"Hataraku Maou-sama!" Anime Review

***This is a spoiler free review***

Anime has recently been on a trend of light hearted comedy shows with a heavy emphasis on “moe”. While Hataraku Maou-sama embodies many of these elements, it is surprisingly enjoyable to watch. It also redeems this season by turning this great light novel into a non-mediocre anime (*cough* Date A Live *cough*). 

Story: 7/10
The plot in Hataraku Maou-sama flows surprisingly well from the beginning all the way towards to the ending. The main focus of the show is on the Demon King Sadao who after losing a battle with the humans flees to Earth through a portal. Not wanting the Demon King to get away, The Hero Emi follows the Demon King to the human earth. The first couple episodes really made me interested in the direction the show wanted to go because the plot introduced my favorite type of character; the fish out of water character. When you have a character dropped into a situation with absolutely no understanding of what is going on around him, you (the audience) has the perfect opportunity to learn with the main character. Since everything has to be spelled out for him, you in turn get to learn everything along with him thus making the experience much more fluid. Granted Sadao does get on his feet rather quickly finding a job and a place to live early on, the first episode was very funny as he and his minion Shirou had to deal with the Japanese culture and police. The only issue with the pacing of the show was that the ending was not really an ending at all and that the one sided love that Chiho expresses feels a little forced. The show did not go out of its way to give us a huge, thought provoking experience but it did not cause me to fall asleep watching it.

As I stated in the opening sentence of this review, this show is a comedy. To be more specific this show is a gag comedy meaning that a lot of people will not like the short jab of jokes. Also a lot of the jokes are centered on Japanese common knowledge things such as their healthcare system. There is also a huge emphases on “moe” or super cute girls that you just want to hug the ever living s#!t out of. There is a moderate amount of fan service in the show but it really did not overly distract me from what was going on.

Animation: 8.5/10
The animation for me was pretty excellent. There are some truly awesome quality shots in this anime such as the scene in daylight under the trees in the park in the last episode or the final fight scene in episode twelve. The character models are also very well done and seeing how this is a very “cute girl” anime, the females all have their unique charm. I think it is safe to say that Chiho is now the most adorable anime girl with huge boobs. I just want to give them…err her a big ol’ hug.

Seriously...the most cute thing in the world. AND it has boobs!

Sound: 6/10
The only noteworthy awesome thing about the sound in this anime was the performance of the voice actors. I absolutely loved the voice of each character in the anime regardless if they had a major or minor role. Other than that though I felt like the show’s sound was average. The music choices for the show felt bland and didn’t really help make the show any better.

Characters: 7/10
Emi, Sadao, Lucifer, and Shirou all made this show extremely fun to watch. Their back and forth bantering brought many funny and enjoying moments throughout the show’s first season. We also had our fill of super cute…err female leads! Each of the three main females in the show has varying personalities. Emi is the really cold and ruthless one, Chiho has a really cheerful attitude (and huge boobs), and the other female lead Suzuno I won’t talk about so I do not spoil anything but she turned out to be my favorite. I mean even Emi's friend Rika is just oozing cuteness on an unfathomable level. This show does have a lot of “moe” elements but it is not putting all of its eggs into this basket. The plot flows so well because of the character interactions; the cuteness is just a super sweet add-on.

Overall: 7.1/10
This show was truly a surprise gift (for me at least) in this anime season. After seeing how much high school/slice of life stuff was coming, I thought that this was just going to be another one of those forgettable ones. This show had an interesting premise with the characters and animation to back it up. Even though the sound sort of took a back seat role, this anime really has everything it needs to keep pretty much everyone interested. If fanservice is an issue for you there really is only two or three scenes where they just throw it in your face so it should not be a huge issue.