Welcome to Demon School! Iruma-kun

Sometimes we are tempted to exaggerate about a series. Mairimashita! Iruma-kun will give us that opportunity, but in the end, the series can be considered average. From some perspective, the series is for a demographic group, children, if we look at the character designs, the licensors, the plot all points to that. Despite all those facts, the series can be enjoyable for any group of age. I think that the series succeeded in the comedy execution, it is not the best, but it can bring a smile into our faces. The story follows a youngster, Iruma, who is sold by his parents to the demonSullivan. This demon takes him to the underworld and starts raising him as his grandson. As the plot advances, we follow Iruma’s daily routine and how he needs to find a way to survive in a world that “hates” the humans. Ironically as it seems, he enjoys more the demon world that humans, so this helps the plot and the character’s growth. However, not all is poetry. The show follows the typical iseaki rules. A guy goes to another world and is powerful. Is it the case of Iruma? Yes, it is. This kid can stand face to face against the fiercest demons from his school, and the only explanation given to us is, he suffered too much in the real world, or he received some sort of ring, that is childish but since it is a comedy we do not care too much about that. On the other hand, the characters are enjoyable. There is a vast cast. It is necessary since the author needs to emulate a daily school routine. Without a big cast, the show will become the typical school anime with a small bunch of characters doing the same thing. Season example, Koisuru Asteroid. Also, I do not want to criticize, but it seems that almost all the spectators watched this show only for Ameri. Although she was a good and strong character if a different person than Saori voiced her, I bet that none would be saying the same. The main character, Iruma, is delightful. From a coward human, he ends as another “demon” that cares about his friends and his surroundings; he tries very hard to not been noticed, but he takes several risks for his new life, and all those risks lead us to some comedic and hilarious moments. Asmodeus, he is talented and maybe the strongest demon in the school. He changes and becomes a great friend and Iruma’s support. In the beginning, you can see him as the typical school rival, but you will be glad that he changes and he is Iruma’s friendship anchor. Clara, she maybe is the craziest demon around, her personality is very charming and cute. She is a delightful character that will make us smile with her craziness. Ameri, she has a good personality, is reliable, is charming, and is a very dedicated demon, but her most significant development will appear in the second season. The best will come. The art and the animation, the show has an acceptable animation. Do not misunderstand, but the palette and the design are childish. Makoto’s direction forced to use a bright and colorful palette to remove the dark and fearful demon’s traits. It is a widespread move when a director wants to deliver a show to kids, and that is reflected in the series’ actual ranking (1345) and the broadcasting time. The sound and the VO are acceptable and the voice fits the character’s personalities in most of the cases. Finally, the show will make you laugh and have some hilarious moments. But here is the problem, you will laugh the first time, the second time maybe not (if there is a second time). As a friend said to me, the second time, you can consider the jokes average and weak. Mairimashita! Iruma-kun is a good series to spend your time, but I am sure you are not going to rewatch it, so that means that even if you liked and love it, the show does not deserve a score more than 7.0.

"School is a place to learn." That’s what some of my parents and teachers used to tell me back when I was a kid. Marimashita Iruma-kun! takes the school life tropes by bringing in demons and supernatural entities to spice things up. Because in this demonic world, anything is possible when protagonist Iruma Suzuki enters a demon school. From Bandai Namco Pictures, Marimashita Iruma-kun walks along the line of a colorful scheme. By focusing on a protagonist of innocent and kind nature, you can probably expect a host of misadventures aimed at his way. Iruma’s life is changed forever upon being sent to a school full ofdemons. The catch is that no one really knows his true nature, that being a human. Without guidance and being alone in such a world, this anime leads an adventure that blends many genres together into one colorful package. Watching the first few episodes gave me a bold impression, one which I assume the author wanted to make the audience laugh. Make no mistake. As bizarre as the synopsis sounds, the show itself is rather lighthearted that’s drenched with comedy. I’m talking about lighthearted comedy of character humor and jokes poking at the fun of being the only human in a demon school. Iruma is practically the new kid in the neighborhood and he must adapt his ways to survive and live his new life. Luckily, he is a gentle boy who seems to be able to easily make friends with just about anyone. There’s even jokes throughout the series where he never refuses favors, regardless how ridiculous they seem. This type of ‘nice guy’ can be irritating to watch at first but Iruma sells his personality exquisitely through the character relationships he builds with others. I practically lost count how many friends Iruma made by the time this anime concluded. Running at a pace of 23-episodes, each one brings out more and more of his personality to fruition. From the very beginning, Iruma has an unnatural ability to change others. An early example is when he makes friends with Asmodeus Alice, an egoistic man who he managed to defeat in a duel. Since that defeat, the two have become close allies and friends together. Another close friend he makes is Clara, the green haired demon girl with a bubbly personality and essentially an airhead. Watching their relationship grow is strange to say the least but deep down, the two forms a friendship that is a national treasure. Even someone as intimidating as Azazel Ameri joins his circle of close friends. What initially started out an embarrassing misunderstanding turns into a bond built on trust. Whenever Ameri is around Iruma, her serious nature fades away and she becomes more of an innocent schoolgirl. The anime also makes jokes about her love for shoujo manga and the delusions she comes to believe based on its romance stories. The big picture here is that Iruma’s personality stands as a symbol of purity. When we hear the word ‘demons’ we tend to think of words such as “evil”. But here, we meet a sweet gentle boy who lives a life to help others while trying to hide his human nature. Based on the manga, I knew this show wouldn’t have enough material to cover everything. But luckily, anime viewers can easily absorb what the author is selling to us with their colorful ideas. Adaptation wise, the anime doesn’t exclusively follow chapters by chronological order but instead structures every episode together to make the overall series flow. This ranges from Iruma building relationships with the main cast, his daily misadventures, and sometimes, the crazy amount of humor. There are minor details changed in the anime such as certain characters introduced earlier or additional scenes added in later episodes. A goal I noticed the anime in trying to achieve is getting the audience engaged with the storytelling. When there are episodes about school events, it tries to flesh out the comedy as much as possible. Other times, it emphasizes on how Iruma interacts despite being so different majority of the cast. It’s also safe to say that some girls in the show (namely Ameri) may have grown a crush on the boy. The anime doesn’t follow a forbidden romance route but it’s always fun to tease his relationships with the female cast. Besides that, the numerous amounts of comedy gags and demonic references (like the Number of the Beast, 666) is evident throughout the show. They’re almost like Easter Eggs thrown in to make the audience more aware about the show’s overall appeal. Bandai Namco Pictures previously worked on the Gintama anime franchise and they bring in their talent to this humorous supernatural comedy. Every episode contains elements of humorous choreography whether it’s the character chemistry, school gags, or other shenanigans. The anime also retains the style of the manga, something that I applaud the studio for making it true as possible. Character designs has a cartoony look that sometimes can make the audience forget they are non-humans. Of course, that doesn’t apply to the case of Iruma, as he looks like an innocent school boy. Meanwhile, the character expressions sometimes jump over the board that is nothing short of classic comedy. Don’t believe me? Just watching Ameri’s first meeting with Iruma and you can see why. It’s just one example but this show is no short on fuse with its humor, enhanced by the cartoony art style of overall gimmicky display of character personalities. Marimashita! Iruma-kun is what I describe as a testament of comedy national treasure. Often times, supernatural comedies can feel too scripted or out of touch by its dialogues. However, this show manages to connect all its dots right with a lovable character cast and lighthearted story adventure. Iruma may be a human but he accomplished a lot more than what demons can at their school. And with all that being said, I welcome you to join in the fun with more to come next year in Season 2.

Marimashita! Iruma-Kun started as a welcome breath of fresh air; the plot, the character designs, the comedic timing, the backgrounds and even the OP looked like taken straight out of a forgotten shounen school comedy from 2002. Like those early noughts series, Marimashita! Iruma-Kun is based on a simple long running gag: Suzuki Iruma is our MC, a human without any sort of magical power who attends a demon school and the only thing he wants is to avoid danger by not standing out. Everything he does to keep his peaceful school life and annonymacy backfires and by the end of every story arc, Irumaends up being more and more admired by his peers. 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.

Every now and again a show comes along that seems interesting, but you're not quite sure if you want to get into it. Sometimes you take a leap of faith and it results in you wasting your time. Other times, it ends up being a hidden gem and you thank your lucky stars you got to try it. For me, Iruma-Kun was the latter. Iruma- Kun is an isekai, but it's not your typical otaku escapism bait. It's much closer to the feeling of watching Cartoon Network shows as a kid than it is to watching a Log Horizon or Re:Zero. I was put onto theshow by some friends in anime club during the start of the Fall season and decided to give it a try once I got home. The show started off quite slow for me. In fact, I would even say I was pretty bored for the first two episodes. But once episode 3 came around and we were introduced to some of the side characters who go onto become very prominent in the latter stages of the series, I was hooked. The show is essentially about a boy who gets kidnapped from his home by a demon and brought to the underworld to act as the demon's grandson. His "grandfather" enrols him in a Demon Academy in which he goes on to become sort of a legend. The gig of the show is that Iruma, as a human, does not belong in the underworld and if ever discovered he would be killed/eaten/imprisoned. Yet, somehow he manages to maintain an air of secrecy about his identity and rises up the ranks of the school to become one of the most respected students. While the latter half of the show features a fair bit of drama/tension, it's overwhemhimgy a very relaxing comedy with focus on character interactions and bonds. As I said earlier, it's much more closely related to those old cartoons you used to watch on Cartoon Network after school than it is to other isekai and that really adds to the freshness of the series. If you're apprehensive about watching isekai or about this show, I can assure you, give it a try and you will not regret it. The animation and art are very well done by Bandai and the textures/shades of the background and character designs are excellent. There's no real sakuga scenes in the show as that's not the focus of it, but everything is more than good enough for this type of show. As I said before, the characters make this show. All of them feel unique and fun. The comedy is very well done as well. I guarantee you'll be laughing out loud constantly throughout the run of the show. In conclusion(TL:DR) Iruma-Kun is a very fun and fresh take on isekai and will provide you with hours of entertainment. It's very under appreciated and slept on, but it's a hidden gem. Watch this show and thank me later.