The Misfit of Demon King Academy: History's Strongest Demon King Reincarnates and Goes to School with His Descendants, or just The Misfit of Demon King Academy for short, is my favorite new anime series that debuted in summer 2020. It isn’t really great; I feel that it’s an undercooked adaptation, in a way. But it executes certain things well enough to show its distinctive merits and be effectively addicting.
The plot follows the extremely powerful demon king Anos Voldigoad. Growing tired of endless wars, he architects world peace by sacrificing his life. 2,000 years later, he reincarnates in a society wherein the pureblood nobility that came from his bloodline treats hybrids – those who descended from demons who intermarry with humans or spirits – as lower-class citizens. Since he’s born as a hybrid in this new life, he experiences being at the tail end of discrimination – not that it affects him, as he does not lack self-confidence, being probably the most powerful being in this world and all.
Moreover, he also discovers that history was mysteriously altered sometime in the past. As a result, demon magic has grown weaker. But more importantly, demonkind is now expecting the reincarnation of the demon king Anos Dilhevia rather than Anos Voldigoad.
Thus, even though Anos immediately flaunts his tremendous power upon entering Delzogade Demon King Academy, a school that expects the reincarnated Demon King to come from its students, he gets labelled as a misfit instead of being acknowledged as the Demon King.
During the course of the series, Anos eventually reunites with his ancient, loyal subjects as well as gain new friends and followers, both pureblood and hybrid, from among his classmates. And with their support and help, he sets out to dismantle the distorted, prejudiced ethos of this current demon society and uncover the conspiracies at work that keep him from taking his rightful title as Demon King.
At surface level, The Misfit of Demon King Academy seems to be another self-indulgent power fantasy. And it’s arguably probably is. Like other such anime, the highlights are two things: a.) presenting various situations where it can showcase how overwhelmingly cool, awesome, and perfect the main character is; and b.) growing his harem of waifus. However, what makes it pretty distinct is it does this in a way that’s so hilariously over-the-top. For example, in the first episode alone, Anos kills someone with just his heartbeat – his freakin’ heartbeat! He then resurrects him and kills him over and over again until the broken opponent surrenders.
Anos is unimaginably overpowered and self-assured to the point of parody. However, another layer that makes this anime special is it plays these absurdities straight. Thus, it comes off as being either an intentional, brilliant satire of the genre or an earnest, extreme derivative that ironically becomes terrific because it’s so trashily excessive. Either way, it’s a genuinely fun and absorbing show to watch.
It even got to a point wherein I actually became legit invested into its characters, storyline, themes, power system, and lore. I might have considered it as something so-bad-it’s-good before this, but at that point I just thought of it as just good good. Actually, when one truly pauses and contemplates about it, the show really does have interesting elements.
That’s why I’m disappointed of how the season’s last two or three episodes turned out. Clearly, it tries to pack too much of the story into them, which proves detrimental to the production quality. The plot at that point contains a couple of superb twists-and-turns, but because of the undesirably rapid pacing, there’s not much time to let them marinate for optimum emotional effect. There are noticeable shortcuts in the animation that occur, too.
Thus, I believe that the story that The Misfit of Demon King Academy has delivered in its 13-episode debut season would have been much more effectively told if it had two cours to do it.
Nonetheless, in the end, it has entertained me well in general, and I am looking forward to a season 2, which hopefully happens.
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