Welcome to Demon School! Iruma-kun Series Review: Into the Fire

Series Positives

To me, it was surprising that Welcome to Demon School! Iruma-kun (Iruma-kun) was twenty-three episodes. I don’t know, now having seen it, this didn’t come off as a show that should have garnered a longer runtime. Do not misunderstand; I’m glad it did because it was a lot of fun. Unoriginal and a bit par for the course, sure, but fun, nonetheless.

Iruma-kun’s saving grace was its focus on character introductions Or more to the point: core-character introductions. Early on, this series established its three leads, Clara Valac, Alice Asmodeus, and, of course, the titular Iruma Suzuki. This show turned this trio into its personality. No doubt, this was a gamble. Had there been even a single stumble, this could have been a horrid slog to sit through.

But you can’t win any bet you don’t take, and Iruma-kun won.

First, Clara was – hands down – my favorite character of the series. She was nothing except a lovably destructive ball of happy-go-lucky energy who knew how to fill both the foreground and the background, often at the same time. Clara was all over the place, and whenever she was in the area, her presence was felt. Plus, she wasn’t a romantic interest for Iruma. Granted, Clara did take a class on seduction. But, to be fair, she thought she was losing Iruma as a playmate rather than as a potential boyfriend.

More than anything, though, Clara was just funny.

Second, Alice did a lot of things right. He was the most powerful of the leading trio, and yet, he was a loyal friend to Iruma, who he also mistakenly thought was more capable than him. However, Alice’s misunderstandings toward Iruma’s abilities weren’t unjustified. Before they were friends, when the two faced-off, although it involved a lot of dumb luck, Iruma defeated Alice fair and square. Although Alice might have been a little overexcited when proclaiming Iruma’s accomplishments throughout the series, he was praising accomplishments that happened.

Thirdly, Iruma himself. To be honest, when I first saw him and heard what he was about, I thought he was going to annoy the ever-living hell out of me. A character who was an utter pushover, yeah, that’s not going to get on my nerves. However, that little tick of Iruma’s never came up frustratingly; it was always comedic. Iruma came out of this show as a strong protagonist. He was someone you wanted to cheer for and support.

Plus, Iruma was responsible for some great examples of reactionary comedy, and I need to give extra special credit to his voice actor Ayumu Murase for making that happen.

With these three as the focus, Iruma-kun was allowed to spend the majority of its time developing a world. For most of this series, very little in the way of plot occurred. To tell you the truth, it was during the segment when Iruma and company had to do something that the show was at its slowest. That isn’t to say things were bad; it’s just that I found it difficult to care.

For most of Iruma-kun, it was a fun slice-of-life comedy. It didn’t need to have big adventures or dastardly villains. Season two can worry about that sort of stuff. And with the ending we got, there better be a season two.

Series Negatives

Iruma-kun was one of those shows that petered out in the end.

Although it was a lot of fun for the majority of its run, this series lost steam the closer it got to its conclusion. And like I said above, Iruma-kun was at its lowest when it actually did something. It was weird since, you know, it’s usually the point of a show to do things. I don’t think season two will run into this problem because it won’t need to worry about introducing its primary collection of characters. However, season one was so enjoyable because it was lighthearted and never took itself too seriously.

Well, it was that plus the fact that things became extremely predictable. It wasn’t hard to see the twists and turns coming, so there was no real sense of tension.

Additionally, it didn’t help that the climax of Iruma-kun occurred about four episodes before the finale. Everything that happened following the resolution of this series’s main threat had no power. That was extremely disappointing because this was when the show finally acknowledged a build-up that had been taking place since around episode two.

It was hard to care about any new developments since, you know, the series was technically over. Any way you look at it, Iruma-kun didn’t have the strongest of endings.

Lastly, I keep mentioning a potential season two. From what I can tell, a continuation does appear to be in the works, and it better be. Iruma-kun was not a self-contained story. There were plenty of hints that loudly suggested there was something bigger going on in this world. So, one can only hope that a second chapter is on its way.