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

Grab life by the-NO NOT THERE!

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

After starting the morning with two scoops of groping his lady friends, Diablo gets taken to the local Adventurer’s Guild for power scaling and to start going on quests. Strangely, he observes there are fewer humans around than in the version of the world in his game, apparently due to a sociological divide. The three go to register and test both Diablo and Shera’s power levels, with Shera ranking a below average Level 30 to Rem’s Level 40, while Diablo’s energy overflows and explodes the scale. The commotion draws the attention of Sylvie (Leah Clark), whose choice of attire tells me that I am now on an FBI watch list. But more important than that, the three are allowed in the guild!

Their first assigned quest leads them to the Man-Eating Woods to face a Madara Snake and take its eyeballs, apparently requested by the Mage’s Association. The walk’s a bit of a drag, so Diablo suggests teleporting like he would do in the game, only to get dumbfounded responses. Five hours later, they’ve arrived in the woods, but no snake to be found. Seems it was a trap, as they are soon surrounded by Elf soldiers mistaking Diablo for a slave trader. They inadvertently reveal Shera to be a princess, and that the quest was a trap to bring her back to their home so she can marry her brother and give birth to an heir. Shera outright refuses to go with them and proudly proclaims ownership of her own life (#feminism)! Diablo then creams them all handily. Galluk, the guy who picked a fight with him last episode, arrives and gives away his tricking the elves into fighting Diablo and runs off with his tail between his legs, while Shera tells the other elves that she’s fine with her two friends.

So, the story’s wrapped up, but we’ve got five minutes left! What to do…

Oh yeah, how about we give Shera the same borderline hentai treatment that Rem got last week (with weird censoring on the groping even though they had no problem showing it at the beginning of the episode)! I mean, I guess it’s only fair they be on the same level, but…geez.

OUR TAKE

Okay, so…guess we’re taking our sweet time moving past the typical harem stuff, huh?

Well, let’s start with something positive that I noticed and appreciated, that being the explanation of the leveling system. While this is the world of a game to Diablo, we ARE meant to believe this an actual place to live for the rest of the characters, and throwing out gaming terms with no diegetic purpose would contradict that. I’ve seen shows like Akame ga Kill, which isn’t even based or related to a game, bring up things like Experience Points and Leveling Up out of nowhere, which just ends up being confusing to me as to what the purpose is other than the author’s gamer side leaking through. In this case, it’s used as a way of assessing power levels and finding a good fit for aspiring adventurers inquests. It’s not a huge detail (at least for now) and didn’t require that much thought, but it would be considerably more annoying if they hadn’t put that thought into it, so kudos to them.

The other big issue that I feel I should get out of the way now is the abundance of fanservice that pads out the episode, even going so far as to fill the last few minutes with it as a substitute for a story. I know, I know, I really shouldn’t be surprised with anime like this after I’ve been watching it this long, but when you have to come with SOMETHING to say about it, it just becomes way too obvious. To lay it all out there, I like boobs as much as the next person who likes boobs, but when a series feels the need to fill every other scene with cleavage shots on nearly every character, no matter how superfluous (like the three dog girls), you really have to wonder how much substance that series is supposed to have. Apparently, not much here. And I can’t help but notice that a scene of a character proclaiming ownership of her self-being followed by that same character throwing herself at the protagonist is a bit having your cake and eating it too.

Yeah, yeah, I know I’m not saying anything new here, but I figured I’d just get that out of my system on the second episode. There’s other stuff to cover like the introduction of Shera’s character arc and the problematic nature of Diablo’s overpowered magic, but I have a feeling I’ll have a lot of opportunities to bring those up. So, for now, pretty average harem shenanigans.