Makai Ouji: Devils and Realist

Trying too hard.

Y’know, one of the criticisms I’ve seen of the X-Files is that Agent Scully’s character is presented as a person who has no truck with things that can’t be backed up by evidence, yet she continually expresses skepticism about nearly every nutty thing she and Agent Mulder come across even though pretty much everything the pair comes across ends up being every bit as supernatural as Mulder suspects it to be in the first place. While the X-Files is able to distract from this oversight for the most part, Makai Ouji: Devils and Realist isn’t really doing such a hot job there so far.

So, we’ve got our lead, a somewhat obnoxious young man named William Twining, who is, unshockingly, the member of an old, venerable, and wealthy family. A British family, even, because that’s the sort of show this is. And he is a REALIST! None of that supernatural nonsense, no angels or fairies or what have you for him! No, no, even when demons start leaping out of solid floors, nor when he himself is sucked through the same floor and witnesses the complete destruction, then reconstruction, of a mansion in the space of roughly five minutes. Because, goodness, that’s all just completely silly! It cannot possibly be real!

It doesn’t help, either, that William’s lone friend from school is completely into ghosts, sprites, demons, etc., allowing for us to be further pounded over the head with the fact that William simply does not believe in those sorts of things. This anime doesn’t have a subtle bone in its body.

The use of the term ‘nephilim’ was really the only thing that caught my attention at all here; the nephilim are mentioned twice in the Torah/the Old Testament, and are explained in the first instance as being the children of human women and angels. In the second instance they are said to be big enough that people seem like grasshoppers to them. Here, though, they are apparently a type of demon that are demons who were once human.

Sigh. I just found it all annoying and frustrating, if I’m to be utterly honest. It at least possesses a story, so its got a leg up on last season’s Monthly Comic Zero Sum adaptation (Karneval), although that isn’t saying much. Too much shouting-as-humor, too much lack of subtlety. And the thing gives us a few minutes in the past, gives us a glimpse to something that looks slightly more interesting, then drops us dead into a paint-by-the-numbers setting instead. What a bore.

Still, will give it another episode. If it got a bit less overbearing, I think that would help it a hell of a lot, but I’m not holding my breath.

Also, lol, Solomon as a blonde. Fucking hilarious.