Score: 7.5

Genre: Comedy, Fantasy
Version: Subbed
Episodes: 13
Where I watched it: Funimation

Synopsis: The Devil (Satan/ Maou Sadao) and his army are defeated after trying to take over Ente Isla. He and one of his generals (Alciel/ Ashiya Shriō) escape through an interdimensional “Gate”. Instead of landing at their intended dimension they landed on Earth in modern times, and left with barely any magic energy left. Now in order to survive they must make a living for themselves and that includes getting jobs. Where else would a person get a job with no work experience? Why at McDonald’s of course, well in this case MgRonald’s. Maou and Ashiya soon find out that one of the Heroes (Emilia Justina/ Yusa Emi) that defeated them followed them through the Gate as well. Yusa is all ready to kill Maō but she realizes that he’s not doing anything evil and is actual a nice guy who helps out his fellow coworkers. Soon they are joined by other people from Ente Isla, who are bent on destroying Satan no matter who gets in the way.

Media: The Devil is a Part-Timer, or Hataraku Maou-sama! in Japan, started as a light novel series written by Satoshi Wagahara. The series started releasing in February 2011 and is still ongoing with 8 novels so far. A year later ASCII started publishing a manga version as well. The anime ran from April 4, 2013 to June 27, 2013. There was also a spin-off manga as well called Hataraku Maou-sama!Hai Sukūru! (High School). From what little information I could find online it seems like it’s the same story only their in high school. he’s not doing anything evil and is actual a nice guy who helps out his fellow coworkers. Soon they are joined by other people from Ente Isla, who  are bent on destroying Satan no matter who gets in the way.

My Thoughts (minor spoilers): The Devil is a Part Timer is a fun short comedy with two fights thrown in. I liked the minor romance story arc that was there and the fact that most people thought that Emi and Maou were a couple, when in fact if there was a couple in this anime it would have been Chiho and Maou. But he didn’t seem too interested in Chiho beyond that she was a co-worker at MgRonald’s. I did also like the fake company names that were a clear reference to a real company; MgRonald’s is McDonald’s, Sentuky Fried Chicken is Kentucky Fried Chicken, and Jungle.jp is Amazon.jp.

Lucifer vs Satan. Yes they are two different people.

The only thing that I was confused about was that in Ente Isla, Satan was supposedly this bad guy, but when he came to Earth he was a nice guy. We don’t know if there was a difference in his behavior or not. Maou and Ashiya’s landlady was also a bit of mystery as well. She seemed to know who they were but it was never explained how she knew. In fact she goes on a trip to Hawaii early on in the series and never came back. I could have done without Ashiya being sick in most of the episodes. It made me feel like he was a useless character that took up room and food in their one room apartment. And he didn’t have a job save for one episode so he really was a useless character that did not need to be there.

I kind of did like the fact that almost each episode was self-contained. The problem with that is that it felt like the story could have just kept going. There was no big finale, the last episode felt no different than the rest. The anime just ends. If there was more of an ending, a sense of conclusion, then my score could have been higher, maybe a 8.0 or 8.5. As you can tell from my score that it isn’t the best anime but it’s not bad, it’s just entertainment

Written by: Stuart Pitchford Writer