Some stories end with a bang, others on a whimper. This one completes its tale with a romantic comedy cliche.
Creative Staff:
Art: Kurone Mishima
Original Story: Satoshi Wagahara
Character Design: 029 (Oniku)
Translation: Kevin Gifford
Lettering: Brndn Blakeslee
What They Say:
Having been banished to modern-day Japan to attend high school, the Devil King (Maou) and the Hero (Emi) have been fighting a high-stakes battle to control the student council! When Maou manages to win, the defeated Emi feels a terrible pang in her chest for…Maou?! Surely not! Did the high school foibles of these fated rivals just get a lot more complicated?
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
Taking place in an alternate-dimension retelling of Satoshi Wagahara’s The Devil is a Part-Timer!, the past four volumes have introduced us to high school versions of the familiar figures of Sadao Maou (the Devil King Satan), Shirou Ashiya (the Demon General Alciel), Emi Yusa (the Hero Emilia Justina), and Chiho Sasaki (who…was a high school student all along). Playing off of the original novels of Wagahara, Kurone Mishima has constructed a romantic light comedy that mainly works as a commentary, of sorts, on the source. The story movements and plot advancements of the original novels are replicated here, more or less, just transformed into high school events.
The original novels, of course, have not ended, so there is more story to tell there, but this volume represents the end of this retelling/spinoff. Already introduced in the middle of the story, the major fight between Maou and Yusa has been the Student Council President Election, which Maou won at the end of the previous volume. This volume largely focuses on the aftermath and then wraps up the story on a rom-com cliche. That’s basically it.
Looking back on the series as a whole, The Devil is a Part-Timer! High School! is largely a piece of fluff. Light, frothy fluff. There is no real depth or weight to it. That’s not to say that it’s bad, only that it provides only surface pleasures to a large extent. The artwork by Mishima is a nice, clean, simplified take on Oniku’s (029) original designs, giving the characters a slightly younger feel, which fits especially for Maou, who in the original setting is much older looking. But that’s the full extent, for me, of pleasure that is to be had here. The story…just basically comes to an end in this volume, as if the author couldn’t quite think of what more there was to say or do with these characters in this setting. It simply ran out of gas and stopped. Perhaps there was no helping it.
It should be noted that there is a major spoiler for the source novels involved if you are not at least current with the Yen Press release of the translated light novel volumes as of now.
With that, it’s time to wave goodbye to these high school versions of The Devil is a Part-Timer! crew. At the very end of the volume, there is a short story written by original creator Satoshi Wagahara which puts the final bow on the whole package.
In Summary:
Maou has won the Student Council President election and Emi is down in the dumps. Emeralda Etuva appears as the school nurse to heal her wounds, but there’s nothing physically wrong with her. Could it be that all of her experiences with Maou here in this world have changed her feelings towards him? A couple of surprise guests help Emi to follow where her heart wants to go. And thus ends this retelling/spinoff of The Devil is a Part-Timer!
Content Grade: B-
Art Grade: B
Package Rating: A-
Text/Translation: A-
Age Rating: Teen—LV (14+)
Released By:Yen Press
Release Date: October 25th, 2016
MSRP: $13.00
