Welcome to animation quick look where I review of a few episodes of an animated show be it from foreign lands or home grown.
In The Devil is a Part-Timer! (yes the exclamation point is part of the actual title) tells the tale of a demon king named Satan. He attempts to take over the world of Ente Isla and nearly succeeds, but is defeated and forced to flee to another world. That world? Why modern-day Japan of course. But things are different here. Satan has no money, very little magic power, no way back home and only one of his equally powerless faithful generals to help him. So while they search for a way to restore their powers and get back to Ente Isla in order to try and take over it again, Satan has to hold down a part-time job flipping burgers to pay the bills.
The Devil is a Part-Timer! Could’ve been horribly hokey but it’s an incredibly smart comedy. Sure, there’s the usual fish out of water jokes you get from this kind of setup, but the characters adapt pretty fast and it’s pretty funny to see Satan get excited about getting a raise or getting promoted at his menial job and put real effort into it. It could probably work on this premise alone but it adds great layers with various characters from Ente Isla pursuing him, namely Emilia Justina, the hero who drove him out in the first place who also has to hold down a job while keeping an eye on the demon king and making sure he’s not up to anything nefarious.
The characters are just a lot of fun. At one point another one of Satan’s generals, Lucifer shows up and causes trouble but Satan and Emilia actually team up to beat him and he just ends up living with Satan and his other general and becomes an online shopping addict as well as a very adept hacker (which leads to a pretty funny bit where they hack Emilia’s customer service station at her regular job as an “experiment”.). There’s also a couple other genuinely interesting subplots going on such as things happening back in Ente Isla that end up affecting the human world and the fact that Satan is actually… nice? Seriously, he cares about the people of this world, especially those closest to him (which includes Emilia in an odd sort off way) and seems to actually thrive at his job which hinges on being nice to the customers. Is this from him becoming human or was it a hidden side he had all along? Or is it simply to make everybody drop their guard for his eventual attempt to take over both worlds?
In the end it makes for a very intriguing and extremely entertaining comedy, the best I’ve watched in a while. I sat through 7 of the 13 episodes and had a great time and fully intend to finish the series in the next day or so and I’m sure I’ll be very disappointed that there’s only 13 episodes to enjoy.
Final Rating: 5/5 Former Demon Kings flipping burgers…
