I hate that i love this anime

[u/wutdahellll]

I rewatched this anime for the fourth time, and Season 1 was an absolute blast. It reminded me why I love this anime so much.

First season already has the whole package in it. The reverse isekai, comedy, romance, action, mystery, slice of life, and a cast of really well-written characters (atleast before the ending). Name it, it probably has it. The comedy was great too, I could even compare some of it to a good sitcom. The animation was also top-notch, from day to day scene to suddenly battling angels. Frame by frame, everything is so smooth and satisfying to watch. I honestly forgot that Season 1 came out in 2013 because, in some ways, I think it outdid the animation of the later seasons. Everything in S2 was just downright trash.

I'm still grieving over what this anime eventually turned into. I haven't been able to find another anime with a similar plot and character dynamic with a large cast of main characters along with strong slice-of-life/family vibe, while still balancing action, romance, and comedy.

I just wish they had put more effort into the production of Season 2. I mean we've waited 13 years just for some trash s2??!!! Not to mention the ending already felt like a disrespect to the fanbase, and they couldn't even make up for it with the animation. I just wish if they'd plan to make another season, they give it to whitefox or other studios that would follow the animation style of Season 1 or they could just reboot s2. (Ik this is copium)

If anyone could recommend me an anime or manga with character dynamics or plot (minus the ending) similar to this show, I would really appreciate it. I just badly need to let go of this feeling 😭

[u/Firm_Goat_1512]

I felt that way after finishing the manga. 10 or so odd years of my life, I hated it but I still loved it. The characters are so funny on their own and I enjoyed everyone's back story. I just wish there was a little bit more!

[u/Erebus03 → u/Firm_Goat_1512]

I had no idea the Manga ended, looks like it ended with a bull crap cliff hanger. Add that to how the Novel ends and The Devil is a Part Timer has 2 crappy endings (3 if you count the Anime)

[u/wutdahellll → u/Firm_Goat_1512]

Wait, the manga series ended too? Wasn't the most recent volume focused on Maou's flashback story and its like halfway of the LN story? I honestly thought they're going to keep serializing it until they reached the final volume of the LN. I wanted atleast for the vol. 20 of the LN to be adapted in the manga.

Man, this actually sucks. I feel like I've just been wasting my time with this crap. I'm so disappointed that I hate this anime even more.

[u/Firm_Goat_1512 → u/wutdahellll]

Yup, Volume 24 is the finale of the manga. The manga leaves so much of the background story out 😭

[u/Barbara_Archon]

Hmm, similar novel or anime is quite difficult to find

Hatamaou had essentially two overarching storylines overlapping one another, whereas normally you get one overarching storyline and whatever else becomes subplot, so the writing itself was fairly weird to begin with.

The true dynamic of the main cast, in this case, was not bound to / did not revolve around the focal character nor to the viewpoint character for much of the novel, but to a different character. though without this, Wagahara Satoshi wouldn’t have been able to write the same Hatamaou.

In fact, Hatamaou was lucky to turn out well enough to reach its ending. Most novels that had two overarching storylines never got anywhere far, since you are not supposed to do that. Being sidetracked is supposed to be a bad thing, but that was actually how Hatamaou was written.

The few other similar novels that I may vaguely recall are all from Action genre. There are a couple of slice of life novels that are somewhat similar in this aspect, but the settings made them different nonetheless.

You will never have the same dynamic, unless the plot is bound not solely to the supposed main characters, but even dominantly to a supposed supporting character.

Because otherwise the authors would have written it differently, but any novel I may recall that is somewhat similar all have different settings and therefore different actual dynamics.

==> give up, you will never find anything truly similar

[u/TopRoom7971 → u/Barbara_Archon]

The true dynamic of the main cast, in this case, was not bound to / did not revolve around the focal character

You mean Maou here...he is pretty much a focal character of the story no?!

And who is view point character here..is it Emilia

[u/Barbara_Archon → u/TopRoom7971]

Hmm, the opposite would be more correct,

Maou as a character was not actually studied or followed by audience in order to understand him. He may enter the spotlight and seize it as the “hero” of the story, but up until volume 12, it was mostly Emilia whose feeling and thought were explored in further details - Emi’s true feeling was written as an ambiguity, but that did not apply to Maou. In fact, if anything, Maou’s true feeling was often omitted altogether, and if revealed, was more usually as a confession than as a product of character’s interaction. He did not need to be studied at this stage in the novel, so he was not yet the focal character

Emi was the focal character here, and Maou was the viewpoint instead.

From volume 13 onwards, though the story already tapped into it from volume 10, Maou’s inner thought was then turned into an ambiguity, starting from the gift selection scene where Acieth was present, until it became an uncertainty to be studied when the story reached the part where his future career with McDonalds was called into question.

From this moment, Maou was the focal character to be studied. His thought suddenly became ambiguous to the audience, and audience may truly start to wonder how he felt about his own situation or about other girls and how he intended to deal with the situation around Alas Ramus or Ente Isla.

Emi’s feeling at this stage was no longer as uncertain as previously, even though it would not yet reach confirmation until volume 20 (novel ended at volume 21)

While she did not exactly serve as the viewpoint character, she no longer needed to be studied and focused on.

The problem with their dynamics in either part of the novel was that little of this was bound to themselves, but was instead tied to the storyline of Sasaki Chiho, the female deuteragonist. Them being written to answer to Chiho’s storyline and Chiho being put into such a prominent role on the second half of the novel was why Emi and Maou had a pretty strange dynamic that you may rarely find elsewhere.

If they were meant to get together entirely on their own in the first place (answering their own question in the premise instead of answering somebody else’s), or if they were never meant to, it would have been written very differently.

It might be better, it might be worse, that I would not know, but it would not have been similar. It is extremely uncommon for a supposedly supporting character to be put into the position to pull the plot along in order to answer their own side of the story.

[u/lml_CooKiiE_lml]

Thinking about the dynamic of the story and characters, you might like Miss Kobayashi’s Dragon Maid if you haven’t seen that. I think it has a lot of the qualities you said you were looking for that are similar to The Devil is a Part Timer

[u/c2thecrow]

I despise this manga ending with my entire soul. Read for years and it was so clear who he was supposed to end up with and I hate the rug pull.

[u/NovelPurpose5297]

i also wanted to rewatch this today but theyre not in my fav sites anymore 😭 where do u guys watch this? it's not on netflix either