English Dub Review: How NOT to Summon A Demon Lord “The Demon Lord Act”

I can’t believe it’s not Overlord! Actually, yes I can.

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

Takuma Sakamoto (Eric Vale) spends all of his free time playing the world renown Cross Reverie using his Level 150 character, Diablo. The only thing that seems to irritate him in the game world is players who even seem to be coupled. Suddenly, he is transported to the world of the game in his character’s body by obligatory catgirl Rem Gaellu (Jad Saxton) and obligatory Monty Python “large tracts of land” joke Shera Greenwood (Sarah Wiedenheft). Apparently, the two have summoned him (or at least someone with great power) to use him for…something. Though despite their attempts to order him around, they end up under the control of HIS power, not that his lack of social skills makes this any less awkward for all parties.

Apparently, there are “laws of sitcoms” that spell in effect, because, by wacky coincidence, they all end up in the same room for the night. Though this does allow them all to meet up with Princess Cele-er I mean, Celeste, head of the Mage’s Association. She’s here to discuss matters with Rem, but Diablo’s summoning also peaks her interest. After some totally necessary bedroom hijinks, she confesses to Diablo that she has a demon sealed inside of her named Krebskulm (who is depicted with boobs because how else would you know she’s a girl?) and wants to destroy her.

And because we need to end the show on some action, Diablo trounces a bunch of mages who disrespected him. With that, the three adventurers carry on with their new quest.

OUR TAKE

It’s been a while since I dove headfirst into a straight up harem anime, mostly to avoid reminding myself of my crushing loneliness, but I figured it couldn’t hurt to view one from a critical lens for once. I guess I just wasn’t expecting it to be so shallow.

Isekai shows (stories about characters being thrown into another world, for those not in the know) are pretty popular right now, with three coming out this season, and this one wishes fulfillment at its most cut and dry. Diablo, or rather Takuma, is just some schlub who only plays games and has no charisma, but now has a chance to make all of his power in the game actually pay off while also surrounding him with a bunch of hot babes by showing even the barest amount of niceness. We’re only at the first episode and it wouldn’t be very fun for you to read me sulking about this mediocrity for twelve episodes, so I’m not going to write it off just yet, but it’s starting itself off with pretty much the most derivative of beginnings. At least the visuals look competent and there’s plenty of explosions and boobs to satisfy my primal urges, but I’ll need a bit more than that soon.

Unlike its more subversive peers in the Isekai genre like Log Horizon or Overlord (which has started up again this season), Demon Lord seems to be pretty much satisfied with sticking to the paint by numbers approach to setting up its world and its story. As I’ve said of Diablo, his hate of couples is pretty much forgotten now that he’s actually in a position to connect romantically with however many cute girls come his way. As for our initial two harem routes, Rem gets most of the focus this episode in order to establish the main goal of the season, and I’m curious where her character might go beyond “tsundere love interest” if it indeed does. Shera is nice to look at and all, but hopefully also gets some proper fleshing out (and might as soon as next week if the preview is anything to go by), but again, yeah, not a whole lot to work with here just yet.

And of course, we have the Opening and Ending credits that instill a great fear that I am about to summon Chris Hansen to kick down my door any time now. But until then, we have a pretty cookie cutter story which I will try to turn my brain off to enjoy, but unfortunately can’t if these reviews are going to make any sense.