English Dub Review: Welcome to Demon School! Iruma-kun “What I Want More Than Anything”

Overview (Spoilers Below)

Upon Iruma reaching the workshop to confront Kirio of his sinister intentions. Kirio reveals his plans to use magical fireworks to destroy the school and This is where we fall into another Anime Trope where the main antagonist/villain (In this case Kirio) reveals their entire motivation towards why they’d cause such anarchy. It turns out that the origin itself while short and simple, gets the point across that one bad day can warp your worldview and twist what people define as “Joyful”.

As the backstory further unravels, we also learn that one of the head-teachers of the council “Baal”, actually encouraged this behavior as he believed that the demons of the modern era are too nice & lenient compared to their barbaric & antiquated old ways which only encouraged Kirio’s plan to destroy Babyls as a symbol of their weakened society. But just when things seem decidedly bleak, Iruma seems unconcerned and calmly explains to him that thanks to his screwed up childhood, he almost never feels despair anymore, and to get the point across that they’re nothing alike, Iruma makes an important decision that involves breaking a promise he made to his caretaker/”grandfather” Sullivan…

Our Take

This was a good episode but not spectacular. We get a sad backstory on Kirio’s past as It seems that the emotional trauma of being looked down on with disgust and despair has twisted Kirio’s into a psychopath. To make things worse, sending him to a boarding school without giving him any sort of therapy or assurance that the pain would wash away someday didn’t make his problems go away: the problem of bullying against the weak, with Baal being one of them, dastardly influenced by the idea.

But despite how anti-climatic the episode came across, I think the only message I can take from this the most is the whole “Nature vs Nurture” debate and how it’s actually possible to move on from the pain of your past and to reject an unhealthy, toxic and antiquated philosophy. Even in the face desperation, Iruma chooses optimism and understanding thanks to his bad upbringing which also proves that even abused kids don’t always grow up with criminal behavior either.

Hopefully, this ends this particular arc since the pacing was so damn slow and we can get to something bigger and maybe more compelling that unravels some lore more interesting than this.