Tag Archives: Hataraku Maou-sama!

Hataraku Maou-sama! – Episode 4

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Maou-sama! Last episode had a whole lot of exposition and worked hard to develop starting relationship dynamics between everybody except Maou. I thought that stuff honestly dragged the episode down a little, at least comedy-wise, but I accept that stuff like that kind of has to be established. So, now that all the story homework has been done, hopefully the show can cut loose and be fun and endearing and hilarious all the fucking time. Let’s get to it.

Episode 4

1:42 – This is the first time I notice the brutal irony of those classic derpy OP lines like “Put a smile on!” and “Your future’s waiting for you!” in the context of main characters working minimum wage to hold down a shitty one-room apartment. Ouch

Am I just projecting all this cynical class commentary here? I mean, the jokes wouldn’t work otherwise, right?

2:15 – Flashbacks?! Character development?! Be still my heart

3:15 – “The priest’s prayers will protect us.” Oh yeah, that was cynical class commentary alright. What was I thinking, doubting this show? It has about as much faith in modern society as I do

5:28 – She’s the daughter of an angel?

Okay, am I allowed to start thinking this show is actually smart, and does stuff for real reasons, at this point?

Because that concept gives me all sorts of ideas.

Like… her expecting to live within a just society where they are guarded by larger, benevolent forces, has now been replaced by her understanding that any peace (advancement) she gains will only be gained by her own hands, which itself is only possible because she was born into a position of importance. Meanwhile, her father, who was born into a position of no importance, is swallowed by the system and forgotten by its caretakers

Is the thematic relevance of that to the class-structure stuff on the human side too much of a stretch? It seems pretty solid to me

6:15 – Omigod, what is Maou’s backstory gonna be? Are we really gonna hit “we are all products of our environment, trapped within arbitrary and uncaring structures, and only through human connection can we hope to rise above?” Oh man I’m getting thematic poignancy shivers

6:52 – “Is that the Sasaki you’re referring to?” Yesss coherently weaving exposition into the natural requirements of their conversation yesss. It’s so easy to forget in a comedy (well, this episode hasn’t actually been funny yet, but regardless), but no show can get away with poor dialogue fundamentals. FUNDAMENTALS!

8:25 – I said in the pre-text that I was hoping the show could get back to straight comedy now, but this drama is all just… kinda… good. Hm.

9:30 – “My lord, please punish me!” Alsiel when will you stop being Best General

10:04 – Way too much dramatic tension here. Emilia’s coworker is gonna go crazy on her any second now

11:40 – Nevermind, it was an Emilia’s-character-arc moment. False alarm!

13:28 – I really love how Emilia’s default evil stare comes off with that silly-ass bandage on her head

14:35 – It’s weird, this episode isn’t really all that funny, but I’m still really enjoying it. I just like these characters, and think the dialogue is really natural and good, I guess. It’s also nice to watch a show where, even if there’s fantasy stuff thrown in, most of the runtime is dedicated to adults dealing with adult problems

15:21 – “May I unleash the Dullahan?” There’s a point

16:20 – This is awesome. They’re basically outlining the “humor” conceit of the show – that it’s ridiculous a dark lord would be living as a model working-class citizen – but because of the context this episode has provided Emilia, it doesn’t come off as funny at all – it’s devastating to her to have the force she’s built her identity around living in opposition to betray her expectations this way. And it’s actually working. What is this show doing to my heaaad

17:35 – Oh man, and now they’re taking it from the other side – sure, this show’s cynical streak casts it in terms like burning fields and murdering fathers, but the obvious parallel here is the callous obliviousness of the upper class to the realities of the system that supports them. When did this show get so driven and smart?!

19:30 – Oh, awesome. I was hoping they’d use Miki-T for something like this

And Done

Hm. That was really interesting. It wasn’t really funny, or… well it did have some good jokes, but it didn’t come off like an episode of a comedy at all. It was a slice-of-life/supernatural drama/character story/biting social commentary.

And a pretty damn good one.

I don’t even know how to feel about this. It doesn’t feel like the show we started with, but it’s certainly also a show I really like. Maybe this will be a brief arc before establishing a new status quo? Maybe the creators are wary of running their same base jokes into the ground with repetition, and are curving towards drama, theme, and character to give the show more staying power? I can’t even guess yet… but I’m still eager to see what happens next. They certainly have my attention.

Hataraku Maou-sama! – Episode 3

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Hataraku Maou-sama!

I get the feeling this will be the last episode of setup for this very smartly written comedy. So far we’ve established our base conceit, we’ve grounded our four characters in their world, and we’ve begun to explore the various dynamics between them. The foundations of a classic sitcom are all there – the animosity and begrudging respect between Maou and Yusa, the seemingly obvious rivalry between Asriel and Yusa, the constant shifting between hero-worship subservience and mother hen disapproval between Asriel and Maou, and the fawning respect Sasaki shows Maou. Based on that info, the only dynamics really left to establish are those between Sasaki and the rest of the cast – and would you look at that, the preview for this episode implied Maou and Sasaki are going on some kind of date. That promises some comedy, as Maou’s dead-serious commitment to his new life always does – but the other classic side of this weathered sitcom chestnut is the group of friends sneaking along “for his own good.” Will we get Asriel and Yusa bonding over how Sasaki isn’t good enough for their precious/hated Maou?

See, that’s the thing – a lot of the jokes and situations here are pretty reliable standards, but the characters are written so wittily and affectionately, and the execution of the jokes is so top-notch, that it just doesn’t matter. It’s like a jazz riff on a classic progression – we’re not here for the melody, we’re to watch excellent artists show us their take on it. Let’s get to it.

Episode 3

1:25 – Those action cutaways of Maou putting on his MgRonald’s hat and apron are a pretty great elevator pitch for this entire show.

2:12 – I kind of appreciate the fact that the whole OP being reused show footage means they put every single goddamn dollar into the actual production.

2:30 – Eva trick turned industry standard #754 – bad memories always find people in the bath

3:39 – “Sure, I don’t have a shift. Let’s talk!” Normally this kind of plucky male obliviousness is a symptom of bad writing, but considering Maou still believes capitalism allows for class mobility, from him I can believe it

5:46 – Welp, her certainty it’s a demon makes me pretty certain it’s our wayward Head Priest. A priest wanting to erase both the hero and the demon king… wait, could this show actually be about something?

8:00 – See, you’d think this show is a one-note joke, but it just keeps finding new ways to play with that concept. The main trick is grounding their theatrics in a variety of modern mundanities (meddle with the epic hero… by forcing her to bail them out. Insult Alsiel’s skills at a general… by mocking his inability to maintain a well-stocked refrigerator), but the way the two sides of this coin both bounce so naturally off each other and come up so naturally as part of their conversations and characters is just really nice stuff

8:30 – Acting tsundere about her right to kill Maou before anyone else does. I think someone invented that harem comedy in a thread here…

9:20 – Omigod we get a fashion montage of Alsiel dressing up Maou for his date. GET OUT OF MY HEAD, SHOW

11:54 – And here we finally are. Yusa runs into Alsiel shadowing them on the date – perhaps the entire point of this episode. Savor it

12:46 – Goddamn this dynamic is great. Yusa immediately goes from blistering rage at what evil deeds her nemesis may be planning, to resigned disappointment that his plans include no evil deeds whatsoever

14:33 – “No, waaaait…” as she defiantly… walks through an automatic door.

20:32 – A lot of this isn’t particularly great, but that’s mainly because they’re for some reason using this last quarter for a huge infodump of plot catalysts, as well as to set up the Yusa/Sasaki dynamic. However, I did like the dialogue both in their fight and in Yusa’s light prodding afterwards – which makes sense, since a show that can write characters well enough to make personality-based jokes work should definitely be able to make personality-based drama work too

And Done

Ooh, I really like that twist at the end. Perhaps three episodes in is a little too soon for Maou to get his powers back, but not his old personality – but they’ve skipped months already, and that’s just not what this show is about anyway – it’s about their current selves, not the transition to their current selves, and that’s honestly how I prefer it.

The infodump stuff about trans-world sonar and earthquake magic and blah blah blah was honestly pretty lackluster, but I guess if one artless, humorless exposition-spiel was required to set the board for the rest of the show, I’m fine with that.

Otherwise, the episode was fine. I don’t think it was quite as funny as either of the first two, but I think that’s mainly because Yusa and Sasaki just aren’t as funny as Maou or Asriel, and this episode foregrounded both of them. Hopefully, now that all four leads have been properly introduced, as well as the larger conflict established, the show can settle into a more comfortable groove and fall back on its excellent writing and humor

Hataraku Maou-sama! – Episode 2

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Good comedies don’t really lend themselves to storytelling and character-writing analysis (well, unless they’re Community, but sadly only Community is Community), but this one is still smart and distinctive enough to possibly warrant real posts. I’ll see how it goes.

Hataraku Maou-sama! – Episode 2

1:55 – It’s weird to see a comedy work so well off direction and pacing alone. Here, the entire “joke” is basically just the overwrought tribal/operatic soundtrack, but it works perfectly.

3:27 – The war against the Demon King enters a new phase. Its first casualty: Umbrella-kun.

5:45 – How does this work? One of my primary worries regarding this series was that there wasn’t enough material in the premise to support a full series – but them just playing their lower-class domestic squabbles entirely straight isfantastic. I think I’m just a huge sucker for dry, understated humor.

7:20 – Ashiel’s look of delight at being praised for putting sauce on tofu cubes is adorable.

9:09 – “All I need to do is keep excelling at this job, and soon I’ll take over the world!” The joke is capitalism allowing for advancement in economic class. 🙁

Also, music once again the MVP of this show, and everything Ashiel does is fantastic.

15:16 – So her house is somehow related to the presence of magic in this world. I see the stirrings of a plot here. Just need a couple more details now. 

16:48 – DULLAHAN, NO! When will this senseless violence END?!?!

18:33 – This show really knows how to ride that Girls und Panzer line of “matter-of-fact in the context of pure absurdity.” I really like how their argument seamlessly jumps from a magical sniper assassin to the two of them bickering about part-time scheduling conflicts.

19:50 – And now, Ashiel as overprotective father figure. “A hero? At this hour?” He gets all the best bits

21:10 – It’s nice that they respect her characterization enough to show her actually torn up over a situation this demeaning.

And Done

That was great! I was worried going into this episode that they’d pretty much played their own gag out, but the show has risen well above on the unlikely strength of its characters. Hero is still playing pretty much within the standards of her character type at this point, but both Maou and Ashiel have proven to be endearing comedy goldmines. This show has that genuine affection for its characters that all my favorite comedies possess; everything is funnier if it’s happening to someone you care about, and whole realms of jokes are only available if you already know characters well enough to anticipate and appreciate their reactions to new situations. Plus, it plays with its conceit incredibly well, because it takes their current living arrangement even more seriously than their epic fantasy one – if their current lifestyle didn’t seem achingly believable, nothing else would land as well. It doesn’t lean on any one thing (another hallmark of great comedies) – it’s just a set of likeable people who happen to each be two separate people living in two separate worlds/genres, which the dialogue, music, and direction all support.

I don’t think I found this episode quite as funny as the first one, and Hero still has yet to really impress me, but I find myself actually more satisfied by this one than the last, because I think it proves this staff can actually make this series work.

Hataraku Maou-sama! – Episode 1

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Hataraku Maou-sama! This will be the fourth show I’ve gone crazy on in the last 24 hours, and it’s almost certainly the most speculative. And honestly, it was barely on my radar earlier – two other shows I was interested in, Karneval and Photo Kano, have simply slipped off my radar. Karneval because all the comments here are like, “Whoa, this is pretty solid… for a BL distribution platform,” and Photo Kano almost strictly because retrobrigade, one of the bright lights in our community, made a comment that basically confirmed the sum of my fears. But I have my reasons.

I love comedy. I think it’s a critically under-respected art form, I think it’s goddamn insanely difficult to do well, and I think it can contribute to truly lasting, powerful, incisive, important, emotionally resonant things. I also think a finely crafted joke in the abstract is a beautiful machine, regardless of its power or resonance. Unfortunately for me, most anime comedies fall into the same routines they’ve always trod – heavy slapstick, wacky misunderstandings, extremely broad gags, refrains on single-note characters. All really easy, obvious, frankly tedious stuff. And yeah, there are good anime comedies out there, but when I think of “anime comedy,” I mainly think of a lot of shows that put me to sleep.

So, fair warning. The concept of this show sounds rife for great jokes to me (or at least is itself one single great joke that could be riffed on successfully for a while), but if this show is pretty much a standard anime comedy, this comment will likely get kind of brutal. I’m just a guy who likes a good joke, and thinks they are a fine topic for craft discussion. So let’s see what we’ve got here.

Episode 1

2:00 – Wow, this is some remarkable production value being expended to set up this conceit. A good sign.

5:10 – Wow again. They’re using this exactly as hilariously as I think it could be possibly used.

10:00 – I… pretty much can’t even comment. The deadpan gags, the overwrought narration, the urgent, pulsating soundtrack, the overall tone – it’s perfect. By playing this running gag entirely straight from their perspective, but oh-so-occasionally veering out and letting the cinematography/soundtrack undercut their self-seriousness, it is absolutely searing this joke. So far, this is a show I am happy to have exist.

11:03 – Ermahgerd that scene. “CALM yourself, Alsiel! WOULD YOU EXPECT ANY LESS?!” Why is this so funny.

16:00 – Amazing crazy smile.

Also, I didn’t talk at all about the immediate transition to their complacent life, because it just fucking worked. The show slipped immediately from taking itself seriously as a fish-out-of-water story about two pompous ex-demons in the modern world, to taking itself seriously as a lighthearted slice-of-life within the working class of everyday existence. Despite the huge genre shift, the tone remained consistent, and framing both the establishment of their standard of living and the new social dynamic between the pair of them as jokes to us that are far from news to them both smoothed that vast gulf of a transition and immediately attached the audience to the new reality, all while making great use of this shift for some cheap, reliable gags.

Another thing that these creators clearly understand is that one of the great strengths of humor in a show that actually cares about its characters is its ability to humanize characters without dissecting them. Because we’ve seen these characters act ridiculous in a consistent way in a variety of circumstances, it doesn’t matter that we don’t know anything about their pasts – their goals are clear, their personalities are self-evident, and, most importantly, we’ve seen them fail in ways we can relate to and empathize with. Empathy is the most important variable in character-driven stories (and yes, I’d argue that most of the best comedies happen to also be character-driven stories), and one of the easiest ways to create empathy is to reveal characters making fools of themselves in ways the audience can relate to. Done and done.

20:30 – And now they’re applying the stakes of an overwrought high fantasy drama to the life of a fry cook. The joke is fairly obvious – this one’s all in the execution. And man, does this show ever know how to nail its executions.

And Done

Damn. Really, really impressed by this one. In fact, I’d say that of what I’ve seen, this is easily the most impressive show of the season, at least craft-wise. RDG is also pretty solid, but it suffers from some generic elements – this show is both fairly unique and pretty much a perfect articulation of why this idea is funny. A couple important components comprise that, and the most important by far is its level of commitment. It wholly commits to the idea of these characters, and plays it so very close to straight throughout the entirety of the run. This is good – the idea is what is funny, and the more it sells the viewer on the reality of that idea, the better. Secondly, it doesn’t settle for generic gags – all the humor in this show is a natural extension of the specific characters and the specific situations they encounter. So many shows start with an interesting premise and then tell the same story/jokes as every other show (I dropped it pretty early, but from what I saw Nyaruko was a pretty standard example of this). This one goes deep on its “protagonist,” and most of the humor comes from his very funny and very singular interpretation of the world. Plus, it all makes sense – I can completely believe that someone from an absurdly unrealistic, good-versus-evil fantasy world would believe that the regional contest regarding Spicy Fries is the most critical battle in the universe.

I hope this show keeps it up. This episode was really, really good.