THE DEVIL FINDS WORK FOR IDLE HANDS!
Creative Staff
Story: Satoshi Wagahara
Art: Akio Hiiragi
Translation: Kevin Gifford
What they say
MgRonald is closed for renovations, which means Maou is temporarily out of a job! His hunt for employment takes him all the way to Chiho’s family farm in Nagano, where he’ll get a taste of the agricultural life. Can he and the others survive their time in the sticks, or are they simply too spoiled by the city? And if Maou does learn the value of hard work, what of all the farms he trampled during his time as the Devil King…?
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
The Devil is a Part-Timer continues to be one of my favorites amongst the isekai genre, in which otaku are sent to another world, given ridiculous powers, and get a bevy of beautiful women to fight over their oblivious backside. This series differentiates itself simply by being a reverse isekai. Instead of an otaku getting sent to another world, the Devil King himself is sent to live in Japan.
Volume 12 begins with Chiho offering Maou a job at her family’s farm. MgRonalds is closed, so he has no work, and if he doesn’t work, he can’t pay his bills. It’s only natural that he accepts the job. He, his roommates, and Chiho are driven all the way to Nagano by Chiho’s mom, who we have only seen a few times. He ends up meeting Chiho’s family, who are all thankful that he, Ashiya, and Urushihara have come to lend them a hand. I think this is a nice change of pace. Even though Chiho has been a constant presence since volume 1, we only learn a little bit about her. Up to this point, the focus of her has mostly been about her love for Maou. Now we’re learning about her family, which gives Chiho more depth as a character.
Chiho’s family feels very much like a real family, complete with the “let me tell the boy Chiho likes about all the things she says about him” mentality. I rather like this family and how Chiho interacts with them. It really drives home that Chiho is a mostly normal girl who has found herself in some extraordinary circumstances thanks to Maou and all the other otherworldly people surrounding her. I feel like her presence is one that adds a sense of normalcy to the lives of the other characters. At the same time, her normal life is being interrupted and changed by Maou and the others.
However, not everything is as pleasant as it first appears. Emilia the Hero, along with the former Church Executioner Crestia Bell and Emilia’s and Maou’s adopted daughter Alus Ramus, have learned about their departure and plan on following them. This naturally means the two groups meet before Maou and his gang of devils can begin helping Chiho’s family on the farm.
One of the most interesting aspects of this story has and probably will always be the continuously changing dynamics between Emilia the Hero and Maou the Devil King. In this volume, Emilia ends up helping Chiho’s family as well. She and Maou are forced to work together, and we learn a little more about Emilia’s life on her father’s farm in Ente Isla before she was taken in by the Church in order to be trained to defeat Maou. She has a lot of experience with crops thanks to her life before the war on Ente Isla engulfed her village. Emilia imparts her knowledge about plants to Maou. Their relationship doesn’t necessarily change here, but through their interactions, you can feel that Emilia is no longer as antagonistic toward Maou as she used to be, though she says she still plans on killing him.
In Summary
This volume ends similarly to how the beginning arc of every manga volume in this series ends: On a cliffhanger. After Emilia takes down a bear with her bare hands, we learn that someone has been stealing produce from around town. Nobody knows how. However, given the direction this series has been going so far, it is pretty obvious that the culprit is very likely someone from Ente Isla, perhaps a demon or maybe even someone from Emilia’s side. Whatever the case, I am looking forward to the next volume.
Content Grade: A+
Art Grade: A+
Packaging Grade: B
Text/Translation Grade: A
Age Rating: Teen
Released By: Yen Press
Release Date: October 30, 2018
MSRP: $12.99
