Iruma’s off to a bad start keeping a low profile, as he can’t seem to stop finding himself the centre of attention. But school is also a time for love, for some, and the student council president, Amari, begins taking lessons from some unlikely sources.
The best comedy comes from the jokes you don’t see coming. I would argue that the second best comedy comes from the jokes you can see coming a mile off and are still funny anyway. It’s the latter scenario that this volume trades in and makes for a good laugh for the reader.
There’s no question that the Amari portions of the story are the best - the second she said she had forbidden tomes about humans I was thinking it was going to be shojo manga and boy was that a great reveal. I am a big sucker for manga-in-a-manga, so that was me sorted.
The fake manga, First Love Memories, is perfect because it perfectly nails the tropes that then start showing up in this section with Amari . I also love the conceit that none of the demons can read Japanese, so Iruma is quickly pressed into service doing narration.
This then pays off even further at the end of the volume when they have a fake intro page for First Love Memories that details the series’ ostensible plot, which turns out to be absolutely insane. That made me laugh just from the splash of absurdity.
The other obvious joke comes when Iruma decides to rank up and the method is based on competing in an ancient demonic battle that quickly has the edges sanded down to reveal that it’s just basic old dodgeball. As if that’s safe in the real world, let alone one where demons are involved.
This arc is fitfully amusing, but it really feels like the set-up for something that doesn’t quite measure up to its potential. Iruma’s training with Opera is probably the most enjoyable part of the whole thing, but the game proper is kind of… just there. The messaging is good, just not the execution.
I like how the story is going out of its way to have something interesting to say in general, actually. I really enjoyed Amari in general (her love of shojo is… very relatable), but the way she pushes Iruma to think that he can actually want something for himself for once in his life was a really solid character moment for both of them.
And we still have a full class we have yet to meet, some of whom could use such small things as names or identities, but I really enjoyed having Az and Clara back around. Even if Clara has minimal going on with the main plot, she is often freewheeling chaos in the background. Normally that would drive me crazy, but somehow this series manages it.
I think if I had to describe the feel of the manga right now, it would be ‘chummy’. It has a certain ‘check in with some friends and see what they’re up to’ that makes it really easy to just chew through a volume. And that also carries it when the jokes and plotting are just hitting ‘okay’ levels.
3.5 stars - one brilliant section, one okay section, some smaller stuff. I just won’t be rounding up because the first volume was funnier. This is still a really enjoyable series, however, and I like the way it’s setting itself up for a nice long run that I can happily take for what it is.