English Dub Review: Welcome to Demon School! Iruma-kun “Studying in the Netherworld”

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

Having now obtained the Royal One classroom to learn in, Iruma and the rest of the Misfit now have to deal with upcoming exams, which are more dire for Iruma because if he fails, he’ll go down a rank. Being a human, he naturally has a hard time learning demon knowledge, but eventually finds a professor teaching an elective about Netherworld History, Balam Shichiro.

OUR TAKE
And we’re off into another arc, this time about studying for a big test! I mean, that would make sense considering that this series takes place at a school, but it’s odd that it’s taken this long to get to an arc about that. It also makes sense that Iruma would struggle with understanding or memorizing demon facts, given that he wasn’t raised there and isn’t a demon. That’s actually an interesting opportunity for both him and us as an audience, as this provides us a chance to see some worldbuilding by getting into the nitty gritty of how the netherworld works, what its culture is like, and how it is both different and similar to our human world. We don’t get a lot of info about much of that this episode, though considering the point right now is to communicate how lost Iruma is, then it adds up. I imagine that once Iruma understands a lot more, then it will be also shown the us so that we also understand more. And given that this is a bit of an oddly paced arc compared to the two before this one this season, I think that will be sooner rather than later.

It’s nice to see that the major change of moving the class over to the Royal One classroom is sticking around, since that was the big goal of the last arc and you never really know how much of this retains from one episode to the next. I know that this series isn’t exactly episodic but it’s cool to see some continuity, since it makes me feel like binging the first season and being nearly halfway through this one has been worth it. We’ll see what this arc has to offer in terms of developing our characters, though this new teacher character is likely to be an interesting addition, especially in how Iruma is likely to connect with him as a human. Ugh, still gotta think of something else to talk about. I don’t know, this episode had a pretty singular purpose so it’s hard to stretch out any major points. Oh, it’s at least a little bit tense that Iruma might go down a rank and have less access to his powers, but I honestly doubt that’s going to happen. We’ll have a good reason for why it doesn’t I’m sure, but it’s safe to say there aren’t really stakes here.