Thanks to the magic of scheduling I can post while taking an exam, isn’t technology amazing? That being said, more than my never ending exams (today’s the last though, yeah!) the subject of today is Maoyuu.
Maoyuu has a very simple plot and starts like this: there is war between demons and humans, but thankfully, a super strong hero manages to get to the Demon “King” and is dead set on killing him. Except it happens that the Demon King is a very cute girl who also happens to hate war. Together, they will try to stop the endless killings and restore peace between demons and humans. So cute.
In the end, I still was hooked even before the first episode was finished because of a simple reason, that reason being economics. I love economics. And the anime made a very interesting use of economics and did well explaining how much of a role it has in war and in peace and that, in the end, economics is a war in and of itself.
I really like that part of the plot.
I can’t say the rest of Maoyuu was anything that original. I mean, it’s a war story between demons and humans with characters that want to stop it in one way or another. The kind of fantasy setting that nearly always works if you can write decently enough. And the writers of Maoyuu did just that. The only twist being that the demon Queen and the Hero who was supposed to kill her actually team up against both sides. (They’re basically traitors but, well, love is that powerful.)
And love is probably the most surprising part of this anime. Seriously, who would have thought these two would fall in love. Well, ok it happened a bit fast (though Maou had been looking at Yuusha ever since his birth) and in real life I would find this totally creepy, but well, anime love isn’t real life love (thankfully) so I can find their love story really cute. I even found the love triangle quite interesting to watch, because the Female Knight’s love was also very cute.
I’m usually not someone who falls in love with something with very typical plots for no reason, nor am I compelled to stomach a love story and go as far as calling it cute if it isn’t for something more. And the something more that Maoyuu has and that some other anime have not is very simple: good characters.
Starting with Maou, she may be one of the strongest female characters I have seen in a while as she knows what she wants and she fights to get it, but, on the other side, she’s also a normal little girl. Same could be said for the Female Knight. I liked these two because of this, they’re everything but one-dimensional, and that made them very realistic, very imperfect, and thus, very loveable.
I quite liked the men as well. First has to be the Hero, he’s quite the interesting fellow, falling in love and helping a Demon Queen like that. On the other hand, the Merchant was probably the one I liked best, because being a Merchant it means he kinda likes to trick people and I like that (Also, Hiroshi Kamiya voiced him…)
In short, I LOVED Maoyuu, yes, LOVED, in caps lock. Should be enough to demonstrate how much I urge you to watch. Unless you can’t stand economics and nearly no action aside from the few battle scenes, then you should definitely pass.
