Reviews for The Devil Is a Part-Timer!

Imagine being served a perfect steak. Just before you're about to dig in, the chef comes to your table and tells you he forgot to add the final touch and proceeds to dump an entire cup of salt and ketchup over your steak, walking away with a smirk of satisfaction after announcing "There, now it's perfect!". The ending completely ruins the entire series; yes it's that bad. It invalidates 20 volumes of wonderful character development, shoving down your throat an abysmal relationship that makes absolutely no sense in the story. How can the author be so tone deaf/unable to read the room? It's absolutely disgusting whatthe author's done to this series. It was one of my top 3 light novels, and now I wouldn't recommend it to anyone. I regret giving the author my time, attention, and money. He should be ashamed and apologize for ruining the series.

This light novel. Jesus Christ, how can I go about it? Spoilers ahead. I picked up the series when the anime first aired back in 2013. The premise was interesting and I liked the characters. It was the first light novel series I picked up. As years went by, I kept buying the novels after reading fan translations. The writing was fine and the character interactions were great. I especially liked the development of Emi, the main heroine, as she questioned everything she knew and became a different person as the series progressed. It was hard and still is, to find stories where the female lead isdeveloped so well.

For the past 20 novels, there's an obvious way that the story is probably going to end up. Characters were developed and expected to do certain actions because it just made sense and any good author would follow up with what they wrote in a logical way. Hataraku Maou Sama was a good read and I hoped it would continue that way. That was until news broke out about Light Novel 21, the last one, and its ending. Instead what we got was complete shit. The "Final Battle" was very anticlimactic and poorly written. Maou ends up dying and becoming human and officially dating Chiho after sidelining her for the past 20 books. He basically comes full circle and is back where we first found him in LN 1. You would hope something interesting would happen to him but nope, a subverted expectation, I suppose. Not a good one, though.

Maou's sudden relationship with Chiho over is the biggest travesty of this book. The author had so much development with Maou, Emi, and Alas=Ramus' relationship with a lot of it going towards Emi falling for Maou. As I mentioned before this came with a lot of internal debate with Emi questioning her beliefs in the Church and everything she has known and realizing she slowly fell in love with Maou. Yet none of this mattered because Chiho confessed her feelings to Maou first.

Chiho is someone I don't like but it was a gradual dislike. She's the middleman character that lost her purpose several light novels in and the author kept inserting her out of nowhere and forcing her to appear in every major event to keep her relevant. It's aggravating. She's not even the glue that keeps everyone together because that's Alas=Ramus. Chiho was fine when the novels were mainly a comedy and a bit of fantasy but as the series progressed to more Ente Isla plots, it became more fantasy and Chiho really wasn't needed.

But to make her relevant, the author gives her power that saves all of Ente Isla because why the heck not? :)

There was so much going for this light novel only for it to be thrown away at the last minute, leaving a bitter taste in your mouth.

In the modern world, Its not easy to live a decent life. You don't get a good life, you earn it yourself . Having job is not an option but a necessity . No matter who you are.. a middle aged man, a young man,a boy, or even the demon king..you need money . And our friend Maou here is no exception either ,as After escaping from a loosing battle in his world , He finds himself in this weird world called "Earth" and now needs to work as employ in a burger joint to conquer the world, Or rather to beable to get a meal for tonight.

The story might start of in the midst of a gruesome war between humans and demons, for the land of "Ente Isle".and of course With a lot of blood being shed and people being killed,however the way things progress, might just make you forget that something like this even happened.

So, the story itself is not really great .Even though things start good , It has little to offer beyond that . The book doesn't have a grand plot with lot of mysteries and plot twist.In fact, for the most part you yourself would keep wondering, what the book is even about.The plot progression and development are extremely slow, and at some points even non existent . But good thing is that the book realizes that and does not really the story part too seriously. The author knows the true strength of the book and focuses on what is important, that is the characters.

Its quite difficult to describe the character line up of devil is a part timer. All of them seem to have a certain charm about them and they fit the overall theme perfectly. Take the protagonist for example, The reader knows that he is demon king who had tried to rule the land of ente isle in the past, However his actions and behavior now, actually makes one wonder about his true motives. He acts, or rather, becomes a good, respectable and law abiding citizen and the only reminder of his true past is the constant complaining of Emi, the hero. The book shatters the image of demons we had in our mind and portrays them as something completely different.

The book , as mentioned before, is more of a character driven story and thus the plot progresses very slowly with very little development in each volume. But on the other hand, The author gives a lot of time on developing the characters ,And as we progress further, one notices some major changes in the personality and behavior of some characters, yes i am referring to Emi. However , none of it seems to be forced or rushed, but it rather feels more natural. For instance, Emi's hostile and violent behavior towards the demons changes to a more friendly and caring one, and the way all this happens , actually makes sense and is understandable.

There is also good time and effort given to developing relation between the characters . The relation between Emi and Maou was exteremely tense and they hated each other from the bottom of their hearts. However, through various small events, their relationship improved slowly and it has reached a point where the both have some level of mutual attraction towards each other ,and who knows, they might even become a couple. However, equal attention is given to other characters and relations as well, Like the relation between Ashiya and Rika also slowly develops , but its still something far from being romance. But, that is understandable as its not a romance story.

Now, its very difficult to describe the art and character design of the book. In one word, i would say its "cute". The illustrations are colorful, attractive and adorable. The character look nothing like what you would expect mythical creatures to be, and that in fact, fits the real theme all too well. They rather seem to be more attractive and adorable, especially Alas=Ramus, who just might be the cutest thing you will ever see in your entire life.

In conclusion ..its a good book with one of the most charming cast of characters. It has somewhat of a week plot, but the characters easily make up for that. There also some action, but its very plain and not really the focus of the story. There are moments when things get serious but overall , its really lighthearted .The plot progression is really slow and it might turn off many people who like more fast paced stories. But overall, I really enjoyed the book and it is something i would easily recommend to both newcomers and veterans of Light Novels.

Includes spoilers. The over all story was extremely engaging and fun to read, with the good character development... Except for the last volume. It was rushed (still a good story), and it did get a bit confusing during the last few volumes, but the point that ruined it was the ship war. I had thought the hero would definitely get together with Maou in the end, with all the character development and how most of the readers preferred hero over Chiho. Maou had fallen in love with Chiho for a kiss (which was done in the end of volume 20). I had also expected that Maouwould end up with Yusa because all the continents leaders were surprised when they found out that Alas Ramus was the Hero and Devil Kings child.

in conclusion the story was good except for who Maou ends up with.

After watching the anime, I started reading the light novel, and the series itself is really good. However, the author managed to ruin a part of the story in the final volume. In the end, Sadao chooses Chiho, and why is that so bad? It made the story bad because from volume 9 to 21, Chiho has almost no importance in the story anymore. When the story takes place in Japan, yes, Chiho is well-developed, but even in Japan, she was still secondary compared to Emi. But after volume 9, this became even stronger because the story takes place in Ente Isla, where the focusis entirely on Sadao, Emi, and Suzuno. But mainly Sadao and Emi, where they develop romance, closeness, friendship. LITERALLY EVERYTHING. After a bunch of things, Sadao becomes human with Emi's help, who saved him with a kiss when he died. Then he says he has no romantic feelings for Emi. BUT HOW? The author literally built almost the entire story around them, they even had a daughter. After being with Chiho, he opens a café with her, but they are still extremely poor and can't even afford their wedding, while Emi continues to stay in Japan, she is successful and invests in his café and even shares custody with him. The end. YES, THAT'S THE END OF THE STORY. THE AUTHOR LITERALLY RUINED THE END OF THE STORY OUT OF PURE PREFERENCE. IT MAKES NO SENSE, HE THREW AWAY THE ENTIRE DEVELOPMENT OF THE STORY. But apart from the ending, the story is good.

Hataraku Maou-sama! is an amazing series. Nearly all of it's aspects are amazing, and those that aren't don't detract from the series too much. If you are reading the story purely for the comedic factor, or the plot, and not the relationships between the characters, then I would recommend reading it. However, if you read it for the relationship between Maou and Emi, then I recommend stopping at around Volume 17, as opposed to completing the entire thing. So, to make it brief, the series has an amazing story, and, despite me personally finding the ending to be less than favorable, I'd still recommend itto anyone interested in something like this, if for nothing else than the story leading up to the ending.

NOT RECOMMENDED!! ***SPOILERS*** UNREASONABLE ENDING. NO RELATIONSHIP BUILDUP OR CHEMISTRY BUILD UP FOR MAOU AND CHIHO for their ending to be justified. Justice for Emi.it was a good read at the start but when you finish it and expecting emi and maou together because of many hints dropped by the author in their feelings with each other, and that expectation hits you in the face, well, you just want to throw this on fire and never read it and recommend it to anyone, EVER.

this manga/LN has potentials to be a good read and good romance because of the chemistry of the main protagonist as it was written by the author. But Maou still end up with the girl with the big oppai. smh. No hate for Chiho, but there is no justification in the story of her relationship/chemistry with maou. it just happens. something like that.

so after reading this review, its up to you to read it or not.

There are good series, there are great series, and then there is this which for the first 10-12 volumes felt like it was destined for greatness and then decided to slowly but surely go on a generational run of degradation which culminates in an ending so bad I physically felt sick and decided to give away all the hard copies of the novel volumes I had because just looking at them made my day worse. I literally cried reading the last 2 volumes, not because I was sad or because it was great but because of the sheer frustration I felt having to read theending with my own two eyeballs. If you are deciding whether to read this or not, just read the first few volumes and then forget the rest exist to preserve your sanity. If wasted potential had a physical representation then it would be this.