English Dub Review: The Misfit of Demon King Academy “15th Birthday”

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

Misha explains that she is not actually a real person, but an extension of Sasha that was made into a separate vessel in order to fuse with Sasha at the end of their fifteenth birthday. And as it turns out, Sasha’s awful behavior towards her sister was part of her own plan to sacrifice herself in order to make sure Misha was the one who lived. Luckily, Anos has a plan to help them both go back in time and make it so that they both are full beings, only to have this interrupted by Ivis, who says he was planning on using Misha’s fusing with Sasha as a means of making a vessel for his master’s return. Anos quickly defeats Ivis, who is no match despite receiving help from the god of time, and convinces him that he IS Ivis’ master reborn, meaning that this Avos Dilhevia person must be behind things. Anos has Ivis fake his own death in order to investigate the other Demon Emperors, but he also decides to continue going to school with Misha and Sasha, who finally celebrate their fifteenth birthday in peace.

OUR TAKE

This draws the first arc of the season to a close in quite the extravagant way, ending with time being altered so that both girls can live and one of the demon emperors turned to Anos’ side. Though while these are both things that are pretty significant steps forward in their respective plots, they’re also both pulled out of basically nowhere while also kinda adding to my initial issue discussed last time of whatever Anos is involved in not having any tangible tension to it. So now he gets to keep his harem and start his plan to reclaim his power, but…was there really ever any chance he wouldn’t? How is he growing or learning from this as a character? He doesn’t even necessarily need to learn a lesson or change but he seems so incapable of making a mistake at any turn that actual investment in this story is pretty difficult. And maybe this is purely an age thing, but I feel like I’ve grown past the need for stories about characters I’m supposed to insert myself into being who win by telling everyone else how wrong they are and make them tell him how awesome he already knows he is.

But hey, great for Sasha and Misha, I guess. They’re probably the actual protagonists to follow in this story with all of what I just said in mind…but then, did we just watch the end of their character arcs? Beyond this point, what will they do besides simply cow tow to Anos’ wishes and start a kinda sorta not really love triangle? I mean, we’ve still got nine episodes left, so there’s plenty of room to flesh them out a bit more before the season is over, but I can’t help but get the sense that this might be as far as they go before things inevitably fall back to being about Anos slowly gaining back power while being basically unopposed. I’m certainly not going to keep bringing this up every week, since that will probably be boring for all two of the readers who are actually interested in seeing reviews of this show in particular, but that’s how low the bar is set for me, so it’s actually not going to take much to impress me with this show. Especially since it hasn’t even quite hit the bare minimum quite yet. A new arc starts next week, so let’s see where that takes us.