How Not to Summon a Demon Lord Review

Well this show started out different from the now all too common isekai. We have our main character, Diablo, drawn into the world as an OP physical representation of his in game avatar. I left off around episode 5 with Diablo saving the day and the threat of war looming over our team if Shera was not returned back to the Elven Kingdom of Greenwood. While I admit I left the show alone for some time, this was more due to lack of time over lack of interest and I went back after the season and finished it. Thankfully they managed to stay unique enough of an isekai that I wasn’t really bothered by the show, while maintaining our protagonist as powerful, but not an ungodly OP evil beast (looking at you Ainz).

Of course in regards to the ultimatum, Diablo says the elves can suck it, and Shera can decide what she wants to do. With this declaration, the party is assigned a liaison in the form of the Imperial Knight Alicia Crystella. Along with this representative, we have Diablo and party look into removing the slave collars, and they set off to look for a slave trader to help them out. They meet a slave owner who teaches Diablo the way to unravel and dispel magic, and spoiler alert, he basically caresses and feels up the target for a rather vocal response. Unfortunately, the magic is very complex and Diablo is unable to remove the collar, and they return back to the inn and meet Shera’s brother, Keera.

After basically telling him to go dig a ditch, Shera stays with Diablo, stating that she wished these moments could last forever. So this asshole brother is not going to take no for an answer and proceeds to utilize a magical flute to brainwash Shera into going with him, leaving Diablo in a rather human spiraling depression. He wallows in sorrow in his room as Rem and Alicia are concerned for him while he remembers his childhood where people faked being his friends. On a side note, I found this to be a rather surprising and unique touch on things. As many of these isekai, and especially the comedy isekai have the main characters being shut-in NEETs but I don’t remember a time where their old world issues ever really had such a crippling effect. Finally Rem convinces Diablo that something is awry and he snaps out of it and sets off to recover Shera.

So I’m just going to gloss over Keera’s cringey, creepy, awkwardness pertaining to his racial supremist thoughts, rapey-incest plots, and just overall asshole tendencies. He summons forth a beast that could allegedly destroy the world, which Diablo handles about as easy as you’d expect, but he still finds himself drained at the end of the fight. After smashing the brainwashing flute’s effects through the slave collar, Shera declares her intent to stay with Diablo and begs him to spare her brother. While Diablo is cool with that, Galford, the governor of Faltra, beheads Keera quickly and reveals himself and his army who were posed to strike against the elves in a “retaliatory attack” for their oil because democracy. Turns out Alicia really isn’t all that tough and is quickly defeated by Galford, leading to him dueling Diablo. Once again, Diablo comes out on top but internally admits that Galford’s power is very close to his own and only because of his PvP experience was he able to quickly dispatch him. Externally, he acts like Mr. BigDickSwinging and declares Galford a fool for facing off against a Demon Lord such as himself.

Wrapping that story arc, we have the Fallen Dragoon Edelgard appear and offer Diablo a way to remove the Demon Lord Krebskrem from Rem without killing her. Of course this bodes poorly but Diablo is willing to give it a shot to save Rem, and the party of Diablo, Rem, Shera, and Alicia meet with Edelgard who begins the ritual at the summoning tower where Diablo was first brought into this world. While this occurs, the biggest asshat to date enters the fray in the form of inquisitor/paladin Saddler who comes to Faltra to find and hunt down Demon Lord followers. The show just drops all pretenses and goes full penetration as they have Diablo pour his magical energy into Rem “directly” so that Krebskrem can be summoned, which occurs and we are given a rather adorable loli-Fallen. Turns out that this “half-baked” Demon Lord doesn’t even remember why she wants to kill all the mortal races and decides instead her goal in life to be eat all the biscuits. Renaming the loli-Demon Lord “Klem” they take her back and are attacked by the chief Fallen, who is beaten when he tries to reset (read: Kill and reincarnate) the Demon Lord, to the anger of all present, including Edelgard.

When we return back to the town of Faltra, all seems well, until Saddler shows up and Alicia reveals herself to be a Demon Lord cultist, and kidnaps Rem and Klem, bringing them before Saddler. Saddler like all stringent religious fanatics is a complete fucking sadist and begins to procedurally torture Rem, while she begs Klem to be good and not strike back against them, making me think of the recent Castlevania scene with Lisa begging Dracula to not wreak vengeance upon the humans of Wallachia. Of course this doesn’t go well in that case and it doesn’t go well in this case, as Rem is struck down and stabbed a crazy lethal amount of times. Klem then uses the hatred in her heart to evolve into the fully fledged Demon Lord Krebskrem, then absolutely demolishes Saddler and his cohorts. In the distance the Fallen wait to strike Faltra and Diablo has to set off to save the day. By channeling all his magic power, he manages to stop Klem, who reverts to her previous form when shown Rem who was barely saved by administration of a shit ton of healing potions.

At this point, I’d have been happy with the end, but there was a slightly extra ending the creators had in mind. Turns out Alicia and Edelgard were not regarded too highly after bringing together all the Fallen, only for their Demon Lord to fall. Alicia takes a hostage to leverage Klem to heal Edelgard and in a bit too much of a cliché, all is forgiven in the end of the day. In an even worse cliché scene, the women all strip naked to rub up against Diablo because of course they do. Overall I really liked the show and felt it was a fresh enough take on isekai that I couldn’t really complain all too much. More than anything they made Diablo more real in my mind, with his inability to normally talk to people nor be able to easily brush of the Shera leaving him ordeal I thought “Yea I can imagine a dude in another world acting like that.” However the ecchi got far too far towards the end with the “Demon Lord summoning” and the end scene being just too much for me, I had to drop it from the probably 8-8.5 I was going to give it down to a 7.5 unnecessary ecchi harem scenes out of 10.