Maoyuu Maou Yuusha

Fifteen years have passed since the war between humans and demons began. Dissatisfied with their slow advance into the Demon Realm, the Hero abandons his companions to quickly forge ahead towards the Demon Queen's castle. Upon his arrival at the royal abode, the Hero makes a startling discovery: not only is the Demon Queen a woman of unparalleled beauty, but she also seeks the Hero's help. Confused by this unexpected turn of events, the Hero refuses to ally himself with his enemy, claiming that the war the demons have waged is tearing the Southern Nations apart.

However, the Demon Queen rebuts, arguing that the war has not only united humanity but has also brought them wealth and prosperity, providing evidence to support her claims. Furthermore, she explains that if the war were to end, the supplies sent by the Central Nations in aid to the Southern Nations would cease, leaving hundreds of thousands to starve. Fortunately, she offers the Hero a way to end the war while bringing hope not only to the Southern Nations, but also to the rest of the world, though she will need his assistance to make this a reality.

Finally convinced, the Hero agrees to join his now former enemy in her quest. Vowing to stay together through sickness and health, they set off for the human world.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

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Adaptation:	Maoyuu Maou Yuusha
Summary:	Maoyuu Maou Yuusha: Kono Monogatari wa, Niku dake de wa Nai no ja!

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Characters & Voice Actors

Maou

Main

Koshimizu, Ami
Japanese

Yuusha

Main

Fukuyama, Jun
Japanese

Onna Kishi

Supporting

Sawashiro, Miyuki
Japanese

Onna Mahoutsukai

Supporting

Fukuen, Misato
Japanese

Maid Ane

Supporting

Tomatsu, Haruka
Japanese

Maid Imouto

Supporting

Touyama, Nao
Japanese

Maid Chou

Supporting

Saitou, Chiwa
Japanese

Rou Yumihei

Supporting

Ginga, Banjou
Japanese

Karyuu Koujo

Supporting

Itou, Shizuka
Japanese

Seinen Shounin

Supporting

Kamiya, Hiroshi
Japanese

More staff

Staff

Ishiguro, Tatsuya

Producer

Hayashi, Youhei

Producer

Morijiri, Kazuaki

Producer

Miyajima, Kouhei

Producer

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Opening Theme

"Mukai Kaze (向かい風)" by YOHKO (eps 1-11)

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Ending Theme

	1: "Unknown Vision" by Akino Arai (eps 1-10)
	2: "Mukai Kaze (向かい風)" by YOHKO (eps 12)

Reviews

Mar 29, 2013

Stellio

Recommended

The problem with creating a historical anime is frequently similar to that of adapting a manga or video game: oftentimes, the author has to resort to filler or fan-service materials to clumsily meet the airing requirements for shows. However, an axiom that directors ought to familiarize themselves with is that quality is invariably better than quantity.

Thankfully, this inference only applies to certain aspects of Maoyuu Maou Yuusha, a recent adaptation of the original light novels under the same name.

Set in a time period of gruesome wars to political corruptions, Maoyuu depicts a fantasy world where humans and devils are fighting for the ultimate authority, while ...

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Apr 30, 2013

kekekeKaj

Mixed Feelings

The success of "Spice and Wolf" probably came as a surprise to most. Who'd have thought a dialogue-heavy fantasy anime about economics on the surface but powered by the character chemistry underneath would sell, right? But sell it did, and some people must have extrapolated that there's a under-tapped market for such an anime, because the next thing you know, along comes "Maoyu Maou Yusha", a show so blatantly similar to "Spice and Wolf" (the fantasy settings, the economic lectures, moe heroine sporting ginger hair and unusual strength of character and intelligence, etc etc) that people immediately started labelling it "Spice and Wolf with Tits". ... If you're wondering where the "tits" part comes in, it's probably because some people also speculated that the "Spice and Wolf" formula could be improved upon by providing the heroine with a pair of giant knockers to shake around in front of the screen at every opportunity.

But an improvement it ain't. And by sharing so many things with "Spice and Wolf" (including a big chunk of the staff), "Spice and Wolf with Tits" - or just SaWT for short - naturally invites comparisons with the material that inspired it. Alas, it's a comparison which ultimately does SaWT no favours because it falls so far short. But perhaps I'm being overly harsh on the show; it does deserve plaudits for putting some interesting twists into the age-old humans vs demons script.

The show starts with humans and demons at war with each other, and the Hero - literally named "Hero" - storming the demon king's castle solo to try and end the war. The demon king (and guess what the demon king is called) surprisingly turned out to be an attractive girl with big bouncy breasts instead of a giant frothing monster with razor fangs. What also surprised Hero was her personality: she spoke a remarkable amount of sense, and, with a few well-chosen arguments, demolished the pre-conceptions the Hero had regarding humans, demons, and the nature of the war. Bewitched by Demon King's silver tongue and hypnotised by her jiggling assets, Hero agrees to co-operate with her mission to set the world to rights with wisdom rather than wars.

SaWT started a little rough, but its concept got me interested enough to continue watching. Most of the first half helped maintain my interest, mostly with the way Demon King went about changing the world through her learning, introducing new technologies, new methods of doing things and new ways of thinking. And it's this, and not the interaction between the main leads that's the focus of SaWT. But that's not a bad thing, because while the nuanced interaction between the protagonists excels as one of the greatest strengths of "Spice and Wolf", that same aspect is one of greatest weaknesses of SaWT. I realise things are supposed to be a bit awkward between the ridiculously shy leads, but the insipid small-talk and overblown romance cliches is a combination cringe-worthy enough to embarrass a third-rate romance novelist.

While showing some initial promise, the show soon started falling apart. SaWT has a major problem of being overly self-conscious of what it's trying to do, and thus very little of what it does feels natural. Speeches about the ways of the world is almost condescendingly delivered through long expositions that's aimed more at the viewer than the other characters. Then there are Demon King's inventions: she starts off introducing things like crop rotations methods, but soon began inventing one major technology after another, like some kind of Thomas Edison raised to the third power. What's more, her contributions span across ludicrously diverse fields, from agriculture to medical science to navigation, just to name a few; nearly every episode she conjures up something new. In one episode, someone other than her actually managed to invent something (namely, sparkling orange juice, aka Fanta), and, determined not to be outdone, Demon King invents not one but TWO things during that episode (and no, Coke isn't one of them). By the half way point of the series, I felt like I was watching a game like "Civilization" being played, with the Demon King way ahead of the other players in researching the tech tree comprising mankind's greatest ideas and inventions.

If Demon King is guilty of over-performing in her role, Hero is guilty of the opposite: as one half of the central protagonist pair, he simply doesn't carry his weight. While Demon King busied herself with changing the world, Hero spends the first half just tagging along and doing very little beyond admiring her. Though later on he does goes off to distant lands and contribute to Demon King's plans there, we rarely see what he does because the story is still mostly focused on Demon King and her endless output of inventions. In fact, the imbalance issue extends to everyone else, too: the Demon King seems so intelligent that she makes the show kind of boring, and everyone else appear so dim that they can't do anything until Demon King bestows onto them her pearls of wisdom; you have to wonder how the human race managed to hold off extinction before the Demon King came along.

SaWT also has pacing problems. I enjoyed the gentle strolling pace of world changing used for the first part of the series, but the global politics quickly escalated to the point where I struggled to follow. Everything began changing in all the nations, half of which the show failed to properly establish in the first place; I'd also started getting lost in all the economic babble, perhaps owing to my own meagre knowledge. The show simply accelerates away during the later parts and finishes in unseemly haste, leaving one giant political mess, full of dangling plot strands and badly explained developments, in its wake.

But there I go again, coming down quite hard on the show. I do have a degree of respect for what SaWT tried to do, but the problem is that it simply did not do a good job. While it captured my interest early on, I struggled to get through the series as it progressed. It may not be a show devoid of intelligence, but it needed to be more intelligently written; it may not be a bad show, but it's far from being good. I guess it's just too much to expect a show that sought to improve upon something noted for its writing by throwing in a pair of big tits to amount to anything beyond A Good Try. And A Good Try is all SaWT managed to be.

Personal rating: -0.5 (mediocre)

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Apr 7, 2013

mdz

Not Recommended

It's a series that had potential, but ruined it by doing too much.

[mild spoilers pertaining to storyline progression and general point-of-view]

A third season of Spice and Wolf is perhaps the most desired adaptation among fans of the franchise. When announcement came through that a similar series, with similar staff members, was going to be released, fans were ecstatic. Unfortunately, it's not quite that simple to live up to the name of the predecessor, and it's even more difficult to satiate an entirely new crowd. Maoyū Maō Yūsha suffers from a variety of debilitating features that not only make it a shitty, half-assed 'successor', but ... an awfully trite,mundane standalone.

Maoyū Maō Yūsha doesn't have the world's most amazing storyline. In fact, it's relatively archetypal -- the king of demons and the hero of humanity wish to team up to ultimately better the world. Sounds relatively creative right? It's not. But it could have been. We're given two main characters, Maou, and Yuusha [translated to Devil and Hero]. Their names are titular of their roles. During each episode, humanity attains a new invention that may better life [e.g. new farming techniques, agriculture]; and during each episode, a mild time skip is applied [typically a few months]. What does this do? It advances the plot. But does it do anything more than that? Probably not. Is it bad because it's simple? Not necessarily. Is it bad if they advance the plot over developing the characters/mood/every other aspect of the show? Probably.

A certain series revolving around a travelling merchant and a wolf goddess revolved around the characters -- every episode moved at a snail's pace, and the characters were developed accordingly; in Maoyū Maō Yūsha, it isn't uncommon for several months to move in one episode. The characters aren't developed. There's a romance between Maou and Yuusha. But the romance between the two are magnetic. They're only together for the storyline. A magnet doesn't need a reason to attract the opposite charge, neither does Maou to Yuusha, and Yuusha to Maou. They're together, but there's no semblance or inclination that would insinuate anything outside of being together for the storyline. Love? What's that. 12 episodes, or several years, resulted in a half-assed display of affection at the end. No discourse implying anything significant, and no actions outside the cursory depicted a sort of love outside of obligation.

The art and animation in Maoyū Maō Yūsha was fantastic? You mean the art and animation during Maoyū Maō Yūsha's first episode was fantastic. Arms was tasked with animating the series -- Arms did a really nice job during the former half of the series. The latter half, they kinda just gave up on maintaining consistent quality. Surprisingly, Arms, a studio, known for their integration of ecchi into everything, didn't put that much ecchi into Maoyū Maō Yūsha. That's a bright side. How about the soundtrack? The soundtrack's probably one of the best, redeeming features of the series. The track titled 'Beyond the Hill' by Takeshi Hama [composer of the original Devil May Cry soundtrack]would on its own, bump the score up by at least a point. The series contained a fantastic soundtrack, albeit, it wasn't exactly applied that well. The general soundtrack is perhaps one of the few things that Maoyū Maō Yūsha does better than its related series. It may not have been used as well [the soundtrack in the former was heavily ambient, but that ambience was integral in developing the mood], but it's certainly noteworthy [the main theme really is good].

So, we're given a series with generic characters that are seldom developed, the noble goal to save the world, time skips for plot, alongside a fantastic soundtrack, inconsistent animation, and a predictable, archetypal plot progression. Oh, and don't forget the romance. Everybody loves romance. So to sum it up, we're given a series that attempts to do too much within 12 episodes, that's understandable right? Well, it probably would be if it attempted to do something difficult. Every other development and concept explored in Maoyū Maō Yūsha isn't exactly novel, or avant-garde; it's not even a rendition of generic concepts. They're really just generic concepts without any sort of application. Economics? Spice and Wolf had more economics within a single episode than this did in 12. The notion that opposite sides often have a lot in common and that they probably shouldn't kill each other? That's clearly edgy and new.

It's not as enjoyable as it could be to watch because the series tried to do too much. When you introduce a romance, actually develop it. When you attempt to mirror a similar series, at least compliment it. The series doesn't revolve around combat and the mechanics of the world? Then don't dedicate an entire episode to combat. There wasn't enough time to do what we wanted? Then don't do so much.

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Poll: Maoyuu Maou Yuusha Episode 9 Discussion ( 1 2 3 4 5 ) symbv - Mar 1, 2013	211 replies	by MeguriRapture »» Mar 6, 12:04 AM
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