Did Anyone Else Think of Shugo Chara When Maou-Sama Did A Character Change?
Demon-Lord, Retry Episode 3
Episode 3 of Demon Lord Retry gives us the most interesting development yet. While the episode execution is still undeniably poor and so many of the jokes fall flat, for instance the older holy maiden sister talking trash and swearing continuously before falling head-over-heels in love with the demon lord’s alter-ego, there’s an element of fun in the second part of this episode that has been sorely lacking up until this point.
The main problem with this story so far is the tone. It seems to be trying to be a comedy, but it is too cool to actually try to be funny and has this jaded and weary tone that centres around the protagonist and kind of flattens every scene we’re in. Therefore when a scene genuinely tries to go for broke with humour the end result is pretty jarring in contrast with the rest of the episode. It doesn’t fit and it doesn’t sit particularly well.
The main character also remains a morally ambivalent character. On the one hand he has clear lines he won’t cross but on the other he certainly isn’t against using others and scheming to get his way. His ‘negotiation’ with the shop owner left me wondering what his game really was and whether he was indifferent because he believes he’s dealing with NPC’s.
Affiliate Link – Nintendo Switch Game
However, the second half of the episode where the holy maidens are attacked by the Satanists is where the episode takes a shift into something that is a lot more fun. The Demon Lord finds himself being overwhelmed by the evil ring on his finger and in order to get out of doing something that will probably kill a lot of people, he opts for a character change option that appears on his menu. The end result is actually alright and one of the more entertaining sequences we’ve had in the first three episodes of Maou-Sama Retry.
I’m not actually fully on board with this one yet but episode three has me slightly more optimistic about this one than I was. There’s room for improvement to be sure but hopefully it starts finding its feet, figures out its tone, and delivers something reasonable.
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Karandi James
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Images from: Maou-Sama, Retry! Dir. H Kimura. EKACHI EPILKA. 2019.
Your comparison to Shugo Chara inspired me to watch eps 2 – 3 despite initially dropping it, but then I encountered the spanking joke in ep 2…which I knew existed from reading other people’s comments and wanted to avoid, so I kept skipping sections where the joke came up (and somehow managed to understand the plot by mentally filling in the gaps).
The “Character Change” itself was pulled off pretty badly – it’s just the screen going white and then voila! There’s Zero where Hakuto used to be, although you need to be told afterwards that Hakuto did switch as confirmation. I’ve never seen a transformation animated so badly…and I’m a fan of transformations…
On the bright side, I did have some fun laughing at pretty much everything else during those 2 episodes, no matter how much it was intended to be comedy or not – the highlight was definitely how I found “Discount Saber” (Killer Queen) and “Discount Zangief” (Mount Fuji) to go along with “Discount Rem” (Aku), though.
The visuals are certainly not this anime’s selling point. Though I’m struggling to really think what is given I’m really reaching for positives most episodes.
Episodes 3 and 5 are the points where I drop something, well ecept for one piece, that got dropped a bit later……. Unfortunatly this one won’t be making it past 3.
This is one of those animes, where you just feel you are ‘watching an anime’ and never anything more. Can’t get sucked into the world at all. So it’s a drop for me.
Probably the smarter choice in the long term.
Honestly, this one is barely hanging on for me, but you hit the nail on the head. It’s like I want to drop this one, but they have just enough of my curiosity to keep going. It helps that there isn’t anything in here that I actively hate, so I’m not exactly put off, I just haven’t really been pulled in.
I think it is going to stay that way for the season unfortunately. It will probably not get bad enough that I actually drop it but I’ll probably not really appreciate it even by the end.
Hmm, don’t think I’m going to give this one a try. Not a fan of comedy in the first place, especially not comedy that seems to be a bit out of tone. (Even though it sounds the second part of this episode was kind of fun). But with so many far more cool shows out there, I’m giving this one a pass….for now that is 😊).
Yes, this one is definitely something you can pass on this season with so many other great titles out there. I’m holding onto it because I’m a sucker for isekai and even bad isekai is usually entertaining for me. This one is treading dangerously close to me dropping it though so unless you are a mad keen isekai completionist it is one that is an easy skip.