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The Devil Is a Part-Timer! Recap: Old MgRonald Had a Farm

The Devil Is a Part-Timer!

The Devil Begins Farming
Season 2 Episode 8
Editor’s Rating 2 stars

The Devil Is a Part-Timer!

The Devil Begins Farming
Season 2 Episode 8
Editor’s Rating 2 stars
Photo: Crunchyroll

What exactly is The Devil Is a Part-Timer! about now? As I’ve mentioned here before, the show started out as a funny, charming, biting parody of the isekai genre by reversing its plot and having a super powerful being from another world travel to ours and be completely powerless. It was also a workplace comedy where the episodic stories were the highlight, while also building up this larger story about the evilest villain in existence learning some people skills and maybe learning to care about humans along the way.

But now? The individual pieces that made the show great and made the nine-year wait for a second season so hard have dissipated, and where the show used to blend its fantasy and slice-of-life elements effortlessly before, now the show feels like the early seasons of Better Call Saul but without any of the craft or good writing. This is either a run-of-the-mill high school-set show starring regular, boring people, or a full-on fantasy show with the fate of the world at stake, archangels showing up at your doorstep threatening to murder your family, and a magical baby that turns into a sword. This season, it is hard to remember that Maou Satan is a demon overlord unless one of his friends says it.

Now, that isn’t necessarily bad. After all, a big part of the show is seeing Maou learn to be a better person and grow closer to the humans as the audience finds out he wasn’t really a villain. But, there is a big difference between having Maou selflessly fight to protect total strangers or show genuine devotion to a part-time job and this version of Maou who seems like he never even stepped foot on Ente Isla, let alone had the ability to rule over a whole kingdom.

On the other hand, we’re back on the part-time job tour of Japan! After their previous job ended when Team Satan disturbed the equilibrium of a sacred spirit beach, good old Chiho offers them a new lifeline when her uncle asks for workers for his farm. Turns out, bear attacks in the area have caused all the local kids to quit their temp jobs at the farm right before the summer harvest, so Maou decides to bring Ashiya and Urushihara along to Nagano.
Just when it seems like we’re getting a Chiho-centric new story arc, with the introduction of her extended family, along comes Emi yet again to make it all about her. In yet another repeat of, well, every episode of the season so far, she leaves her well-paying job to come help Maou. Her reason is that she is furious that Maou and the other demons are working at a farm, because they once destroyed her family’s own farm. Everytime she starts to like or at least understand Maou’s side, she is reminded of the pain he cost her, so when she tells him the story after a farming lesson, she begs him not to apologize because it would diminish her thirst for vengeance. It’s always one step forward, two steps back with this show.

But fine, it’s been a minute since we’ve heard about Emi’s backstory. But what does this mean for Chiho? What exactly is her role on the show now? She started as the human anchor, the one teaching Maou about what it meant to be human, while acting perplexed by his weird antics. But now that the demons are more of the human realm than the fantasy one, and they are so well-adjusted, and now that the MgRonald’s part of the show is gone, she does rather little. Indeed, other than being just another babysitter for Alas Ramus, Chiho has taken a huge back seat this season.

Back to the farm, almost immediately Maou and his minions discover that farming is rather hard work, actually. Granted, the farm has a rather small work force for such a big plot of land, but still. And about the point of Maou acting disconnected from the Satan we knew, it’s one thing that he never personally worked a farm, but here he acts like he doesn’t know anything about what a farm is or what it’s for, and I can’t believe he was able to rule a kingdom (of demons, but still) without at least the knowledge that his food didn’t appear out of thin air.

We end the episode with the surprise, and kind of underwhelming appearance of a bear in the farm, and it charging to attack Team Satan. I don’t know about you guys, but after battling demons and angels, a bear doesn’t seem that big of a deal to a powerful hero with a magic sword or a trio of demons.

And yet, that is not the biggest problem. If the return of the weird and awful facial expressions wasn’t enough, The Devil Is a Part-Timer! is suffering from rather bad pacing. The story feels rushed even when little is happening. This current arc doesn’t seem like it needs two episodes, at least not the part where it feels like filler with the sole purpose of joking about the devil doing manual work. What happened to Gabriel? After the first half of the season made it seem like things were moving quickly and the end of the world was right around the corner, why are the characters doing small jobs in the countryside? What is happening with Olba? Is he gathering an army? We don’t know, and the characters don’t seem to care. This season is playing too many cards, and keeping most of them a secret in order to stretch the game as long as possible. The result is just a poorly paced show that keeps playing its worst cards while presumably keeping the good ones a secret for a future that may never come. But at least we got a bear fight to look forward to?

Snacks & Sides

• Ashiya enjoying their refurbished apartment and the fixed sink and calling out Urushihara for demanding others look for a job is delightful.

• Emi and Suzuno’s elaborate and convoluted excuse to explain Alas Ramus makes no sense. Compels me, though.

The Devil Is a Part-Timer! Recap: Old MgRonald Had a Farm