In the fantasy land of Ente Isla, he was the most fearsome demon warlord ever. Scourge of mankind, defiler of the Holy Church, and commander of the forces of hell. But when a holy Hero rose up, shining blade in hand, he fled through a portal.... to our world. In the heart of the Tokyo metropolitan area, the Demon King once against plots his conquest. Only this time, he does it from the most unlikely place of all....
Hataraku Maou-sama is a fun, witty series of light novels centering around Demon King Maou. Once considered the epitome of evil, now he's an earnest shift manager who wants to conquer Japan by climbing the corporate ladder. Where did this contradiction come from? Is he a chunibyo of epic proportions? Has a genuine change of heart tempered his lust for blood? Or is he playing everyone for fools? This Prince of Darkness is a gentleman whose silver tongue and easygoing nature forges a truce with his bitterest foe, the Hero Emilia Justina who made him flee Ente Isla. Together, they and their allies get embroiled in a war that stretches to the heavens and shakes the pillars of the Earth.
In this series, the humor lies in juxtaposing the fantastic with the mundane. Maou starts volume 2 cackling about burning his enemies alive, then reveals he's grilling patties. His right-hand man Ashiya is a conniving master strategist who nonetheless makes a great househusband and spends most of the series arguing with his liege their household budget. It's unafraid to mix religious bureaucracy and fantasy heroics with a detailed conversation about getting a discount on electronics by pretending to be married.
Wisely, though, the series avoids dumping everything in our laps. A lot of care and thought was put into parceling out the plot and tidbits of Maou's past, and the way it builds upon plot threads from earlier volumes in a satisfying manner.
If it has a weakness, though, it's the actual writing. More precisely, the translation. For every great line like, "Her stores of holy force were like a can of baked beans compared to Emi’s fully stocked zombie apocalypse survival bunker," there's five clunky, awkward sentences that probably sounded better in Japanese. And all dialogue attribution comes in a paragraph after the dialogue. If a conversation involves three or more people, or if their voices sound similar, the reader must scratch their head as to who's speaking. Again, the missing Japanese honorifics probably helped clarify this. It feels like a translation, which isn't a good thing.
But if you can overlook that, there's a lot to love. This breezy spin on Isekai fantasy has a great cast of characters who play off each other magnificently and a surprisingly intricate plot about a war between heaven and hell that occasionally interrupts heated debates about how to squeeze the most out of your Socket City points card.
The Light Novels, vol. 1 - 5
In the fantasy land of Ente Isla, he was the most fearsome demon warlord ever. Scourge of mankind, defiler of the Holy Church, and commander of the forces of hell. But when a holy Hero rose up, shining blade in hand, he fled through a portal.... to our world. In the heart of the Tokyo metropolitan area, the Demon King once against plots his conquest. Only this time, he does it from the most unlikely place of all....
Behind the counter of McDonalds.
Hataraku Maou-sama is a fun, witty series of light novels centering around Demon King Maou. Once considered the epitome of evil, now he's an earnest shift manager who wants to conquer Japan by climbing the corporate ladder. Where did this contradiction come from? Is he a chunibyo of epic proportions? Has a genuine change of heart tempered his lust for blood? Or is he playing everyone for fools? This Prince of Darkness is a gentleman whose silver tongue and easygoing nature forges a truce with his bitterest foe, the Hero Emilia Justina who made him flee Ente Isla. Together, they and their allies get embroiled in a war that stretches to the heavens and shakes the pillars of the Earth.
In this series, the humor lies in juxtaposing the fantastic with the mundane. Maou starts volume 2 cackling about burning his enemies alive, then reveals he's grilling patties. His right-hand man Ashiya is a conniving master strategist who nonetheless makes a great househusband and spends most of the series arguing with his liege their household budget. It's unafraid to mix religious bureaucracy and fantasy heroics with a detailed conversation about getting a discount on electronics by pretending to be married.
Wisely, though, the series avoids dumping everything in our laps. A lot of care and thought was put into parceling out the plot and tidbits of Maou's past, and the way it builds upon plot threads from earlier volumes in a satisfying manner.
If it has a weakness, though, it's the actual writing. More precisely, the translation. For every great line like, "Her stores of holy force were like a can of baked beans compared to Emi’s fully stocked zombie apocalypse survival bunker," there's five clunky, awkward sentences that probably sounded better in Japanese. And all dialogue attribution comes in a paragraph after the dialogue. If a conversation involves three or more people, or if their voices sound similar, the reader must scratch their head as to who's speaking. Again, the missing Japanese honorifics probably helped clarify this. It feels like a translation, which isn't a good thing.
But if you can overlook that, there's a lot to love. This breezy spin on Isekai fantasy has a great cast of characters who play off each other magnificently and a surprisingly intricate plot about a war between heaven and hell that occasionally interrupts heated debates about how to squeeze the most out of your Socket City points card.