Ironic Anime Is Ironic – Throwback Thursday: Demon King Daimao

Back in 2010, I still remember trying to balance undergraduate classes, living with my girlfriend, a crippling WoW addiction, and watching the occasional anime. One that I managed to basically marathon through after it just finished was Demon King Daimao, or Ichiban Ushiro No Dai Mao. I want to take you on a bit of a tangent right here. So one of the conundrums about A.I. is teaching them certain idiosyncrasies such as morality or humor, in a challenge akin to describing a rainbow to a blind person or an orchestra to someone who is deaf. This show right here is an amazing example of how to teach comedy through its hilarious pacing and outrageous jokes and irony, culminating in an exercise in futility.

So let me throw something out there very quick about this show. It’s ecchi. I mean, pretty damn ecchi. Additionally, it’s one of those shows that I harp on about because it does the “cute sticker censorship” that gets removed from Blu-Rays so you can see the naughty bits for paying a premium. That aside, the art and animation is not bad considering it came out over 7 years ago. If you watch it on Crunchyroll, the best you can get is 480P but while this is ecchi this is not the main draw for the show. Unlike other shows with daemon vs angel themes *cough*High School DxD*cough* this show actually relies more on great comedic timing and plot instead of just “plot.”

So this show revolves around Akuto Sai and his feth awful luck and timing in the year 3000 where magic and daemons sit alongside futuristic tech like flying cars and AR glasses. This boy was raised in an orphanage and aspires to become “high priest” (pretty much Pope) and make the world a better place. This is a job of such high moral character requirements that LITTERING will stop you from getting selected. Episode 1 starts with him being mistaken by a religious ninja, Junko Hattori, as a thief but Akuto is really helping her grandmother. After a bond of friendship, he is to be assigned a future job very similar to the sorting hat of Harry Potter lore, but instead by a bird smoking a cigar. What is his future occupation you might ask? Demon King! As in, the lord of daemons and the greatest threat to society itself!

It’s grand because he manages to take steps that the rest of us find absolutely logical to dispute this. For one thing attempting to say that judging him is a form of discrimination that must be stopped to be fair for all, he is then compared to the last Demon King from a hundred years ago for his “anti-establishment rhetoric.” Upon his recommendation as class rep, he then opts to instead help as the class cleaner, i.e. janitor. What does this translate to by chance? Cleaner in this school equates to a detested position where the said cleaner goes through and eliminates all in his path to keep the class secrets confidential. Of course Junko flips shit and begins to take it out on him, going on about their Oath (of friendship) and the class hears this as him having his way with her in a biblical sense. This entire show’s premise is basically slated like this where Akuto tries to genuinely do the right thing and ends up proving the prophecy right at every turn.

The rest of the show can be summed up pretty much as misunderstanding after misunderstanding. In a refreshing turn of pace, he is the head of this amazing harem of beautiful and powerful women, but is really a humble guy who literally never asked for this. He want’s to be a mild mannered “good guy” but is actually the most powerful individual in the series. The cast is pretty entertaining and interesting with the aforementioned Lawful Good tsundere, Junko, the ditzy childhood friend Kena Soga, deadpan android Korone, the “evil” underground leader who intends to become the Demon Queen Fujiko and even Akuto’s own lackey, Hiroshi who ends up becoming the legendary hero Brave. The ending of this show is actually quite entertaining with Akuto fulfilling his destiny with the help of his dragon (with the silliest possible name of Peterhausen) and destroy the gods who created him to basically act as a destroyer of humanity. Its revealed magic is all one giant form of technology and is effectively a giant computer a la the matrix. The show resets where the identity of the Demon King is no longer a known thing and we find ourselves in a new semester where everyone thinks Akuto helped kill the Demon King as part of his responsibility as a member of the Disciplinary Committee, barring the main supporting characters. Of course this isn’t how life is destined to be and when set to be sorted for his future occupation, Akuto is once again slated for Demon Lord and the show ends on a happy note implying more hi-jinks to come.

As you can tell from most of my tone during this article, I really enjoyed this show. The comedic timing was great, the art was pretty good and the animation was great considering it came out back in 2010. The detail on magical circles is very good, even matching ones from this season’s Akashic Records in terms of details. The music is very energetic with the battle sounds being mighty fine and really pumping you up into a cliche but still awesome mindset. Re-watching this as I write this article made me remember happier times from way way back in the day and I figure if you like comedy and can tolerate (almost unnecessary) ecchi, then this is the show for you. Now go watch it and leave a like and a comment before a tsundere ninja has to cut a ho.