English Dub Season Review: Welcome to Demon School! Iruma-kun Season Three

Overview

Based on the ongoing manga series by Japanese manga series by Osamu Nishi. The story further continues the adventures of the titular Iruma and his struggles to hide his humanity in an all-demon high school after the events of Season 2 where he managed to sort of move his misfit class to a higher rank, now him and the class are faced with the herculean task to maintain that status while facing new challenges along the way…

On the technical side, the series is animated by Bandai Namco Pictures and directed by Makoto Moriwaki, with Kazuyuki Fudeyasu handling the series composition, and Akimitsu Honma composing the music. NHK and NHK Enterprises are credited for production. With Fantastics from Exile Tribe performing the opening Season 3 theme song “Ride it out, On the Edge Ride it Out”, while the band Wednesday Campanella performed the ending theme song “Hotpot Boss”.

After the insanity of Season 2 following the Walter Park arc and concluding the First Term Saga story part of the manga, Season 3 is back to trail the Second Term Saga, starting with the Special Tutor Training and Harvest Festival arcs (following the mid of Volume 11 to mid of Volume 17 of the manga) of watching the titular Iruma and the Misfit Class follow through the promises of what it means to be in the ultimate Babyls class of all: the Royal One. The catch is that if they don’t raise their ranking status to Rank 4 Dalet, they will be kicked out of the class. Sounds pretty simple right?

Often times, I was left confused by the rules of how this festival worked in later episodes with the students going up against other schools, yet some episodes have them going up against each other to flex the newfound skills they acquired from various teachers. And while the show’s overall positivity and messages of friendship and determination remain heartwarming and uplifting. The animation is decent, characters are the same as ever with a new outfit sometimes. But now there’s more focus on the side characters this season than the previous ones, which is fine. They are quite interesting and Iruma still has the spotlight which remains some of the positives I can say about it. Because despite its charm, Iruma-kun Season 3 struggled with predictability.

The plotlines followed a familiar cliche formula, often resulting in a lack of surprises or twists. Additionally, the humor at times felt forced and cringy, relying heavily on slapstick comedy or subtle sex jokes sprinkled in when you expect serious moments to happen. Often when people read a manga or light novel first, they’d be first to notice something is missing in its narrative as exemplified by shows like Overlord and Rising of the Shield Hero Season Two. This is a big deal because up until this point, the anime has been consistently well-paced since the beginning, so there is no shortage of great content to adapt throughout its entire episodic run, and could’ve been handled differently.

Overall, this season was fine, but it can’t be sugar-coated that it was a step down from the previous two seasons. Mostly because of the pacing and the length of the Harvest Festival. You can tell that Season 3 had some level of effort put into it, but sadly, not in the places where it mattered. The later proceedings felt like they dragged for too long, but it did have some of the highest points of the series so far. I wouldn’t be surprised if the show was even greenlighted for a Season 4 since there are now new plot threads from the last few episodes that left things open-ended for future storylines to happen and I’d love to see how they handle them if season 4 does become a thing, but hopefully with better pacing and less cringey high school jokes.