Anime: Isekai Maou to Shoukan Shoujo no Dorei Majutsu

• If you couldn’t tell from the (ridiculously long) title, Isekai Maou to Shoukan Shoujo no Dorei Majutsu, or “How Not to Summon a Demon Lord” in Shakespeare’s language, is a pretty generic anime. It’s about a socially awkward and shut-in NEET who is summoned into his favorite MMORPG as his character, an overpowered self-proclaimed demon lord known as Diablo. The only thing that’s “new” here is that the protagonist doesn’t die at the start of the series, but is instead summoned into the game’s world without any explanation by a cat-girl named Rem and a female elf with huge jiggly boobs named Shera.
  The technical aspects
  Landscapes and buildings in this anime are generic, they’re the kind of stuff you can find in any garbage isekai or crypto-isekai. Though they don’t look ugly, they aren’t that well drawn, except maybe in the first episode. The character designs are… very meh. Some are decent, like Shera and Rem, as they fulfill their purpose of being cute, but most of them (Celestine, Emile, Galford and others) are extremely lazy. Take the protagonist Diablo for example: he has the generic video game demon character design, meaning he’s just a normal human with small horns on his head (in his case, they are fake) and some weird tattoo on his face, much like the demons in Tensei Shitara Slime Datta Ken and the demon lord in Hataraku Maou-sama! At least he look somewhat like a demon lord, contrary to some series where the “demon lord” is just a regular-looking human with overpowered abilities. There’s also the usual bullshit where males of the evil race are monsters and the females are human females but they have horns and pointy ears – they wouldn’t be fuckable if they were monsters, huh? As usual, magic in this anime is mostly just cheap and ugly magic circles. The animation is okay most of the time, though there are some moments with very little actual animation, and there can be inconsistencies in the characters’ faces.
  Sound-wise, the background music isn’t good, sometimes even bad. Same for the generic opening. I’d say that the voice-acting is mostly good, except from Shera’s irritating voice.
  It’s an ecchi
  So our protagonist is summoned into his favorite game Cross Reverie (light novel writers stop using random foreign words challenge) by a cat-girl and an elf, who both cast an enslavement spell on him to make him their summon, but the spell is reflected by one of Diablo’s skills, and the two girls are turned into his slaves. You can see where this is going. This anime is a ecchi of the harem type, with the usual stuff like the protagonist sharing a bed with his two slaves, ear nibbling, boob fondling, skimpy clothing for almost all female characters (Rem, Shera, the guild master, the slave trader, Edelgard, Klem), jokes about boobs’ size, suspicious camera angles, and bath scenes with the girls groping each other.
  Is the ecchi well done? Since it is very predictable and makes the female characters uninteresting, ecchi is always bad. But in this anime, the ecchi elements are surprisingly decent, at least for the first half of the series. After that it gets more and more stupid, as the series attempts to justify the ecchi elements with the plot: touching the girls’ breasts replenishes magic, staring at Shera’s boobs allows Diablo to make potions, and to resurrect the demon lord Krebskulm who is kept inside Rem, Diablo has to finger her – yeah!
  There are rare moments where the comedy is decent
  … with Emile Bichelberger’s appearances, for example, but only in the few early episodes, as the series gets more serious after that – serious meaning cheesy and boring stuff about friendship and the like. One thing that is quite funny to see in the few early episodes is that, being a socially awkward incel, the protagonist has to role-play his demon lord character to be able to talk to people.
  Sadly, this gets repetitive quickly
  Not only this, but as the series progresses, Diablo speaks less and less like a demon lord, and more and more like your average otaku protagonist, saying sappy lines about friendship, making your own choices and so on. In short, Diablo is as much of a demon lord as Maou Sadao in Hataraku Maou-sama!, meaning he’s not a demon lord at all. In the entire series there is not a single time where he acts like an actual demon lord, except maybe from one particular moment in ep.4. Most of the time he helps people, saves his friends, fights bad guys, is idealist, and spares his enemies – even if they tried to rape and kill his friends!
  The protagonist’s actions are incoherent
  In ep.4 Diablo fights a Fallen (the Fallen being the bad guys of the series) who tried to kill Rem, since he is overpowered he has no trouble defeating him, and then he kills him in a really painful manner to punish him for harming his friend. But later in the series, when he defeats the Elven king who tried to rape Shera, Shera makes Diablo spare him because “he’s family”… Seriously? Same thing for Galford who attempted a goddamn genocide. Same thing for Edelgard and Alicia who tried to bring back Krebskulm, the true demon lord of Cross Reverie. Same thing for the demon lord Krebskulm, who is forgiven for her past crimes since she is actually just a normal loli. Yeah let’s keep a half-resurrected demon lord around, there’s no way that could go wrong – spoiler: it went wrong!
  This is not the only thing that’s inconsistent in Diablo’s actions. Coming back to the moment where Shera’s brother, the Elven king, tries to rape her, he first brings her back to the Elven kingdom by hypnotizing her. When this happens, Diablo, who knows that she’s being hypnotized, goes to bed and cries like a little bitch instead of doing something to stop her brother. He is overpowered and knows what’s happening, he could easily beat him up and force him to release her, but he doesn’t. Why? Because the night before he had a dream about how lonely he was in his childhood. Ridiculous! I mean, if Diablo just starts acting like the average friendless otaku, there’s no point in watching the series anymore.
  Another annoying thing in this series is the names
  I already mentioned earlier that the name of the game was completely random: “Cross Reverie” – why not “Square Cauchemar” while we’re at it! A random english world and a random french that the author put one after another, probably because he thought that it would sound cool… it doesn’t you dumb fucking cretin. The names in general are random. Some sound German, like Krebskulm, some are Anglo-American like Chester Ray Galford and Greenwood, and some are french, like Celestine Baudelaire (you know, like the poet) and Emile Bichelberger. As a french person I can tell you that these names sound ridiculous, and that hearing them made by ears bleed.
  The world-building is plain generic
  There’s little development. There’s only two countries, and everything happens either in Faltra (basically the starting town of the game) and its surroundings or in the Elven kingdom. It’s a MMORPG world, so you have the usual stuff that you find in any isekai or crypto-isekai, with video game mechanics like classes, adventurer’s guild, quests, summons, levels, skills, MP and so on. Nothing new or interesting.
  Yet again, pedophilia
  Coming back to Krebskulm / Klem, she’s added to Diablo’s harem right after her resurrection, and Shera invites her to join her and Diablo in the bed, because you know, having sexual intercourse with children is cute and wholesome, apparently. And when Diablo enslaves her with a spell, he has to kiss her. She’s always nearly naked, by the way. I don’t care that she is 3000-year old or some other bullcrap, it doesn’t change the fact that she looks and acts like a child.
  The protagonist
  I won’t talk about Diablo’s personality much, as he is just your usual isekai male protagonist. It is established from the beginning of the series that he is overpowered, as his level is super high, he has overpowered equipment and skills like magic reflection, and so you know that he is going to win any fight with little to no trouble, whether it be against an army of Fallen, the ruler of the town, or the actual demon lord. He defeats most of his enemies in a matter of a dozens of seconds, one or two minutes at most, except from Krebskulm, whom he defeats with the power of friendship (gah!).
  The other characters aren’t much better
  As in any ecchi, female characters exist purely to be cute, sexy, or just a walking fetish, and as a result they are bad characters. This is the case for Shera, the elf that has huge jiggly boobs (in anime, female elf equals huge boobs if you weren’t aware), that’s her only personality trait. Ah, no, actually she’s also childish and has an irritating high-pitched voice… ugh. Her background is also pretty shit. She’s a princess who wants to be an adventurer because “blah blah blah freedom blah blah blah follow your dreams”… you get the idea. Even her dream is ridiculous: she wants to open a café with Rem and Diablo!
  Then you have the cat-girl, Rem. A slightly less shit character because she has an actual objective and a better background, but she’s still mostly here to be Diablo’s plaything.
  Both of these girls are too weak to fight by themselves, but thankfully for them Diablo is always here to save them.
  The demon lord Krebskulm / Klem is just your average loli, she even has the moe face expressions and the chibi face at some moments. Because of her incomplete resurrection she forgot her memories and how to use her demon lord powers, and so instead of acting like an actual demon lord and killing people, she just wants to eat biscuits with Shera, with whom she sings a “biscuit song”… This is just stupid and unfunny.
  The bad guys are even worse. Shera’s brother is cartoonishly evil. He is just your typical garbage anime villain that is easy to hate because he is a rapist with the generic anime psycho face and the generic evil laugh. Same thing for Saddler, the paladin of the church (or something like that, I didn’t pay much attention to the lore of this generic MMORPG world), who is also an evil psychopath with an evil smile who loves to torture and kill, but this one thinks he acts for good and claims he is god, constantly spouting nonsense about salvation and whatnot.
  Verdict
  This is a very generic series with nothing remotely good or new in the setting, the story, the characters, the animation or the music. There are only three things that aren’t completely garbage, namely: the protagonist role-playing a demon lord, the very rare comedy elements, and the ecchi elements, which are decently done, but are not good enough to make the series worth watching. While it is an easily watchable show, it belongs to the trash can.

Review
Isekai Maou to Shoukan Shoujo no Dorei Majutsu is yet another light novel-based show with a ridiculous long name. In essence, it could be said it is simply yet another light novel-based show, period, because it utterly oozes the very essence of this concept. Everything you have seen in modern adaptations is here. Everything.

Doreima (for short, because fuck these long names) starts with a comical flick. It picks a random japanese guy and puts him inside an MMO of sorts without any warning in the guise of his in-game character, Diablo. He is damn powerful and well-equiped though, and as the two summoners from the MMO attempt to cast an enslavement charm on him, the spell is reflected and the two end up being his slave in turn. Yes. Diablo now has a flat-chested tsundere and an elf with massive boobs under his command.

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1. Yes, it’s all there, you see?
   Stuck in a game? Yes. Random japanese with anti-social issues? Yes. Powerful character? Yes. Girl-magnet attractor even though he is timid? Yes. MMO elements at every corner? Yes. Let us not forget the long name too. There are plenty of the modern elements present in every fucking light novel around. It’s sad to see that. The premise can be a bit funny, but an instant analyzing the show and you get that sensation of being in front of something you’ve already seen. I mean, think "Show about a guy stuck in a MMO world with an overpowerful character" and you can only be thankful it is not a "Show about an overpowerful guy in a magic-related school".
   
   But this time it is an ecchi
   Well, in fact, it starts pretty heavy in this department, with a lot of bizarre ecchi moments that go beyond the contemporary shyness of teens. Diablo could issue commands to his two slaves, but he doesn’t even need to do that as he got an imbued girl-magnet in his ass. Those two girls will swarm over him, and at some moments he will act with a little more perversion than the average otaku lead.
   
   And that’s the heart of the show
   Diablo or random japanese guy? Most of the comedy aspect of this lingers on the fact that Diablo randomly acts like an evil overlord or like a shy japanese teen. It gets some funny moments early on, but it gets old quite quickly. The same can be said about the ecchiness too, as there is a wide gap without the super-horny stuff presented in the first set of episodes.
   
   It happens for the sake of... plot?
   When not masturbating his girls or freezing in front of them, Diablo is doing quests as an adventurer with a level far above every other entity in this world. Yes. Overlord all over again, although instead of giving an idea of world-conquest we now have an idea of slave-hoarding, much like what happened in Death March during the previous season. Along with questing comes the fact that Rem, one of the slaves, is hosting the soul of the new Demon Lord of the MMO and requires Diablo’s help to quell it.
   
   There are some side-questing too in an attempt to give more reason for the elven slave, Shera, to exist, as well as some other girls that come to form the harem around Diablo. It’s a decent medieval fantasy fare if you compare with what is available in the anime industry, but sadly it is boring because Diablo is said from the very beginning to be so powerful nothing can be a challenge to him. Evil lords and mages, surprise monster attacks, and greedy nobles seems a waste of time more than an attempt to develop the cast.
   
   Yet...
   For an ecchi, the horny early and late parts do a good job and the basic plot at least gets things moving from episode to the next. There is a great help in the art department, which makes generic characters look sharp and deliver the ridiculous soft-porn scenes with enough spice and expression. Nothing, however, breaks any grounds or even tries to do so. Perhaps turning this into straight-on hentai may have been better if it kept this quality.
   

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Comments
Okay. I just finished writing this review and decided to take a look at the one I did for Death March a few months ago and... damn. I certainly could simply switch the anime title and you would never know the difference. Doreima is not simply the very concept of recent light novels, but also its execution and style. There is nothing new here, nothing to break the barrier of a genre with a lot of walls such as the "guy in magic school".

It’s sad to see that even when the show manages to be entertaining. Similar shows are doomed to exist, but these recent trends of picking the same tale and repeating it over and over with slightly different designs and backgrounds is a waste of talent and creativity of the industry.

Anyway, if you enjoyed Death March, maybe a bit of Overlord, or Smart Phone, you can have your deal of fun, but that’s it.