How DARE this series make me feel things?
Back in 2022 I read and reviewed what I considered to be a slightly amusing, slightly forgettable manga called Maou to Yuri, Volume 1. I bought the next volume not because I cared what would happen, but because I like to have some manga on tap for those days I have nothing else of consequence to read. This has been hanging out in my Bookwalker Library waiting for that day. And then I read everything on my Kindle in the first to days of vacation and needed something to else read. Voila! And there I was 3/4 way through and yelling at my phone as my eyes teared up! How very dare, I tell you.
Maou to Yuri, Volume 2 ( 魔王と百合) goes from great to great in ways that are simply shocking, given both the premise and the characters.
To recap, a female Demon Ruler is trying to figure out a way to repare relations with the humans, after the war and settles on marrying one. The choices are as follows: A Princess Knight, a righteous and energetic Hero, a Wizard, a Witch, and a Maid. For character details, visit my review of Volume 1. They each can be summed up in a sentence or less. No one has a name here, only a title.
As Volume 2 begin, Yuri Bachelor begins as the five women “compete” in a variety of stupid competitions to allow the artist to play dress-up with them. The “winner” they are told will get to be Demon Ruler for the day. When Maid-san wins, she dons the Demon Ruler’s cloak and begins a deep clean of the castle’s dungeons. Along with the wolf-headed guard I enjoyed so much in the first volume, the Maid gets down to the DO NOT ENTER portion of the dungeon, releases the violent spirit of Maou’s ancestor and defeats him, thus cleaning out any malevolence and dust in basement. It was an amazing chapter that completely had me floored.
Maou, as clueless as she is, is suddenly aware that she really like Maid-san, and notes, in a moment of weakness, that she never smiles. But even worse is on the horizon when wolf-guard guy bursts in and says that the kindgdom in the West is getting ready to attack! Weird, because the Princess Knight is one of the candidates to marry Maou…what if they just do that?!? But no…it’s too late, her sister is on a rampage and she needs to go home and become Maou’s enemy.
Maid-san makes a cheesecake hoping to share it with everyone, but realizes their happy group is no more. Maoh comes across her standing despondently in the garden where they took tea. Maid-san turns to her crying and Maou runs over to embrace her. I stopped reading for a moment, raging that this stupid book made me emotional! The story wraps in a much better way than I might have imagined with the premise and I find myself smiling far more than I might have expected. How. Dare.
Ratings:
Art – 8
Story – 8
Characters – 7 At least two of them develop a sentence’s worth of personality
Service – 4
Yuri – 5
Overall – 7
I still loved wolf guard guy, “Maou! The humans from the kingdom to the West are massing to attack!” What a job.
