Saturday, November 5, 2011

It must be their demonic panache

because otherwise I can't possibly explain why I gave up on Mitsudomoe after 2 episodes and finished Yondemasu yo, Azazel-san in two days. Both of these seinen comedies border on gross for comedic relief, but somehow where middle-school triplet girls couldn't make me stay a bunch of perverted chibi monsters from hell did. Okay, one of them had Izaya's voice, but that sure isn't all of it! Maybe I prefer my butt jokes without kids, thank you.

What I liked about Yondemasu yo, Azazel-san is probably how they managed to serve some spot-on observations on human nature in a purposefully gross nature, and made fun of both characters and the audience. For example, there is this Belzeebub demon, supposedly a prince of hell who looks like a penguin (and talks in Izaya's voice, yes). In the beginning he mostly grosses you out, then you get used to him, then he shows some amazing princely potential (of the twisted kind, obviously - at his best moments he reminded me of fic!Dracos of the realistic kind) skyrocketing to some tragic levels and then he plunges back into a - quite literally - pile of shit. It's like the storytellers are making fun of you and your expectations and stereotypes in the first place while pretending to toy around with the characters.

Belzeebub in his penguin and princely forms. I like it how he essentially looks the same *giggle*





And somehow many characters managed to have some character growth withing 13 half-sized episodes. Sakuma, who starts of as a sensible yet naive college girl working part-time as a detective assisstant by the end of the series is halfway to the crazy and dark that all other cast are. She's turning (or revealing herself to be) quite greedy, manipulative, better at summoning and considerably less green behind the ears. The only one who doesn't change from minute one is Akutabe the detective. He is one helluva grim-looking expert on the demonic stuff, and looks like he just came from hell more that all the demons togethers. At one point I thought he might harbour something for Sakuma, but it seems that no, he was still mostly just the grim short-tempered boss he seemed to be.


Don't try to read too much into either the anime or my musings on it, and you might enjoy it. Just keep the kids away from it:)

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