Guess what: When I look at Maou now, I feel sad, I feel bad for him. Why? Because somehow he was changed from being absolute evil to this standard-fare anime-hero. If you shut off your brain, you might just say "oh well, isn´t it nice that he had a change of heart?". NO. It is not nice. Imagine this: You are changed to the exact opposite person you are right now. If you´re a communist, now you´re a nazi. If you´re straight, now you´re gay. If you like Jojo, now you hate him. And so on. Now also imagine that somehow you can observe this changed persona of yourself. Would you really think "oh well, isn´t that nice?" The hell you would.
As I see it, Maou died. He was killed. Because it´s our mind that defines who we are. A person can be killed by having its body ruined, but so can it through the loss of memory. And this Maou we´re currently watching is not the real Maou. He "good" for good people, but he´s in a truly sad, pitiable state from his own kind´s perspective. And, since he is the main character, that´s the perspective that should have to count.
It makes no sense, and isn´t resulting in exciting scenes, and most of all, it´s not funny.

And what is it that proves you wrong? Again, these perfectly awesome fantasy-scenes like the one at the end of ep4. For fuck´s sake, I had a bit of a Gantz-feeling here, that´s how awesome it was (even though the people´s reaction wasn´t strong enough - there´s a black winged angel, you idiots, scream louder! panic!). And that´s exactly the kind of chilling atmosphere that the intro of episode 1 promised. You can go on with your "then stop watching, idiot"-agenda, OR you could try to understand why some of us are disappointed in how this anime unfolded.

Just for completion´s sake, here´s how I´d have love this anime to go on:
- Maou arrives in our reality, power´s gone
- his attitude is the same from when he was the most powerful, most evil demon
- he starts walking around in public, talking loudly, saying stuff that´s super embarrassing for any normal person, you know
- he begins acting on his attitude, which promptly gets him into trouble. Like "stealing" or tossing some "worthless human" to the ground.
- quickly, he realizes that something´s gotten wrong, very wrong, and he keeps a low profile from here on out
- what follows now is Maou aka "Yagami Light" trying to solve the mystery of his lost powers, how to regain them, and how to conquer this reality, too. He does that by keeping a fake-nice guy-appearance on the outside, but his thoughts are pure, dark evil. And as time progresses, his power in the real world rises (working his way up in some business), his plans take form and become grander and crueler. All that while Emilia, the hero, is watching Maou, trying to figure out if he´s really gone "good", or if she can justify killing him - since she´s a true hero, she couldn´t bring it over herself to kill somebody who isn´t evil anymore. Then you could have added in elements like Lucifer to spice things up.

THAT IS HOW AWESOME THIS ANIME COULD HAVE BEEN - following it´s premise from the beginning. Yes, of course, it is silly to expect these exact plot elements to happen, but come on, it´s as if the author decided to show the opening sequence just to troll everybody.