Manga / Musuko ga Kawaikute Shikataganai Mazoku no Hahaoya

Lorem and baby Gospel

Lorem is a demon. One who, in her heyday, was famous for the havoc she'd wreak among demon and human alike. Lorem is also a mother, one who has given up her days of delinquency and dedicated herself to making sure her baby boy, Gospel, grows up happy and healthy. Helping her in this are her younger sister Merii and Chiharu, a human girl who helped Lorem when she gave birth to Gospel.

From that basis comes the story of Musuko ga Kawaikute Shikataganai Mazoku no Hahaoya ("A Demon Mother Whose Son is Cute") by Zyugoya (who later made My Divorced Crybaby Neighbour), an Urban Fantasy Slice of Life in which Lorem raises her little boy in a world where the conflicts between human and demon have only just recently ended. The manga ran in Young Jump from 2016 to 2020.

Musuko ga Kawaikute Shikataganai Mazoku no Hahaoya provides examples of:

• Accent Adaptation: Some of the characters, such as Veronica and Eliza, use certain Japanese dialects that are commonly considered difficult to understand for other Japanese, so when translators got to them, they substituted their own difficult to understand accents. However, while Veronica has consistently been depicted with a heavy southern accent, Eliza wasn't fully decided on. The initial translator started out by giving her a heavy, almost impossible to understand Scottish accent, with the translation shown in side notes, then they dropped the accent, before finally deciding on a strong Scottish accent while still being mostly understandable. Meanwhile, when the manga got a new translator, they dropped the idea of giving Eliza an accent altogether.
• Amazing Technicolor Population: Teresa and her sister Dolores both have light-blue skin and black sclera.
• Asskicking Leads to Leadership: Demons are generally inclined toward direct action rather than subtlety. As a consequence, leaders among demons tend to be the most powerful among them, and they are inclined to use brute force to keep others in line. This is especially true of the hard-liners resistant to reconciling with humanity among the Self-Administrated Zone. This works out for the protagonists when they get into a fight with hard-liners, as they immediately back down when Lorem fully demonifies in front of them and fully cooperate with the group's desire to negotiate.
• Baby Talk: As they are toddlers who have yet to fully learn how to speak, Gospel and Helga mostly just utter cute unintelligible noises, with the occasional garbled word or name. So far the closest they've gotten to actual words are Gospel saying "doggy" and Helga mispronouncing her own name.
• Bait-and-Switch Character Intro: The author loves doing this for new characters.
  • The buildup to Minami and Garron's first appearances makes it seem like they're evil government agents who are looking to lock up Lorem and Gospel for her past actions. Turns out Minami is a Wide-Eyed Idealist who believes in human-demon coexistence and is really intending to help Lorem, and Garron is just there to protect Minami.
  • Valentine's arc hints at her having a hidden agenda behind being an Idol Singer, especially with out of control demonification being increasingly common after her debut. Her goal is to promote coexistence, and the demonifications are a side-effect of her voice, a side-effect she didn't even know about until told.
  • Eliza looks creepy with her dead-fish stare and big dark eye circles, and her behavior makes it seem like she's off her rocker. She's a bit weird, but she's really just as much of a loving mother as Lorem, and they hit it off really well as fellow single mothers. Her creepy eyes are just results of reading too many parenting books.
  • Zeke's introduction paints him as a hateful Hunter of His Own Kind who is obsessed with Lorem, with the implication being he doesn't trust her around humans. Later chapters show he's actually not a bad guy, who does a lot for demon kind as an internal reformist and his obsession with Lorem is actually because he's worried about his wife and son.
• Blindfolded Vision: Demon shop owner Alice is almost always shown wearing a blindfold. She explains to Teresa that it's because of her sound abilities. They allow her a near 360-degree range of vision, but using them and her eyes at the same time makes her dizzy, so the blindfold helps. The downside is she can't read while wearing it, which resulted, on at least one occasion, in Alice sitting on a bench with a wet paint sign on it.
• Break Her Heart to Save Her: After Chiharu nearly dies from catching demonitis, Lorem and Merii attempt to coldly dismiss her to protect her from the dangers of living around demons. Although it seems to succeed at first, Chiharu returns even more determined than ever to help, going so far as to move into the demon-human compound with them and join a highly-exclusive program to foster demon-human relations.
• Burial at Sea: Weaponized. Cochrane has Byakuren's coffin sunk to the bottom of the ocean since their Swap Teleportation powers continue to function even after her death, letting him condemn anyone he can lay his hands on to a watery grave (thought the one person he uses it on is tough enough to get back to the surface relatively unharmed). The coffin is later recovered and given a more proper burial following the final battle.
• Cerebus Rollercoaster: The story repeatedly shifts between light-hearted comedy and serious drama, with when the shift will happen not always being obvious. The main system for it is having several light-hearted slice-of-life chapters, followed by a serious arc, followed by more slice-of-life chapters, so on and so forth. However, sometimes the seriousness will be intermingled with the comedy, such as the introduction and aftermath of the anti-demon mine in chapter 12, with the following chapters being mostly comedic while interjecting scenes of Lorem being worried about her parenting abilities, with it only returning to full comedy after Chiharu and Merii help her work through her worries.
• Cute Monster Girl: Demons generally look like humans, except with horns, a tail, and wings that extend from their hips. There is some variation to this, as Lizette's wings are on her head, and some, like Helga and Fuuga, don't have wings at all. Also nearly all demons possess the ability to demonify into a "battle mode", which makes them appear more monstrous than cute.
• Cynicism Catalyst: In the past, Lorem and Merii were constantly on the run, taking help whenever they could get it. But after humans attacked them time and again and demons were only friendly until Lorem's Power Incontinence proved inconvenient, Lorem stopped trusting people from both sides entirely, viciously attacking the demons who came to "recruit" her to fight the humans while citing that she has no reason to trust them after constant violations of her trust. It took meeting Chiharu for Lorem to regain her ability to trust others again.
• Disappeared Dad: There is no mention at all of who Gospel's father may be. In fact, it's not until nearly chapter 100 that the subject of Gospel's father comes up in any form, when Eliza asks about Lorem's husband. Lorem hesitates to answer but eventually settles on assuring Eliza he's a good person. It finally gets fully answered in chapter 110.
• Engineered Heroics: Later chapters imply that with their growing issues and likelihood of being dissolved, C.A.T.T. are secretly bankrolling Crown, the leader of a demon terrorist group fighting humanity, solely so he can get the magic stones needed to help cause more conflict and justify C.A.T.T.'s continued existence in stopping them. Problem is, they don't care who dies in the process, even children, which leads to no small amount of dissatisfaction and cynicism from Crown.
• Extraordinary World, Ordinary Problems: Lorem may be a demon, but her biggest worries are frequently in relation to her ability to care for Gospel. Whether it's fear he will hate her after her carelessness nearly gets him seriously hurt, worry that her checkered past will cause Gospel problems in the future or concern that Gospel's development might be behind other kids when they meet another baby who can say her own name when Gospel can't.
• Face of a Thug:
  • Garron has the looks of a shady and villainous demon who works with Minami in order to exert government control over Lorem and Gospel, but he's actually a genuinely good guy that fully supports Minami's desires to bring about a peaceful coexistence between humans and demons. Minami even lampshades that his appearance can give people the wrong impression about his character.
  • Eliza has a perpetual Thousand-Yard Stare, is near-constantly wearing a small frown, her way of speaking is difficult to understand and somewhat unnerving, and she acts incredibly awkwardly, which all combine to give her a Nightmare Face whenever she tries to interact with other people. However, despite all that, she's a good woman and loving mother, with her creepy stare being due to staying up late reading way too many parenting books, and her awkward attitude being simply caused by nervousness.
• Falling-in-Love Montage: Lorem's story to Chiharu regarding how she and Zeke met includes one of these, showing the time from when they first started living together up until the near end of her being pregnant with Gospel.
• Fanservice Pack: As the story goes on, most of the female characters in the story, the main exception being Lizette since she's 8, get progressively bigger chests, even Chiharu who has A-Cup Angst as part of her character, with some of them like Lorem and Merii eventually reaching ridiculous levels where they're bigger than their heads.
• Fantastic Arousal: Demons' tails are very sensitive to touch. An omake page describes Lorem's as making her weak-kneed when touched. This is problematic for Lorem, in particular, as Gospel likes to chew on her tail despite her efforts to teach him not to. When she lets Gospel do it to calm him down, Merii notices Lorem is drooling and biting her lip to keep from crying out.
• Foreshadowing: Chapter 56, which introduces Sera and shows her and Fuuga's developing relationship, Lorem remarks that she's been told "you're so warm" for as long as she could remember. When Fuuga asks who told her that, Lorem hesitates and instead dodges the question by telling Fuuga to treasure Sera. The final page of the chapter is the first on-page appearance of Zeke, who is later revealed to be Lorem's husband and Gospel's father.
• Form-Fitting Wardrobe: Lorem and Merii are so busty that all of their clothes tightly cling to their bodies.
• Fun with Acronyms: C.A.T.T. is short for "Counter Asmodean Tactical Team".
• Gag Nose: A common way of showing that a character is feeling incredibly smug is their nose growing longer Pinocchio-style, with how long it gets denoting how smug they're feeling at the moment. While it mainly happens to Lorem when she's feeling really proud about Gospel, with it at one point growing longer than she is tall due to seeing Gospel balance on his tail, it occasionally pops up on other characters.
• Godzilla Threshold: After Chiharu is stricken with an incurable case of demonitis, Merii is forced to use her tentacles to link herself to Chiharu to siphon the virus out with her own antibodies. She doesn't know what the final outcome will be or if Chiharu will still be human afterward, but it's the only thing she could think of to save Chiharu's life.
• Gone Horribly Right: A faction in C.A.T.T. uses Crown in order to try and create a controlled demonic threat in order to justify their current existence and power in the face of peace between humans and demons, using an implanted bomb to keep him in line. After one of his allies is killed, Crown kills several of the conspirators, removes the bomb from his body, and plans to use the Magic Stones he's gathered to become a genuine threat, including kidnapping Gospel for his immunity to the gas.
• Hair Memento: Cochrane and Byakuren are a pair of brother-and-sister Child Soldiers serving under Crown, a demon fighting to create a nation for their kind. When Byakuren is killed in battle another demon, Kewpie, makes a bracelet out of Byakuren's hair and gives it to Cochrane. As the arc progresses, the loss of his sister sends Cochrane headfirst through the Despair Event Horizon and, after he fights and is subdued by Zeke, decides all he wants to do at this point is be with Byakuren. He jumps off a damaged building only for the bracelet to snag on a piece of rebar, which is initially depicted as Byakuren grabbing his arm to catch him. The bracelet holds on and prevents Cochrane's fall long enough that, by the time it breaks, Kewpie is able to dive in and save him from certain death. Afterward, the boy can only cry and ask why Byakuren won't let him go to her.
• Happiness in Slavery: Teresa was purchased by Alice when she was twelve with the proceeds of a smuggling job. Alice treats Teresa more like an employee than a slave, however, utilizing Teresa's natural talents and making her the face of the store she opens, where Teresa is quite popular, as well as making sure Teresa takes days off to relax. Teresa, for her part, is loyal to Alice and her life with Alice is a significant step up from where she had been; Teresa's parents were abusive due to her not having a special ability like most demons and the whole reason she had been available for purchase in the first place was humans kidnapped and sold her to the person Alice bought her from. This is best demonstrated when Teresa's younger sister, Dolores, tracks Teresa down intending to rescue her and is dismayed to find her big sister doesn't really need rescuing.
• I Just Shot Marvin in the Face: In chapter 12, while going through some old things of hers, Lorem finds an object she can't immediately identify. She remembers it's an Anti-Demon Bomb, set to explode as soon as a demon touches it, just in time to throw it out the window where it detonates harmlessly. Just as she's wondering what in the hell she had been thinking keeping that around, Lorem turns around to see Gospel touching a second bomb she had. This one Lorem isn't able to throw out in time, so it doesn't detonate harmlessly, and Lorem is forced to seriously injure herself getting between the bomb and Gospel. Once she's healed, the incident serves as a wake-up call for Lorem, as she realizes her carelessness nearly got her baby killed.
• Imagine Spot: Lorem tends to have this while thinking about Gospel's future. She dreams of having a close relationship with him where he'll always be happy to see her even as he gets older, but also imagines him as a terrible delinquent should she somehow fail as a parent.
• The Immune: As of chapter 163, it's all but confirmed that Gospel has potential immunity to the A.D. gas that his father's poison is used to create. This causes everyone to panic and work with their doctor to cover it up but, at best, it's only going to buy time before someone notices, at which point the characters fully fear humanity and demonkind will start hunting for Gospel. The threat ends up coming from the latter direction, however, as Veronica is part of Crown's faction and assists in a kidnapping of Gospel when Lorem refuses her offer to join Crown's demon nation.
• Impossible Hourglass Figure: Many of the adult female demons are incredibly busty relative to their waist sizes, as emphasized by Lorem's loosely hanging t-shirt and Merii's snugly fitting sweaters. The ones who aren't often suffer from A-Cup Angst, such as Valentine, or are just too young for it come up yet, like Lizette and Dolores.
• Insistent Terminology: While people ignoring Merii's attempts to nickname them is a common occurrence, Teresa is the only one that is outright adamant about being referred to by her actual name, with her saying "It's Teresa" in response to Merii calling her Tere-san acting like a Phrase Catcher.
• Intimate Haircut: Played with during the flashback of how Lorem and Zeke fell in love. Just before their Falling-in-Love Montage, she notes how how his wild mane of hair must make it difficult for him to eat and offers to cut it for him. The result is laughably bad and he's forced to clean it up himself. However, after the flashback is over, there's a scene where the two of them are able to talk for the first time in a while and she notes that his hair is growing out and offers to cut it for him when he gets home, with the whole thing being treated a lot more affectionately.
• Knight of Cerebus: The entire pro-Demon group, who are willing to straight up commit terrorist acts to try to fight human oppression. When their arcs are involved, demons get mangled or even outright killed as a sign that nothing good will happen for anyone involved.
• Make Some Noise: Alice, the owner of the shop Lorem and Merii frequent, has the ability to control and redirect sound. This lets her fire off blasts of sound, but she can also use it for echolocation, which served her well in her previous career as a smuggler. However, as she explains to Teresa, using her sound and her eyes for sight at the same time can make Alice dizzy, which is why she almost always wears a blindfold.
• Mass "Oh, Crap!": When the trip into the Self-Administrated Zone turns into a fight, everyone but Merii freaks out when Lorem demonifies. For some, like Valentine and Isabella, it's because they didn't realize just how strong Lorem was, while others, like Garon and Isabella's father Ramon, know exactly how strong Lorem is.
• Metaphorical Marriage: Lorem and Zeke's Falling-in-Love Montage includes a scene of him giving her a wedding ring (which she visibly wears for the entire run of the series), and she does refer to him as her husband for the few people who are in the know, but since they're keeping their relationship a secret to protect their son there's obviously no official record of them being together. While they never do have a "proper" wedding ceremony, one chapter at the tail end of the series after they're able to live together again does have them take wedding photos and they presumably sign a marriage certificate offscreen.
• More Teeth than the Osmond Family: A mouth full of numerous incredibly sharp fangs is a common feature on most demons. While there are occasions where these are portrayed as Scary Teeth, particularly when characters are acting threatening, most of the time they act as Cute Little Fangs, even on characters that aren't exactly "cute" themselves.
• Muggle Born of Mages: Teresa was born to her family without the slightest hint of any demonic power, neither a special ability nor the capacity to demonify even a little. This resulted in her parents treating her like garbage, abusing her before eventually selling her into slavery. If it wasn't for her being bought by the Jerk with a Heart of Gold Alice, the fact she was completely powerless meant she probably wouldn't have survived for much longer.
• Multi-Armed and Dangerous: Veronica is a demon with four arms, which she mainly uses for Mundane Utility, such as playing two-player games by herself or brushing her teeth while washing her body in the shower. Though since she sometimes mixes up which arms are doing what, one time brushing her teeth with shampoo, she decided that two hands are enough for some things.
• No Conservation of Energy: Besides demonization being able to seemingly pull mass out of nowhere, it's noted In-Universe that demons don't consume nearly enough to power their abilities like Lorem's Playing with Fire capabilities. The going theory is that they're somehow drawing energy from some alternate dimension. "Magic Stones" are so prized by demons because they act as an external version of the organ theorized to do this, allowing demons to overpower anti-demonization gas.
• Not What It Looks Like: The Rescue Arc was sparked by this. Eliza's husband (the heir of a major demon faction) suffered an unexpected death and his former aides came to pick her up because they hoped that having Helga (now the new heiress) would help prevent any political turmoil. Everyone realized almost immediately how badly humans might take a demon living under their protection suddenly disappearing with signs of forced entry (since it's really hard to get into her apartment without a key) and they were going to let her go back home right away, but her father-in-law wanted to spend some time doting on his granddaughter.
• Odd Friendship: Lorem and Eliza. Lorem is a brash, outgoing, and ditzy Retired Monster. Eliza is a reserved Shrinking Violet who's grown up ostracized for not having abilities like other demons do. The two are so different Minami actively questions their becoming friends when she hears about it. Lorem was encouraged to reach out to her after seeing Eliza had a baby about the same age as Gospel, since it would give Gospel a playmate and Lorem a fellow mother to bond with.
• Power Incontinence:
  • A common problem for demons. Even in adulthood they occasionally have issues with demonizing while asleep. An early chapter shows Lorem accidentally destroying Gospel's stuffed doggy toy with her claw because of this, while Merii has wrapped herself up in her own tentacles more than once.
  • This is a potentially lethal problem for demon children. Especially if their powers are particularly strong. It's unfortunately common for a young demon to harm themselves or their families because they can't control their powers. Lorem met Fuuga after he had frozen himself with his ice powers and thawed him out. As for Lorem herself, a flashback of Merii huddled over a charred and blackened Lorem is shown to show it's very likely that Lorem would never have survived to adulthood had Merii not been around to heal her.
• Power Nullifier: The human government managed to somehow create "anti-demonification" gas in the past, allowing them to nullify the various powers of demons and make dangerous ones easier to subdue, along with proving instrumental in winning the war. The source of it is actually Zeke, Lorem's husband and Gospel's father, whose personal demon power allows him to produce a poison from his bladed body-parts that suppresses demonic powers until the poison leaves their system.
• Power-Upgrading Deformation: Demons have the ability to "demonize" or "demonify", which transforms parts of their body and increases their power. The process varies slightly from demon to demon, but generally involves arms and legs becoming much more scaly and reptilian-looking in nature. One way to gauge a demon's power is by how much of their body they can demonize at once. Lorem is able to change her entire body.
• Pregnant Badass: Despite her power and being the most prominent demon mother in the story, Lorem is not an example as her time while pregnant was peaceful and she never saw any action. Instead, the pregnant badass of the story is the Gothic Lolita Blood Knight, Nightmare. She can fight the powerful Crown on relatively even footing and, as she does so, Crown notices that she's very clearly taking care to not let her stomach be hit. He confirms she's pregnant by attacking her in such a way that she willingly takes a blow to the face over her stomach.
• Puppy Love: A somewhat downplayed example between Gospel and Helga. The two enjoy each other's company and like playing together, but since both of them are barely past one year old, they don't have enough mental capacity to even comprehend the idea of attraction, let alone actually be interested in each other like that yet.
• The Reveal: After a bit of Foreshadowing chapter 110 finally reveals who Gospel's father is. Its Zeke.
• Secret-Keeper: When Gospel's pediatrician Veronica calls to report that recent bloodwork done on him suggests his antibodies against anti-demon weapons are unusually high, it prompts some panic among Lorem, Merii, and Chiharu, as one of the main reasons the identity of Gospel's father is kept quiet is because as the demon whose poison anti-demon weapons are made from, Gospel has a potential resistance or immunity to it. When it becomes clear they can't just dodge Veronica's requests for a re-test to confirm, they take her into their confidence and she agrees to keep things quiet for them. Soon after, it's revealed that she's actually working with Crown and sells them out to him and, when Lorem refuses to join Crown's faction, assists him in kidnapping Gospel.
• Secret Relationship: While Lorem is clearly married given that she wears a wedding ring and has a son, the actual identiy of her husband appears to be a secret to everyone incuding her closes friends and little sister. It's only at around the halfway point that we learn who he is and why it's kept a secret. He's Zeke, the demon whose poison was used create the anti-demonization gas responsible for the current peace between human and demons. He went back to his old job at C.A.T.T. to keep both Lorem and their son off the radar because both he and Lorem are fully aware that a child born with her level of power and potential immunity to the gas would have a massive target painted on their back in the current political climate.
• Stating the Simple Solution: After Valentine's live concert, which resulted in her Compelling Voice causing multiple demons to involuntarily demonify, she approaches Merii with a request to remove her voice so she can't sing anymore to prevent a repeat of the incident from occurring, even though doing so means the end of her career as an idol. Only after Merii is able to fix the problem without rendering Valentine mute does she point out that Valentine could have avoided a repeat of the concert incident by simply quitting being an idol. However, she also acknowledges that Valentine's more extreme choice of action was an indication of how much she didn't want to quit and instead took steps to make certain that she wouldn't have a choice.
• Wham Episode: There's more than would be readily countable for a concise listing, given the Cerebus Rollercoaster. In between all the slice-of-life antics, virtually every serious arc or chapter is a Wham Episode in and of itself, whether due to new revelations, events happening in the background, or the escalating new conflict between Demons and Humans. This includes the Death of a Child of a young demon girl in chapter 162 as a demonstration that anyone involved in the war is fair game, followed by 163 showing the shaken leader of the anti-human group is in contact with C.A.T.T. executives.. who he promptly betrays as he sets his sights on Gospel. Everything after that is hell and a half.
• Wham Line: Chapters 110-119 detail the history of Gospel's father, how he and Lorem met, and why he's not in the picture. While he has his reasons already for keeping his distance and hiding his connection to Lorem and Gospel, his concerns take on a new light when the fact that the poison his body generates is the basis for the Anti-Demonification weapons that have allowed human-demon relations to improve prompts an important question: "Will the A.D. Weapon work on Gospel?" Being the son of the demon whose poison was used to make the weapon means there's a very good chance he would be highly resistant, if not outright immune to its effects. Couple that with being known as the son of one of the most powerful and infamous demons in the series and Gospel's father has ample reason to keep away until humanity's more hawkish factions are unable to act.
• Whole Episode Flashback: Chapters 111 through 119 deal with flashbacks about how Zeke and Lorem met, fell in love, conceived Gospel, and had to separate.
• Wings Below The Waist: Wings at the waistline are a common trait of the majority of demons in the series. The types of wings can vary, as Lorem's wings are feathery while her son Gospel has scaly, dragon-like wings. The wings are also functional, enabling flight for the demons that have them.
• Younger Than They Look: Teresa has always looked older than she actually is. At 12 she looked like a busty 18-year-old, and at 18 she looks about 25.

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