Manga / The Demon Girl Next Door

Yuko Yoshida is just your average, ordinary teenage girl. She goes to school and tries not to flunk out, plays video games bought from the local bargain bin because of her family's crippling poverty, and spends time with her mother and sister while she waits for her father to come home...from his job catching squid on a nuclear-powered submarine, according to her mother. Though Yuko may be poor, malnourished, and wracked by childhood illnesses, she puts on a brave smile every day and tries to do her best.

Then, one fateful morning, she wakes up and finds she's sprouted goat horns and a pointy tail overnight.

At that point, her mother reveals the Yoshida household comes from a line of demons. But millennia of defeat at the hands of the Light Clan's warrior-priestesses, known in the modern age as "magical girls", have stripped the demons of their demonic appearance, powers, and prosperity, while cursing them to scrape by on only 40,000 yen^*about 400 US dollars a month. Now that Yuko has awakened to her demonic nature, her mother dubs her "Shadow Mistress Yuko" — Shamiko for short — and tasks her with defeating their mortal enemies and breaking their family's curse so they can enjoy the kind of fine dining you only get at family restaurants.

Unfortunately, the only weapon her mother can provide is a fork.^* Since she's a thoughtful, loving mother, she also wraps it in plastic and puts it in a cutesy carrying case along with a wet nap and packet of sauce.

Meanwhile, local magical girl Momo Chiyoda can stop a dump truck with her bare hands.

Finding the small, sickly, none-too-smart Yuko no threat whatsoever, Momo rebuffs the fledgling demon lord's every attempt to do battle with mind games a five-year-old could see through. Yet the jaded, cynical magical girl finds her life brightening up every time Yuko darkens her doorstep. As the two of them unravel the secrets behind their little street corner and the mysteries that bind them together, they quickly go from sworn enemies to best frenemies.

The Demon Girl Next Door (Machikado Mazoku, or "Street Corner Demon") is a yonkoma Perspective Flip of the Magical Girl genre by Izumo Ito. The manga has been serialized in Manga Time Kirara Caret since 2014, and an anime adaptation by J.C. Staff aired in July 2019 with a second season following in April 2022.

The manga is being translated into English by Seven Seas Entertainment starting January 2021, and the anime is licensed for home video release outside of Asia by Sentai Filmworks as well as being streamed on its HiDive service.

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The Demon Girl Next Door contains examples of:

• Abandoned Hospital Awakening: This along with a Zombie Apocalypse is the opener of volume 5, though it's just one of Lilith's terrible fictional drama creations.
• Abandoned Warehouse: The abandoned factory that Momo used to train Yuko in Chapter 6 is eventually revealed to have been involved in several important events in the past: First with Sakura's confrontation of Ugallu, then whatever happened that eventually caused two people to be sealed.
• Abusive Precursors: According to the serpent sealed in Tama river, the Light Clan were founded by an omnipotent being who created a set of protocols for exterminating anything that upset the "proper" balance of the world and then disappeared into the human population, leaving the protocols to perpetuate themselves.
• Achievements in Ignorance: The less Yuko knows about the workings of her family's Ancestral Weapon the Whatever Staff, the more she can do with it, only being limited by her lack of imagination and magical power.
• Acme Products: Everything is Kirara-branded: from alcopop to hotplates to video games. Chapter 85 even has Shamiko turn the Whatever Staff into a Kirara-branded chainsaw.
• Act of True Love:
  • When Yuko turns her Dream Walker powers on herself to try and recall what happened to her 10 years earlier, when she was in the hospital dying from the Light Clan's curse on her family, she becomes trapped in a nightmare of her repressed memories and unable to wake up, being attacked by syringes and IV drips in a labyrinthine hospital with no exit. Lilith is unable to pull Yuko out of it either, as being sealed has dramatically curtailed her powers. Momo is unwilling to leave Yuko in such a state, and she gets desperate: she first outright offers to slit her wrist and give Lilith her blood to break the seal if it'll give Lilith the ability to save Yuko (it wouldn't be enough), then goes through with (temporarily) becoming Yuko's vassal to make them family, as only another family member can enter a Dream Walker's dreams, so Momo can go into Yuko's nightmare and pull her out.
  • Yuko herself tries to do it too. After learning that Sakura's core is within her and that it is the only thing keeping her alive against a double dose of the Light Clan's curse, all she can think about at first is getting it out to restore Sakura to make Momo happy. Momo tells her to not even think about it—Yuko is now both of the most important people in her life and she won't sacrifice one for the other.
  • Lilith gets her turn at it as well in Chapter 58. When Yuko's spirit is being held captive by a mizuchi in its sealed space, Lilith is prepared to sacrifice herself to save her descendant, since she's family, her only real friend, and the only person who respects her. Lilith asks Momo to destroy her statue and the temporary vessel she's in, which will leave her as an unbound spirit unable to remain in the physical world, but also would release her from her seal and restore all her powers. That would give her a moment to go into the mizuchi's sealed space, pull Yuko's soul out, and take her place. The mizuchi doesn't exactly like the idea of being stuck with Lilith for eternity, though, so when it hears what she's planning, it instead curses her with immortality and commands her to clean up garbage along the Tama River every day forever as its price for giving Yuko back.
• Actor Allusion: In chapter 85, Itou has Seiko say her voice actress's famous catchphrase from ARIA, "Ara ara!"
• Adam Smith Hates Your Guts: In Chapter 50, it is revealed that Sion effectively price-gouged Momo for the "Corruption Stabilizer" potion—Sion asked Momo to pay 7,289,590 yen for it, knowing well that she is not willing to completely fall to the Dark side and she can afford that much.
• Adaptational Early Appearance: Two major characters and a location that don't get introduced until the third volume of the manga get very brief appearances in the final episode of the Animated Adaptation (which adapts the first two volumes), possibly as a sequel tease.
• Adaptation Explanation Extrication: The season 1 finale features a still of Ryo and Mikan going shopping together. However, the reason for such an odd coupling—the Yoshidas are celebrating Mikan and Momo becoming their neighbors, and Momo needs to get Mikan out of the kitchen before she ruins their dinner with an overabundance of citrus—isn't explained until the premiere of season two, three years after the finale aired.
• Apology Gift: Yuko sends Momo an indirectly-phrased challenge letter calling her out for a duel, which Momo interprets as asking her to go out and have fun for the afternoon. When Momo shows up in a breezy summer dress, Yuko grudgingly apologizes for the misunderstanding, goes out shopping with Momo, and buys her a pair of black hairclips. Yuko then puts the hairclips on Momo while gloating that she's finally managed to turn some small part of her to darkness. Afterwards, Momo never wears her old iconic pink hairclips again in favor of Yuko's gift.
• Author Appeal: In an interview, Izumo Ito stated she's been a big fan of occultism since elementary school, and basically used the manga as an excuse to toss whatever appeals to her into one big narrative melting pot.
• Author Tract: As mentioned under Author Appeal, Ito's loved the occult since she was a little girl. In this manga, the demons are all amiable folks, sometimes mischievous but mostly harmless and fun to be around, while the magical girls work for a crypto-Nazi hierarchy who award points and grant wishes in exchange for committing Van Helsing Hate Crimes. The peace of Tama City only exists because a rogue magical girl, Sakura Choyoda, used magic to shelter demons from the bloodbath her own side is committing, like Suika wanting to exterminate demonkind because she thinks their very existence makes them miserable. Even when Yuko and Lilith are at their evilest, both marvel how Momo effortlessly spitballs plans much more evil than anything they could think up. It's pretty clear where Ito's sympathies lie in the magical girl genre.
• Bargain with Heaven: All Magical Girls' terms of employment work like this. They contract with their Navigators, and the number of demons they subjugate are converted into points which determines the power of wish-granting they can obtain at retirement.
• Big Red Devil: It is implied that demons originally looked like this, but centuries of having their powers incrementally sealed away by the Light Clan caused them to take a more humanoid appearance. Yuko's sudden growth of horns and tail is seen as some restoration of her demonic powers.
• Bland-Name Product:
  • In chapter 6, Momo asked Yuko to shout "whatever you desire" in the same way one calls out your attacks. Yuko yelled out names suspiciously similar to actual restaurant chains: Royal Hosp (Royal Host), Skylarc (Skylark)^note Actually, Skylark is no longer a chain, as Skylark Holdings—also the owner of the Bamiyan chain—rebranded all Skylark-branded restaurants to Gusto over The '90s and Turn of the Millennium., Synned (reversing Denny's), and Bamiyan. Different official English translations change it to bland-named restaurant chains in the United States, and the only common one used is Denny's.
    • The dub changed her list to Applepeas (Applebee's), Subray (Subway), Syneed, and Panda Complex (Panda Express).
    • Seven Seas' translation changed it to Burger Queen (Burger King), Wandy's (Wendy's), McDunald's (McDonald's), and Donny's (Denny's).
  • In chapter 19 (and its anime equivalent episode 9), Lilith suggests Yuko bring the former's statue to the latter's test so that Lilith can "stream" Yuko answers to a history test. When Lilith says this, the logo "Gozenso^note Ancestor Answers" appears above her, in a form parodying Yahoo! Answers.
• Blood Magic: Magical power can be stolen from a Magical Girl through their blood. It's not the bleeding that causes the loss of power, it's the power being absorbed out of that blood by something dark-aligned. Even a single drop of blood in the wrong hands is dangerous for them.
• Breaking the Fourth Wall:
  • In the Animated Adaptation, not only is the fourth wall broken in the conventional sense a few times by Yuko and Lilith, other characters will occasionally rip it down and use it as a prop.
  • The manga is a bit more restrained about fourth wall abuse, but two instances of note are Yuko asking the reader if the bento lunch she just made looks okay, and Lilith putting "a kill counter for the readers" in the lower right of each panel while she's having Yuko do some combat training in her sealed space.
  • When Shamiko wakes up in chapter 39, she's surprised by Sion Ogura wearing a plague doctor costume. When Shamiko asks why she'a wearing it, Sion replies, "To increase the tension!"
  • In Chapter 78, Yuko recalls that Momo said she had a 'flabby belly', and when Mikan asks when this happened, Yuko says "In volume 5, page 69!"
  • In chapter 85, Momo is worried that Shamiko is malnourished and drags her off to the bathroom scale. Shamiko blurts out, "Ehh, that plot point is still relevant?!"
• Breather Episode: Chapter 40. This is invoked in-universe, as Anri, after reviewing Yuko's summer-vacation journal, opined Yuko's summer was far too eventful for a 15-year-old girl, and had Yuko do something more like a normal summer vacation on her last free day of it.
• Briar Patching: Chapter 15/Episode 7. Momo borrows a trick from a traditional Japanese rakugo story called Manjuu Kowai in which a character pretends that he is deathly afraid of Manjuu (a dumpling with a sweet bean filling), knowing his friends will present him with dozens of them in order to tease him. When that fails, his friends demand to know what he is really afraid of, to which he replies that he might be afraid of tea now. The trick works against Shamiko, as well.
• But Not Too Foreign: Yuko and Ryoko are half Mesopotamian (the specific modern country isn't specified) on their father's side.
• Catchphrase: "Don't think this means you won!" Usually by Shamiko, but also occasionally from Momo.
• Cerebus Retcon: Metako only ever says "The time hath come!" and variations of it, which Momo chalks up as him being past his prime. The true reason is much harsher—he was magically lobotomized by another magical girl six years prior.
• Cerebus Syndrome: The Manga and Anime both start very lighthearted and silly, but slowly gets darker and darker over time.
• Chainsaw Good: Defied. In chapter 85, after an attempt to regrow Lilith's broken horn fails and it grows wildly out of control, Shamiko turns the Whatever Staff into a chainsaw to trim it off again. When Lilith says she should make that her default weapon, Shamiko declines, saying she feels like it wasn't meant to be used on people.
• Chekhov's Armoury: Nothing that is given any amount of attention is ever just used once and forgotten.
  • Lampshaded when everyone needs to conduct a ritual within one night. Sion attempts to explain that it'd be impossible within that time frame because the required ingredients aren't on hand and would be too difficult to acquire on such short notice, only for Yuko to reveal that either she knows someone who can get it for them right away, or she already has it.
    Sion: ...You really are interesting Shamiko-chan! I'm so glad I stalk you!
  • Though everybody ridicules Momo's gaudy, roller derby-inspired "Second Harvest" form, it ends up saving their lives when they're trapped in a collapsing pocket dimension.
• Child Soldier: Many Magical Girls in this series started fighting long before the usual for this genre. For example, both Momo and Mikan started fighting before they went to school.
  • Chapter 77 reveals that this was even worse than it seems. Prior to being adopted by Sakura, Momo was apparently a test subject at some sort of Ukrainian experimental facility that produced child super-soldiers. Momo was the only survivor of the place after Sakura and Suika destroyed it, and the Ukrainian dialogue with her indicates that she was fighting against them until she surrendered. This means that she wasn't even five years old yet, and she'd already been sent out to fight and kill. Current Momo doesn't remember any of this, as Joshua sealed her memories of this part of her life away at Sakura's request, and neither Yuko, Metako or Momo can restore them.
• Crazy Enough to Work: The way Momo prevents herself from being completely "corrupted" is by asking Mikan to shoot her with the latter's Finishing Move. This way she can replenish the Light element in her body.
• Curse: There's two curses afflicting the Yoshida family, the ancient one, and a newer one:
  • The ancient curse on the Dark Clan in general, which removes demonic indicators and powers.
  • Sakura's curse on the Yoshida family, which causes their poverty. But... it isn't technically a curse, but a sacrifice. She meddled in the ancient curse afflicting the Yoshida family in an effort to save Yuko's life due to a double dose of the ancient curse, at Joshua's behest, sacrificing their family's luck and fortune for Yuko's health—and yet even this wasn't enough.
• Deal with the Devil: Yuko asks Momo to become her vassal, mostly to keep Momo from abandoning her to find a new lead on her missing sister, remarking that with her sullen personality, penchant for thinking of evil ways to use powers, and poor eating habits, she'd make a better demon anyway, and as a demon the barriers around town would no longer hinder her search. Momo is strongly tempted to do it, but declines with her own counteroffer upon a last-second realization that she'd lose most of her strength because Yuko would become her power source and...she doesn't have much of it to give. Still, Momo promises to accept her offer when Yuko can defeat her in a duel, expecting she'll never do so but really hoping she will someday.
• Defeat by Modesty: A self-inflicted example, after learning how to completely control her transformation power, when Yuko tries to change her Crisis Management outfit to something more normal. First she tries to make it a ski outfit that fully covers her, and collapses because she's not revealing any skin and this made her too weak to stand. Then she tries to make her transformation into a track outfit, and in this form she can't control her movements. Lilith finally explains that Yuko's Crisis Management form isn't just a "half-naked cosplay outfit;" a transformation isn't a change of clothes, it's a layer of magic that reinforces her existence and reflects her idea of herself at her strongest, so trying to transform into something that doesn't "match her soul" won't work right without changing her self-image along with it. In the end, Yuko just sticks with what works and resigns herself to being a Reluctant Fanservice Girl.
• Department of Redundancy Department: When Shamiko redesigns her crisis management form, she labels the new outfit the "Mk. II Second Unit 02."
• "Do It Yourself" Theme Tune: The opening is done by Yuko and Momo's voice actresses. They also do the credits song, along with Mikan and Lilith's voice actresses.
• A Dog Named "Dog": A woman who lives down the street from Yuko has a dog named "Inu" ("dog" in Japanese). It shows up in every episode of the Animated Adaptation, usually while being taken for a walk.
• Don't Try This at Home: In Chapter 13 (and its equivalent Episode 6), Yuko ate Momo's grotesque-looking attempt at cooking a hamburger steak without any consideration that it might be less than edible, since Momo had intended to make it for her. After Yuko mentions how she defines the word edible (anything that doesn't trigger a gag reflex), a warning message appears:
  Warning: This girl has undergone special training in this field as part of her family's circumstances. Please be very careful to confirm whether food prepared and left out during the summer is safe to eat.
• Dramatic Deadpan: The anime is pretty much the epitome of it. Any conversation between Yuko and Momo is guaranteed to be 90% hushed quips delivered at a rapid-fire pace and 10% Yuko wailing in fear once the implications of the downplayed dialogue hit her. The English dub, however, discards this trope in favor of more "traditional" (i.e. emotive and expressive) acting.
  • In chapter 25, Seiko matter-of-factly explains that her husband is sealed inside a cardboard box in their living room. Nobody reacts in the slightest, forcing her to say the same thing in a melodramatic cry just to make them gasp at the revelation.
• Edible Theme Naming: All the Magical Girls in this series have names taken from a fruit: Momo (peach), Mikan (orange), Sakura (cherry), Honyu (Alternate Character Reading of the Jonathan apple), Budo^* mentioned in passing in ch. 73 (grape), and Suika (watermelon).
• Entertainment Above Their Age: 10-year-old Ryoko Yoshida combines this with Troubling Unchildlike Behaviour—she reads war manuals and books about weapons for fun.
• Every Episode Ending: Every manga chapter ends with the Narrator cheering Yuko up. This is carried to the anime as well.
• Familiar: Magical Girls get animal navigators that act as their familiars. Momo has her cat Metako (who originally belonged to Sakura), and Mikan has a lethally toxic golden dart frog named Michael. Honyu has a lionhead goldfish named Zikiel. Suika had a winged boar named Uriel.
• Fantastic Fragility: Three ways have been mentioned to defeat the Perception Filter effects of the barriers. One, directly attacking the source of the barrier with magic from beyond its effect range can temporarily disable it. Two, someone not affected by it can just physically convey a Magical Girl into a protected place. Three, if someone under a barrier's protection invites someone else in, it stops working on the invited individual permanently. A barrier that has been overcome will begin to decay if someone it's supposed to be keeping out finds a way in, and spends a prolonged time in the area it should be protecting. When Yuko invited Momo to come visit her apartment, Momo was immediately able to follow her home (invoking the third method). The barrier on the Yoshidas' apartment door had seriously degraded by about 60% after ten years because of Yuko carrying around Sakura's core (invoking the second method), and when Momo and Mikan moved into the adjacent apartments and became regular visitors, the remaining 40% or so of the barrier on their door entirely decayed away after about six months.
• Fantastically Indifferent: Sakura set a series of Perception Filter barriers across Tama to prevent Magical Girls from interacting with demons. This means in Tama, they co-exist with muggles, and since muggles are not affected by the said barriers, they have been interacting with the demons so frequently that they see nothing unusual in Yuko gaining horns and tail overnight, or a talking statue claiming itself to be Lilith.
• The Farmer and the Viper: Momo decides to use some of her already-diminished magical power to give her mortal enemy Lilith a controllable body just to make her happy. How does Lilith repay such a kind act? By immediately plotting to force Momo to make more. Unfortunately for her, Momo was clever enough to put in a back-door.
• Fictional Counterpart: In chapter 55 Yuko acquires a smartphone from a mobile phone retailer called du, a parody of the real-life Japanese mobile provider au. The logos are even the same aside from the extra stroke to make the A into a D.
• Five-Second Rule: Referenced. When Yuuko seemingly passes out, as the switch on the Ancestor Statue has been flipped, allowing Lilith to take over Yuuko's body, Momo initially asks if Yuuko had been eating food off the ground. Her classmate, Anri, "helpfully" says that even Yuuko isn't that pathetic.
• Food as Bribe: Momo does it to Yuko several times. Later, Yuko turns the tables and frequently offers to make food for her "subordinates", to the point it becomes part of the sales pitch for joining her side.
• Freeze-Frame Bonus: In the OP, Bartender Anri has four fruity spirits on the counter in front of her: peach (Momo), orange (Mikan), apple (Honyu), and grape (Budo^note  a magical girl mentioned in ch. 73 ).
• Friendly Enemy: Yuko and Momo are technically on opposing sides, but they spend more time helping one another than they do actually fighting. Lampshaded by Seven Seas Entertainment's translation by using the tagline "Best Frenemies Forever".
• "Friends" Rent Control: Double subverted; the Yoshidas live in a very old, decrepit apartment building that's in such bad shape, nobody else wants to live there, and the other five units are empty (at first). They're also only paying 150 yen a month for rent, though it's implied they're getting a very steep discount for being part of the Dark Clan.
• Genre Savvy: In chapter 82, Ryoko is confronting Ogura Sion about her true identity when Lico abruptly interrupts them saying she's "found something amazing". Ryoko ignores her and returns to grilling Sion.
  Ryoko: "Ryou has seen this in books. When an important conversation gets interrupted due to intrusions like this, the plot gets foggy and allows things to be gotten away with. Ryou has seen this in a lot of books."
  Sion: "Uuuu...I like that part of you that reads a lot of books..."
  Ryoko: "We don't need that sort of stuff, please at least reveal your identity!"
• Gilligan Cut: In chapter 43, after Momo loses her opportunity to pet some tiger cubs, Lico offers to let Momo cuddle with her (in her natural fox form, that is). Momo angrily declares, "No, thank you." The very next panel is a sour-faced Momo cuddling with fox Lico, muttering, "Don't think this means you've won."
• Goroawase Number: Momo's door code is 56562, which she initially gives (in a fever-addled daze) as "gorogoro nya-chan" or "purr purr meow".
• Go Through Me: When Yuko is mistakenly convinced that Momo is coming to kill her mother, she stands in the way of the oncoming pink juggernaut and refuses to let Momo into her apartment despite knowing she can't really do anything to stop her. Although the clever bit of wordplay^note (Momo used the term 対峙 'confront' but Yuko interpreted it as 退治 'exterminate'; they are both pronounced "taiji". The English subtitles use "grill" both in the sense of "interrogate" and "eat".) that leads up to this moment defuses the scene's tension, Yuko shows some true courage for the first time in the series, standing up to someone who had so far alternately just vexed and intimidated her.
  Yuko: I don't care if she keeps secrets, and no matter how illogical it may be, I want to protect my mom, Ryo, and this house that my father will someday come back to! Magical Girl, Momo Chiyoda! If you want to get into this house, then you're going to have to defeat me to do it!
• Handwave: Mikan has to jump through hoops to transfer schools so she doesn't end up as a weirdo who hangs out at the park all day. So how does Lilith, who is not a Japanese citizen and has no documents, transfer into high school? She just says she was sealed away at a young age and asks, and the principal lets her in.
• Hanlon's Razor: Ugallu's summoning is a prime example of the Grey's Law corollary. Ugallu was summoned for the task of "protecting Mikan". However, the summoning was shoddily done and Ugallu's vessel broke down, forcing the familiar's spirit to take residence within Mikan. She still acted to complete her original task; however, with no way of telling what was going on outside, she decided that the best way to "protect Mikan" would be to lash out at everything around Mikan whenever her heart shakes.
• Hero Insurance: Subverted. Sakura paid off the Hinatsuki family 11 years ago for her destroying their family factory in the course of fighting Ugallu by buying the property outright. The Hinatsukis used that money to move westwards and re-establish their business there.
• Holding in Laughter: Lilith takes over Yuko's body to try and trash Momo. Unfortunately for her, she's bound by the limits of Yuko's frail body, and fails spectacularly. Anri and Sion are both in the corner, barely suppressing their laughter. Anri even outright denies she's laughing between stifled laughter.
• Honey Trap: Lilith recommends "seduce Momo" as a valid plan of attack, though Yuko modifies that to "ask Momo to become her vassal," which is likely what Lilith was aiming for.
• Horned Humanoid: Lilith and her descendents become this when their demonic powers manifest. Deconstructed realistically when Yuko's horns cause her a lot of problems. The extra weight on her head puts a huge strain on her neck and shoulder muscles, and they tend to catch on things or get in the way. Yuko eventually buys a torus-shaped pillow to allow her to sleep on her side again by putting her horn through the hole, because when she tries to sleep on her side without it, the pressure caused by the weight of her head upon her horn causes her a lot of pain.
• Hypocritical Humor: In Chapter 36, Seiko reflected that ten years ago, Yuko told her the latter spoke with a cat that entered her room. Shirosawa wondered if that was All Just a Dream, saying it's impossible to have a Talking Animal around. Shirosawa himself is a talking tapir.
• Idiosyncratic Episode Naming: Both manga and anime use Excited Title! Two-Part Episode Name!, with the manga also replacing "Chapter [X]" with "[X] Street" (1st Street, 2nd Street, etc.)
• If You Call Before Midnight Tonight: A running gag in the show is one character trying to hustle another and offering to 'sweeten the deal' with an if-you-act-now offer:
  • Momo offers Shamiko a free slice of bread to help talk Shamiko out of trying to pay off her debt early
  • Ogura offers free elixir to get Momo to let her make Lilith's statue mobile.
  • Shamiko offers three meals a day plus maid service if Momo agrees to become her vassal.
  • Momo's counter offer contains a sweetener of one banana flavored protein shake after every training session.
• Istanbul (Not Constantinople): The author just changed the toponym 多摩 (Tama) to the very similar 多魔 (same pronunciation, where the kanji "魔" can be translated as "magic" or "demon". The place name now means "Lots of Demons"). This doesn't only apply to the city where the cast lives, but also Tama River, the river that flows through the city, and Okutama, a place Yuko ended up during the second episode.
• Leaning on the Fourth Wall:
  • In S2 episode 4, Mikan and Shamiko comment about how it feels like a long time since they started to search for clues about Sakura, even though Summer Vacation is only 2 days old, because out in the real world, it's been 3 years since season 1, and a month since the search was mentioned in S2 episode 1.
  • Chapter 85 was the first chapter after a year-long hiatus so Itou could recuperate from overwork, and as soon as it starts, Itou goes hog-wild using the Whatever Staff as a metaphor for being a manga artist. Shamiko uses the Staff to make people happy and fix their problems — such as by literally redrawing Mikan's ratty, rundown door into a "photogenic" door — while Momo berates her for working too hard and threatening her already-precarious health.
• Left Hanging: Narrowly Averted. Even up to the point Momo falls to darkness and appears in Yuko's dream, Ito expected the third volume would be the last, to the point she had already submitted an outline for her next series to her publisher. If the series had ended there, there would've been no closure for major plotlines like Mikan's curse, Yuko's father, how Momo saved the world, etc. However, at the last minute, she received word an anime had been commissioned, and they decided to reverse course and continue serializing Machikado Mazoku instead — presumably so there would be more volumes to sell when the anime aired.
• Light Is Not Good: The "war" between the Light and Dark clans sounds more like a one-sided slaughter in the Light's favor. According to Shirosawa, "angels" have tasked magical girls with hunting down Dark Clan members in exchange for having a wish granted, and the more demons they subjugate the more powerful their potential wish becomes. The demons in town have only been kept safe by the barrier.
• Loophole Abuse: The automated system controlling the Light Clan, which (according to the serpent in Tama River) was abandoned by its creator, awards more points for sealing more powerful demons. Ostensibly it's to motivate magical girls to prioritize great threats to humanity. However, it doesn't actually check to see if the demon is a threat to humanity in the first place. Sakura games the system by sealing Yuko's father — her friend — to amass a huge number of points, which she uses to sustain the barrier protecting the town's demons from the Light Clan.
• Loose Tooth Episode: Chapter 85 reveals demon horns periodically fall off and get replaced by newer, stronger ones. Seiko advises Shamiko to toss her fallen horns into the air, which Momo compares to the Japanese ritual for getting rid of baby teeth.
• Made of Magic: It's mentioned by Momo, then elaborated upon by Mikan, that the process of becoming a Magical Girl involves having one's body restructured to be primarily made of ether, enhancing their strength and making them able to better use magic. As a consequence, however, if their magical power ever gets too low, the magic holding their body together will fail and they'll dissipate into the air, becoming a disembodied soul.
• Mad Libs Catch Phrase: "Ganbare Shamiko! ... " The words of encouragement at the end of each anime segment. actually said by Joshua, her dad.
• Magical Girl: Momo, and a powerful one at that—at least in a physical sense. Her first appearance in the series involves stopping a truck with one hand to avoid Yuko falling victim to Look Both Ways.
• Magical Girl Genre Deconstruction: Not only is every single demon portrayed as ineffectual and harmless, everything we learn about the magical girls paints them as pawns of an ancient, uncaring celestial bureaucracy who're awarded points for essentially hunting down pseudo-ethnic minorities. We're told many unscrupulous magical girls only care about racking up points to make their wishes come true, and in the first six volumes, the only real villain has been a magical girl who wants to commit genocide against demons to 'end their suffering'.
• Mana: This is an important thing for both Dark and Light clans, as they need it for their superpowers. To take the point home, magical girls are selected for their mana (which is also why they often start quite early), such that navigators and some of the magical girls are able to identify who have the potential to be one.
• Mascot: Tamasakura is the mascot for the local open-air mall. She was designed by Yuko's boss, the owner of Cafe Asura, and based on Momo's older sister, the magical girl Sakura Chiyoda.
• Meaningful Name: The kanji for this series's rendition of Tama, 多魔, means "many demons". As noted in Chapter 48 of the manga, this is probably the only place demons can safely co-exist with others and thus has more of them there.
• Mix-and-Match Critters: The anime refers to Shamiko's "rival" for Momo's vasselhood as an "Alpacrunchyshrimppoulteel". It has the head of an alpaca, the body of a crunchy shrimp, the legs of poultry, and its tail is an eel.
• Mono no Aware: Suika's plan to end all suffering by reverting the world to a primordial state has heavy Buddhist undertones, specifically about the inability to stop clinging to things in an impermanent world. Shamiko actually foreshadows this way back at the beginning, when she's forced to jog by Momo and has an epiphany about the river always changing yet never changing.
• Mood Whiplash: Happens quite often for a 4-koma, and it's usually a sign that a longer story arc is coming up. For example when Momo finds out that Yuko's father has been sealed by her adoptive sister, which leads to a volume-long search for her, or when Mikan's curse suddenly isn't played for laughs anymore and she falls into depression, prompting Yuko and Momo to directly intervene to address the source.
• My God, What Have I Done?:
  • Momo is horrified to learn Yuko was Delicate and Sickly and wasn't even supposed to run, let alone go through the heavy training Momo has been subjecting her to. Yuko assures Momo she has much more endurance now after having become a demon and she can handle it, though Momo's still bothered that Yuko withheld that fact.
  • Yuko has a pretty severe one after she used her dream and subconscious manipulation powers on Liko and Honyu, overwriting their feelings to make them into reluctant friends when they were just about to kill each other. She then realizes the full extent of just how powerful and dangerous her abilities can be. Momo assures Yuko that all she's ever done with her powers is to bring happiness to the people around her.
• Nature Spirit: The Tama River is watched over by a powerful mizuchi that was sealed away 150 years ago within a mountain at the river's source.
• Never My Fault: In chapter 83, Lico puffs up Ryou's desire to be a great strategist just so Ryou will give Lico the order to unleash a highly-damaging attack in Momo's kitchen while Lico can neatly shirk any of the blame.
• No Communities Were Harmed:
  • The story is set at the Tokyo suburb of Tama, specifically the Seiseki-Sakuragaoka neighbourhood. The author swapped a kanji for Meaningful Name effect, due to the setting.
  • The anime changed the name of the neighbourhood from Seiseki^note Imperial Footprints—the Meiji Emperor used to hunt around there-Sakuragaoka to Seiiki^note Holy Land-Sakuragaoka.
  • A panorama of Tama in the second season's intro is so true to the real-world skyline of downtown Tama that a viewer managed to locate the exact vantage spot it was drawn from. The only difference is a new building under construction in the center.◊
• Now, Let Me Carry You: Yuko has ended up doing this for Momo twice.
  • In the most straightforward sense of the trope, in Chapter 13/Episode 6; when Momo got sick on the way to school, Yuko had to prop her up and help her walk home, then she took care of Momo for several days.
  • In chapter 44, Momo physically manifests as the dark form she took in a dream while saving Yuko from her nightmares, and suffers a severe case of Power Incontinence that drains her mana nearly to the point of dematerializing. Yuko saves Momo from disintegrating to her core, but Momo is still left even weaker than Yuko afterwards. In the following chapter Yuko then has to help Momo get to a magicially-charged spring in the nearby mountains (which Yuko had accidentally been to before when she fell asleep on a train) to recover her mana. She ends up having to get a weak Momo past a bunch of booby traps, and even has to fight a familiar guarding the spring all on her own. Yuko defeats it by crudely copying Mikan's magical crossbow with her Whatever Staff and haphazardly blasting it; this has been the only instance of combat in the entire series.
• Oh, Crap!: Yuko has this reaction when she sees Mikan for the first time.
• Once a Season: So far, near the end of each volume Yuko dives into someone's dreams or subconscious for one reason or another:
  • In Volume 1, she enters Momo's dream as a trial run for her power, and ends up accidentally cleaning up Momo's loneliness and trauma.
  • In Volume 2, Lilith convinces her to enter Momo's dream again, though this time she is much less successful.
  • In Volume 3, she enters her own subconscious to search for hints on Sakura's whereabouts.
  • In Volume 4, she and Momo enter Mikan's subconscious to negotiate with the demon causing Mikan's curse.
  • In Volume 5, she enters Honyu and Lico's dreams to find a way to keep the two from each other's throats.
  • In Volume 6, Momo lets Yuko enter her own memories to learn how Momo "saved the world" six years ago. The dream-diving session is then hijacked by Metako, who shows Yuko some of his own memories shedding light on Momo's Dark and Troubled Past.
  • While a seventh volume hasn't been compiled yet, Chapter 88 ends with Yuko planning to enter Anri's memories to try and retrieve a lost recipe.
• One Dialogue, Two Conversations: In episode 11, Momo tells Yuko inside her dream that she needs to "grill" her mother. While Momo meant that Yuko should interrogate her mother about her father's whereabouts, Yuko instead thinks that Momo meant grill her in the sense of literally barbecuing her. Once Momo arrives at Yuko's apartment, they continue their misunderstanding until Yuko's mother, who heard the entire thing, ends up clearing it up. She then fills the girls in on what happened in the past, such as Yuko's frail health, her missing husband, and Momo's missing sister.
• The Only One Allowed to Defeat You: This is the defining basis of Yuko's relationship with Momo. At the beginning, she saw Momo as a genuine adversary, out of the desire to take some of Momo's blood to break the curse on her family. Then she succeeds in getting some of Momo's blood on her ancestor's statue through an old handkerchief, entirely by accident, which does partially break the curse but also weakens Momo quite a bit. Even when they develop a genuine friendship, Yuko is still determined to get the better of Momo to show that she's a Worthy Opponent deserving of respect. She even worries that some other demon is going to beat her to it and take Momo away. It's still the case much later on when they have essentially become sisterly Heterosexual Life-Partners with both of them willing to die for the other. Although Momo eventually admits to liking Yuko, and Yuko's actions show the feeling is mutual, Yuko just can't be honest enough with her feelings to admit it.
  Yuko: Momo has been my mortal enemy ever since the moment I first laid eyes on her. I'll chase her to the ends of the Earth until I can finally claim victory over her!
• Opponent Instruction: Momo Chiyoda, Magical Girl, is attacked at school by Yuko Yoshida, aka Shadow Mistress Yuko, aka Shamiko. Shamiko's attacks are ineffectual against a girl who can stop a dump truck with one hand. Momo takes her aside and tells her she'll hurt herself if she punches with her thumbs tucked in, and advices her to pivot to put her whole weight into a punch. The overall effect is that Shamiko's punch does have more power to it, but she just bruises herself against Momo's hide. Momo decides to start a daily regimen of strength training for her erstwhile foe.
• Opposites Attract: Momo and Yuko could hardly be any more dissimilar. The former is tall, superhumanly strong and fast, intelligent and conniving, a servant of the Light Clan with a dark personality, shoots first and asks questions later, is left-handed, a loner, an orphan who never knew her biological parents, a Lethal Chef, lives in a fancy house, seems to have more than enough money to throw around, and almost never gets sick despite neglecting her health and living on junk food. The latter? Short, pitifully weak, dim-witted and gullible, a literal demon as pure as driven snow who's honest to a fault, wants everyone to get along, is right-handed, has good friends, has two living parents (though one is stuck in a box) and a little sister, is a good cook, lives in a tiny run-down apartment, has a desperately poor family, was Delicate and Sickly until she sprouted horns and a tail, and perhaps unironically is on the school's health and safety commission. And that's still not all. It's these differences that create their mutual appeal, though—where one lacks, the other excels. They complete each other.
• Perception Filter: Sakura set barriers across Tama to prevent members of the Light and Dark clans from interacting, to the point that Yuko is the only demon Momo has ever met in Tama. There are, however, some exceptions:
  • These barriers are not intended to be used on muggles, to the point that they became Fantastically Indifferent towards cryptids.
  • Yuko can interact with magical girls because Sakura's core resides in her, making her kind-of-sort-of one as well.
• Perpetual Poverty: As a result of a curse put on the Yoshida household, they have to subsist on 40,000 yen a month. On the day Yuko's mother revealed their demonic origins, they had run out of their rice supply for the month, and miso was intended to be their sole food item for awhile. This is also why Yuko lacks knowledge in many aspects of modern life, such as pre-sliced bread, using computers or smartphones, or going to a movie theater.
• Pest Episode: In chapter 46, a cockroach shows up in Mikan's apartment which freaks her out. Yuko is accustomed to dealing with vermin and offers to simply catch the roach and toss it out, but Mikan insists she deal with it without touching it. In the end, Momo has Yuko help her with making a simple bug-repelling magical barrier to deal with the roach. Momo has Yuko use her magic to activate it, but Yuko's magic is of such poor quality that it only lasts for several hours, so Momo and Mikan pressure Yuko to make dozens more.
• Poke in the Third Eye: Suika threatened to kill Yuko one day... from inside a Pensieve Flashback of Momo's, about a decade before Yuko and Momo ever met.
• Politeness Judo: While trying to invade Momo's subconscious Yuko can't get past a door specially designed to keep out demons. How does Yuko get through? By making a lunch box and politely asking Momo to let her in.
• The Power of Love: Although dream demons can easily seal painful memories, it's very difficult for them to do the same with memories of loving someone, as they're engraved on the soul, and the memories can easily come back with a trigger of some kind. As Joshua puts it, they can't defeat true love.
• Proper Tights with a Skirt: Yuko wears them with her school uniform.
• Punny Name:
  • The author swapped a kanji from the real-life City of Tama (多摩市) to 多魔市, or "City of many devils / demons."
  • Sakura's Finishing Move is called Sacrament Cannon. In Japanese, it's pronounced as "Sakuramento kanon." Seven Seas' translation names it Sakura-ment Cannon to avoid potential Lost in Translation.
• Quirky Town: Because Sakura set a series of Perception Filter barriers across Tama to prevent Magical Girls from interacting with demons, it is the only place in the world where they co-exist with muggles. The fact that muggles are not affected by these barriers means they have been interacting with them so frequently that they see nothing unusual in Yuko gaining horns and tail overnight, or a talking statue claiming itself to be Lilith.
• Quivering Lip: Yuko is summoned to a meeting with Lilith in her dreamscape, and Lilith tears into her about how pathetic she is, and then, when Yuko's lip begins to tremble, yells at her, "Don't cry!"
• Rapid-Fire Comedy: Like the manga, the anime has a lot of background writing, gags, and sound effects. Unlike the manga, you don't have the time to read everything at your own pace. Pair that with a usually fast-talking cast and the jokes come one after another.
• Relax-o-Vision: Momo removing the seal she placed on the Ancestor Statue that stops Lilith switching with Shamiko with a drill gets a picture of tulips and windmills over it, along with a message to please enjoy the picture.
• Religious and Mythological Theme Naming: Light Clan Navigators Metako, Michael, and Zikiel are named after the angels Metatron, Michael, and Zaphkiel. The Metako Guardian Entity that protects Momo's subconscious outright calls itself a piece of Metatron, so Metako might just be a nickname.
• Riddle of the Sphinx: In chapter 83, Lico, Ryou, and Ogura are confronted by a sphinx who asks them the riddle. Fortunately, since Ryou is well-read, she easily answers it.
• Riddling Sphinx: In chapter 83, when Lico, Ryou, and Ogura find a hole in Momo's kitchen, they descend into it and find a sphinx guarding the space. It asks them the Riddle of the Sphinx, which Ryou aces due to being well-read. Then it asks her for an essay on the roots of Egyptian civilization, making Ryou break out in cold sweat. Fortunately it recognzies Ogura, so Ryou doesn't have to answer.
• Rooting for the Empire: In-Universe, when Mikan drags Yuko and Lilith to the theatre to watch a zombie movie, Yuko and Lilith surprisingly find themselves enthralled— and rooting for the zombies.
  Yuko: Why don't any of the bullets actually hit the heroes? It's so unfair!
  Lilith: Just accept it, Shamiko. That's how the world works in movies.
  —later—
  Yuko: (crying) All the zombies and ghosts, even though their guts were hanging out, they really tried their hardest to overcome the ridiculous strength of the heroes!
  Mikan: That was the side you were sympathizing with?!
• Searching for the Lost Relative: The major conflict of the third volume is Momo trying to find her Adoptive Peer Parent Sakura. It turns out Sakura sealed her core in Yuko's body.
• Sensible Heroes, Skimpy Villains: When transformed, Magical Girls wear frilly clothes, as per tradition of them, while demons have stripperiffic outfits, and it's explicitly mentioned that skin exposure is essential to their powers.
• Shared Life Energy: After Sakura was reduced to a core, she entered Yuko's body so her magic could sustain the likely terminal child. Even ten years later Yuko will die if the core is removed.
• Shout-Out:
  • Ito stated the succubi designs were inspired by Ragnarok Online and Lilith's Ancestor Statue was a cute-ified version of the false idol from Dragon Quest II crossed with a Haniwa statue.
  • The Seven Seas translation lists one of Seiko's suggested titles for Yuko in chapter 1 as Ebony Dark'ness Absentia Demon Way.
  • In episode 1, in the hallway of Yuko's school, two background students chatter about YuruYuri.
  • In episode 2, Anri takes Yuko to the school's weight room for a workout, and asks "How heavy do you want your dumbells?"(seen here)◊
  • Also in episode 2, Yuko wonders if she can take her funding requests to Shark Tank (the US version of Dragons' Den).
  • In episode 9, the cast watches a documentary from THK.
  • One strip in chapter 37 is titled "Tactical Espionage Demon Action" and has a panel of Shamiko sneaking around inside a cardboard box. Also seen in S2 ep 5.
  • In chapter 47, Ryoko suggests Yuko morph the Whatever Staff into the Yitian Sword.
  • In chapter 47, the page where Yuko has to fend off 30,000 fake opponents conjured by Lilith is named "Dynasty Warriors: Demons".
  • The volume 5 preview/Season 2 Episide 7 "recap" is based on fellow Kirara manga series School-Live!, complete with an orange zombie dog. The anime throws in references to The Walking Dead and Night of the Living Dead (1968).
  • One strip in chapter 79 is named "A Not-so-Cruel Demon's Thesis." It involves merging the Good Angel, Bad Angel arguing whether Shamiko should eat a parfait into one.
  • In chapter 85, Lilith wears a T-shirt that parodies the Ghostbusters logo, with the Ancestue in place of a ghost.
• Sibling Yin-Yang: Yuko is easily exciteable and a bit dense while Ryuko is her whip-smart strategist
• Sitcom Arch-Nemesis: Momo and Lilith really don't get along after the latter regains the ability to speak. Their hostility mellows out somewhat after Yuko asks them to try and get along better...and Momo threatens to blackmail Lilith about her fear of the dark if she doesn't behave.
• Smarter Than You Look:
  • Yuko is surprised to learn Momo is actually a good student instead of just Dumb Muscle.
  • Lilith somehow manages to talk Yuko's teacher into letting her take the same set of final exams as the rest of the class. She gets the third-highest score out of everyone in Yuko and Momo's grade. Apparently she's learned quite a few things over the last 5,000 years.
• Smash to Black: The panel after Suika casually admits to massacring Tama's demons is pitch black to let the audience process what they just read.
• Soup of Poverty: At the beginning of the series, the Yoshida family is cursed to subsist on 40,000 yen a month (400 USD, based on the exchange rate of the time). On the day when Yuko sprouted horns and a tail, they have also run out of the rice they can afford for the month, with her mother saying they'd have to make do with miso soup for the rest of the month.
• Start My Own: Like Magic of Stella, another Kirara series, Sakuragaoka High School has a rather hands-off attitude on the establishment of clubs, as long as the club's objective can be fulfilled in the entire time the applicant is in school. As a result, the school has clubs for polishing human specimens, drafting anti-zombie manuals, or just playing with cats, while Mikan's proposal of growing tangerines (her namesake) is rejected, since it takes five years for the tree to start bearing fruit.
• Succubi and Incubi: If the Stripperiffic outfits and Dream Walker powers didn't clue you in, Lilith confirms that she and Yuko are succubi.
• Sudden Video-Game Moment:
  • In chapter 85, when Momo explains that she suspects the Whatever Staff is draining Shamiko's health points instead of her magic points, it's illustrated via an RPG stat screen.
  • Chapter 88.5 is a one-page, non-canon short where Shamiko becomes the protagonist of a rage game. Her first task is to get down from her roof without dying. She tries to call Momo for help, but Momo is only available after she finishes an eight-hour tutorial.
• Sugar Bowl: While some strange things seem to have happened in the past, and even though someone will remind you that most Magical Girls are merciless killers or that Demons can become extremely dangerous, all we ever see is a peaceful town full of incredibly nice people. Even the most ambiguous characters are merely mischievous or misguided, and they will always become friendly after their problems are solved. At least, up until volume 6 and Suika's introduction.
• Summoning Ritual: The cause of Mikan's curse; her father summoned a demon to protect his family and business, but did it wrong, and the resulting demon took up residence in Mikan, trying to fulfill its intended purpose by blindly lashing out at everyone around her when it sensed her agitation or distress. Yuko and Momo eventually end her curse; first they dive into Mikan's dreams, where Yuko uses her powers to stabilize the demon's existence. Momo then talks it into being willing to leave, making it possible to repeat the summoning ritual again correctly, but with a narrow window of time to do it. Thanks to a few contrivances, they have most of what they need on hand, and with some help from Yuko's friends and co-workers, they succeed in securing the remaining items needed quickly, summoning the demon out of Mikan and into a vessel in the real world.
• Surprisingly Creepy Moment: The manga is a light and fluffy tale that takes place in a world where the only real problems are comical misunderstandings, easily solved by our intrepid, peace-loving heroine. Then there's Suika, a genocidal monster Momo defeated ten years ago, that Shamiko learns about when she dream-dives into Momo's memories. On her defeat, Suika turns into a creepy shadow form made of black marker scribbles with two round, empty, profusely weeping eyes, announces she knows Shamiko has been dream-watching the whole time, and pledges to return soon and murder her. Oh, and vol. 6 has a full-color page of Shadow-Suika's face with a creepy Cheshire cat grin, surrounded by two dozen extra eyes, all staring directly at the reader. Good luck sleeping.
• Take Me Instead: When Yuko has her soul yanked out of her body and held captive by the Tama River's guardian spirit for littering the river, Lilith implores the sealed mizuchi to return her, and when it refuses, she comes up with a plan to rescue Yuko by sacrificing her ties to the material world to escape her seal, then forcing herself into the mizuchi's sealed space to pull Yuko out and take her place, all because Yuko had always treated her with respect and kindness. Rather than be stuck with Lilith, the mizuchi lets Yuko go, but exacts a heavy price from Lilith in return: pick up the equivalent of 12 kilograms of trash from the banks of the Tama River every day forever or die a painful death, and it gives her temporary vessel immortality so she can make good on the "forever" part of the deal.
• Title Drop: Occasionally, characters will emphasize "this street corner", including the anime's OP. The literal translation of Machikado Mazoku is "Street Corner Demon", but in the west "street corner" has connotations with prostitution so it was understandably changed, obfuscating the title drop.
• Transferable Memory: When Ogura meets the Sphinx in chapter 83, it offers to return some three hundred petabytes of data — implied to be memories — it's been holding onto. Thinking it comes on a flash drive, she agrees enthusiastically. Then it blasts the data straight into her brain, leaving her a limp, drooling husk on the floor.
• Transformation Is a Free Action: Parodied.
  • Momo's long transformation sequence has a timer to show that it actually takes no more than 0.01 seconds. When she manages to transform in 0.008 seconds, the narrator states that's a new record for her.
  • Yuko's transformation hasn't been officially put to a timer, but in the one instance in the anime where she is shown transforming without the usual Stock Footage Transformation Sequence, the process takes a bit less than one second of in-universe time.
• Unconventional Smoothie: During Chapter 15.5, Momo makes a protein shake for Yuko with "broccoli, protein powder, various unspecified pills, and chicken tenderloins heated until they turned into a mysterious colour by the magical girl." Momo transformed just to blend it, and the pink smoothie glows.
• Undead Tax Exemption: Since demons can be spontanously born out of mana or suddenly appear after thousands of years, the Bureau of Darkness can help demons file the paperwork to join a family register.
• Unsound Effect: In chapter 85, when Shamiko uses the Whatever Staff to make Mikan's door more photogenic, it shows the sound effect "Photogenic—!"
• Unsuspectingly Soused: When Lilith's first able to communicate with the Yoshida family, Seiko gives her a can of drink to shut her up. Lilith originally thought it was some orange soda... until she gets tipsy. Seiko explains it's actually highball, a Japanese alcopop.
• Unusually Uninteresting Sight:
  • Yuko's horns and tail rarely elicit more than a passing comment. The various barriers around town that keep Demons and Magical Girls from normally interacting do nothing to the Muggles of Tama; they see it all, and they have simply normalized the weirdness.
    Yuko: I grew horns and have to find and murderize a magical girl to undo the family seal. [...] Isn't everyone too nonchalant about what I'm saying?
    Anri: There are lots of weirdos in this town.
  • In Chapter 48, Mikan transfers to Yuko's class, and during her self-introduction, her class teacher mentions her status as a Magical Girl and her curse. Neither of these elicits any response—her classmates are more interested in her mundane life.
• Van Helsing Hate Crimes: Not all Light Clan members care whether a demon is actually evil or not and will hunt them down for points. It is also worth noting that demons in this setting don't seem to be any more intrinsically evil than anybody else, making their persecution little more than Fantastic Racism.
• Verbal Backspace: Momo admits she gave Yuko her Twitter handle to get to know her better...right before claiming that was just a joke and it's just to keep an eye on her. One look at Momo's face makes it clear that it wasn't a joke.
• Wham Episode:
  • Chapter 13: Yuko accidentally broke the 40,000-yen-a-month curse by putting Lilith in the same bag as a handkerchief having Momo's blood stains on it. Momo was massively DePowered.
  • Chapter 25: The Yoshida family's previous entanglements with Sakura, as well as the identity and whereabouts of Yuko's father Taro. Yuko has multiple Big-What moments.
  • Chapter 38: The reveal that Sakura fused her core within Yuko to keep the latter alive, and meanwhile Momo becomes Yuko's temporary vassal, thus in a sense falling into darkness, to save Yuko from a nightmare she can't wake from.
  • Chapter 76: We finally see Momo's Dark and Troubled Past and the manga does not pull punches. Momo accidently gave Suika the information she needed to murder many of the peaceful demons in living in town. When Momo and Metako tried to stop her, Suika used a wish card to break Metako's mind—which is why he only says "The time hath come!" now—and maimed Momo, causing the scars on her side. While she was ultimately defeated, her final threat to Yuko establishes her as the series' first real villain.
  • Chapter 77: Yuko discovers chapter 76 was only a part of what Momo went through, as she gets a look at her first meeting with Sakura as a Ukrainian Child Soldier, and learns Sakura asked Joshua to give Momo Fake Memories of growing up in a normal orphanage. As a result, Yuko commits herself to becoming a demon who can protect everything she cares about—herself, the town, Momo's smile—and improves her capabilities with the Whatever Staff, finally managing to turn it into a cheat weapon in the waking world, the Staff of Recovery.
• Wham Line: Suika gives one in chapter 76 that completely recontextualizes Tama Town, Momo's stoicism, and the entire manga's tone.
  Suika: I think there's been some sort of misunderstanding, Momo-chan. In recent times, demons aren't that different from humans, you know...? I didn't seal anyone away. Don't worry. I killed them to put an end to their suffering.
• What Kind of Lame Power Is Heart, Anyway?: What Yuko initially thinks of her Dream Walker power, but after she uses them to get a hostile magical girl and amoral fox girl to drop the Conflict Ball, she comes to the realization that her powers are a lot more dangerous than she realized. Then Yuko realizes that her relationship with Momo may be built on a lie because she's unwittingly brainwashed her in both the literal and figurative sense. Momo reassures her that she'd have come to cherish Yuko anyway, and she's never used her powers for anything but making other people happy, but a seed of doubt has been planted that probably won't be going away soon.
• What You Are in the Dark: Yuko realizes she could easily take Momo's blood while she's sick, but decides that it'd be wrong to take advantage of the situation. She ends up doing it accidentally anyway while treating a wound.
• Writing for the Trade: It seems like the author clearly knows that most volumes contain 13 chapters (volume 5 being the exception, with 12), so the plot-heavy content is always arranged to come towards the end of the volume—especially on the second to last chapter of each volume (or the 13n-1th chapter), which nearly always contains important plot twists.
• Yonkoma: Its format.
• You Didn't Ask: Lico never bothered mentioning the negative side effects of her magical cooking until it made Yuko sick. Even her own boss didn't know.