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The Devil Is a Part-Timer! Recap: A Totally Normal Trip to a Theme Park

The Devil Is a Part-Timer!

The Devil and the Hero go to the Amusement Park as Advised
Season 2 Episode 3
Editor’s Rating 4 stars

The Devil Is a Part-Timer!

The Devil and the Hero go to the Amusement Park as Advised
Season 2 Episode 3
Editor’s Rating 4 stars
Photo: Crunchyroll

The first season of The Devil Is a Part-Timer! was mostly a fun, episodic sitcom that placed our main character in funny situations. It had some elements that carried over from episode to episode, but it was mostly background material while the focus remained solely on the high jinks of the devil trying to navigate the life of a part-time worker in modern Japan. Well, all that is out the window this week.

I speculated at the start of the season that the appearance of Alas Ramus would probably become the big focus of the season. What I didn’t anticipate was for the show to seemingly become something vastly different than it was last season and turn from a fun gag comedy to a proper fantasy show with an overarching plot and vast lore. Is that a bad thing? Not necessarily, but the gag-centric comedy of the first season shall definitely be missed.

We pick things up where we left off, at the park. This first half of the episode remains a delightful sitcom, with Maou and Emi taking Alas Ramus to the park and being forced to play the part of parents to a child. The whole time, Emi is skeptical and annoyed because the child doesn’t stop crying if both her supposed parents are around. Still, Emi is actually good at taking care of Alas Ramus and does seem to care for her well-being, urging Maou to buy her a hat to avoid a heatstroke — a very real concern in the Japanese summer, or anywhere this summer, really — and she makes sure Alas has time to rest and eat. As for Maou, he slides into the role of relaxed and cool dad with ease, focusing on making sure Alas has a good time and gets to see all the cool rides and shows, including a Super Sentai–inspired stunt show with surprisingly good choreography.

The “enemies become friends become romantic interests” trope continues to be alive and well in The Devil Is a Part-Timer!. Not only are Emi and Maou experts in acting like an old married couple, we see Maou continue to open up to Emi, while the hero starts to slowly open to the idea that her preconceived ideas about demons and the devil may not be accurate. This week we finally learn more about Maou’s backstory and world.

After Emi became visibly shocked after hearing Maou talk about having parents, she gets another shocking attack at her prejudices when she tells Maou that there is no hope for him back on Ente Isla because all the demons are probably dead. But Maou responds with a question: “Does every citizen go to the battlefield when you humans wage war?” The simple thought is enough to distract Emi for most of the episode, as she never even considered the idea that the demons had a society, let alone civilians.

Later in the episode, Maou also tells Emi about his childhood. He says that back then, the demon realm was brutal, and a dumb but strong demon single-handedly wiped out Maou’s entire clan, including his parents. He was on the verge of death until an angel appeared and saved him because he “was the first demon she’d ever seen cry” — guess she hadn’t met Akira Fudo from Devilman Crybaby. The idea that Maou is different from the other demons, and that he actually cares about others, is interesting, but perhaps more so is the idea that demons were always capable of living peacefully; they just needed a messiah (more on this in a bit) to set them on the path to salvation. Also, it turns out that the same angel taught Maou about many things, including the existence of the human realm, incidentally causing this whole conflict. Did that angel know what she was doing, perhaps? Did angels want a war between humans and demons?

While all of this is happening, we see Ashiya, Chiho, and Suzuki spying on the fake couple. Suzuki is mostly focused on the idea that they actually do make a cute couple even if Emi won’t admit it, while Chiho is making sure her crush doesn’t cross any line before finally responding to her confession. As usual, however, Ashiya steals the episode, with his soul slowly leaving his body every time Maou spends any money. And if you’ve ever gone to an amusement park, it is hard not to sympathize; food at those parks is incredibly expensive. And buying clothes? Ludicrous.

As the day goes by, neither Emi nor Maou realizes that their toddler keeps calling a bunch of balloons by Hebrew names. But when she starts recalling a memory of being expelled from a tree and someone named Malkuth being killed, her new parents panic. Making things worse is the appearance of the strange woman from the last episode, who seems to be the same woman from the season premiere who snuck into Satan’s castle to retrieve what must be the magical seed from which Alas Ramus was born, and the same angel who saved Maou as a kid. She heals Alas Ramus with her magical ring, tells Emi she is an ally, and warns her of the threat of Gabriel.

Here is where the show gets really interesting and potentially falls apart. Turns out, Alas Ramus is actually a reincarnation of Yesod, a sephirot, from the Tree of Life in Jewish Kabbalah. The Devil Is a Part-Timer! always played with lore, sure, but this is the first time the show has tried to build deeper mythology that also hints at a larger story than just demons versus angels and humans. That the anime is borrowing from Judeo-Christian mythology, and especially such a specific branch of Jewish mysticism, is fascinating. To the show’s credit, this seems to be more than just Neon Genesis Evangelion throwing some arbitrary imagery and names around because Hideaki Anno thought it looked cool. From Alas Ramus’s forehead symbol being a moon, a symbol associated with Yesod, to Gabriel wanting to take Alas back because Gabriel is the archangel in charge of the sephira, it is clear Satoshi Wagahara (who wrote the original light novel) did his research.

It is clear the show is heading toward some Constantine-like conflict between the demons and the angels, where the latter are portrayed more as righteous jerks who don’t care about collateral damage or hurting innocents. If Sariel wasn’t already a good villain, Gabriel kicks things up a notch. He not only kidnaps Urushihara and Kamazuki, but he eats the pizza Urushihara ordered, and then dares get angry when his actions look like those of a bad guy. Sure, he is very charming, and he does offer to pay for the pizza — as payment for Maou to hand over Alas Ramus, essentially buying a kid with literal pizza money — but he still threatens to kill everyone around if he doesn’t get his way, even poor Chiho the powerless human.

The episode once again ends on a cliffhanger to be resolved next week, with Maou and his allies preparing to defend their castle (and Alas Ramus) against Gabriel and his forces. This episode had some surprisingly decent animation, almost on par with the first season, so I am finally hopeful things are back on track in The Devil Is a Part-Timer!.

Snacks & Sides

• The mad lads did it. They got the voice of Dio to do a Jojo’s reference and have him quote Muhammad Avdol from Stardust Crusaders.

The Devil Is a Part-Timer! Recap: Here Comes the Lore