Thankfully, there's a much more recent shonen manga with a spooky theme that is a lot more confident in itself and its purpose, even if the title character isn't so much.
WELCOME TO DEMON SCHOOL! IRUMA-KUN (Mairimashita! Iruma-kun), by Osamu Nishi. First published in 2017 and first published in North America in 2023.
PLOT:
Iruma is a nice boy, the sort of kid who can't say 'no' to anything...including being sold by his own parents to a demon for incredible wealth. It's not all bad, though. Turns out the demon in question is a lonely old man who is happy to treat Iruma like the grandchild he never had. He's even willing to send Iruma to the school he runs...a school for demons who will eat Iruma if they discover he's human. It's going to take a lot of luck and all of the skills learned at all the jobs his money-hungry parents forced him to do if he's going to survive!
STORY:
Welcome to Demon School! Iruma-Kun is good clean fun. It's not the first manga I've read about an ordinary dude going to a supernatural school, but this one is much more self-aware and purposely funny instead of trying to find new and creative angles for fanservice.
Yeah, Iruma is a nebbish but this time it's on purpose. All the skills he possesses (including some impressive dexterity and a little bit of martial arts) were born entirely from his desire to avoid conflict and/or attention. Much of the humor in this book comes from using those skills and still fumbling his way up the social scale of the school in spite of them. These gags aren't laugh-out-loud funny, but in both execution and intent they are much like Iruma himself: harmless.
There is one thing that Iruma is sincerely good at, the thing every decent shonen manga protagonist is good at: making friends. His innate decency and kindness, combined with his stupid good luck, manages to win over his classmates one at a time. It starts on his first day, when the class valedictorian Asmodeus picks a fight and loses (via German suplex), and continues as Iruma extends kindness to the childish Clary and the pompous, pigheaded Sabnock. Slowly but surely, Iruma is building up a crew, even if said crew isn't 100% clear on the differences between "friend" and "minion".
Midway through the volume, the series takes a predictable turn as Iruma and his friends (along with his reluctant familiar/teacher) are shuffled off to the low-ranked, underdog "misfit" class in the school. It's a move we've seen a lot of recent shonen hits do, ranging from Assassination Classroom to Mashle. It's not the worst move to make plot-wise, but I'm a little disappointed in Osamu Nishi for doing something so predictable just as his series was picking up steam. What's next, a tournament arc?
ART:
Nishi's art style further emphasizes this manga's friendly vibes. This is most obvious with Iruma himself. He's got a simple, wide-eyed, slightly rumpled look with an equally stark, black-and-white costume. Yet it's quite brilliant in its simplicity. That simple wide-eyed face makes Iruma the perfect vehicle for wild comic takes to the weirdness around him. His ordinary look and stark coloring in turn helps him stand out from the other, more fantastical characters around him, even in a crowd.
The demon designs are also quite fun and communicate quite a lot visually about their personality, be it Asmodeus's fancy waistcoat and handsome looks, Clary's playful, childish looks, or Sabnock being build almost entirely out of muscle and aggressive points. If I have one complaint, it's that Nishi doesn't take full advantage of his cast being mostly non-human and feature some of the less humanoid demons in the main cast.
Perhaps my favorite part of this book visually was its color art, which you see a bit of on the cover and first few pages. In those, Nishi makes use of thicker lines and bold combinations of black, purple and bright blue and it's incredibly eye-catching.
PRESENTATION:
There's a lot of the usual things: omakes about the characters, a gag strip or two for the creative staff themselves, a brief translation guide. What's unusual about the last one is that most of it is dedicated to explaining the complicated wordplay going on with the original Japanese title.
RATING:
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