English Dub Review: Welcome to Demon School! Iruma-kun “Balam’s Lesson”

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

Iruma’s secret is accidently uncovered by Professor Balam, who turns out to actually be quite supportive of having a human around, but is concerned for Iruma’s safety if anyone should find out. Seeing that Iruma is struggling with his studies, Balam makes Iruma special textbooks to better understand magic fundamentals. Also, he’s a former schoolmate of Kalego.

OUR TAKE

This week is definitely a slower pace than we’ve been used to in the past few weeks, mainly because there isn’t a very concrete antagonist or obstacle to overcome. The big test coming up is something, but it’s not really the focus of the episode, which is actually Iruma befriending this new professor character. Balam being an enthusiast of human world creatures is a neat quirk about him, kind of reminding me of Arthur Weasley from Harry Potter, and it’s nice to see him make friends with Iruma, giving him another ally who can look out for him. Iruma making friends is not exactly a surprise by this point in the series, but I have a feeling Balam is going to continue to be pretty helpful down the road. Also, he just has a pretty cool design, looking like some sort of savage Kappa that took dress tips from Hannibal Lecter, but also likes to write educational children’s books on the side. Seriously, I’m honestly surprised that’s not a side hustle for him. One of the students gets to be pop idol in her spare time, why can’t one of the teachers sell books?

Speaking of, I think that Balam’s books and how they help Iruma actually display a pretty wholesome lesson on helping to educate someone who might think they’re dumb. That lesson being that it’s not really about being smart or dumb, but rather whether or not someone is curious enough to learn. Having not grown up in the demon world, Iruma is naturally lacking much of the knowledge necessary for these tests, but it’s not that he is incapable of understanding this, just that he has been thrown out of his depth into a level of understanding that he wasn’t prepared for. Having Balam’s special books helps him to understand things like the fundamentals of magic which he probably wouldn’t have had a chance to understand otherwise. Similarly, Clara and Asmodeus give him mnemonic devices and phrases to help him retain this knowledge, and while he doesn’t pass the initial test, he does show great improvement, meaning that he will likely do much better on the main event. And we’ll find out exactly what happens there next week, but I guess since there isn’t enough material for an entire episode, we’ll also be getting a second half dedicated purely to shipping fuel, and you know that’s always fun, right?