Review for The Demon Girl Next Door - Season 2

Introduction

“And in the end, like so many short run shows, it took its eye off the ball in the hope of scoring a second season, in the process most likely precluding that from ever happening”


That’s what I wrote about Season 1 of The Demon Girl Next Door almost four years ago when I reviewed it. What the hell do I know? Here we are as 2024 races towards a close, and I’m here reviewing season 2 of a show that I was certain didn’t warrant one. There’s a reason I stopped playing the lottery. I think it’s because we live in times where we need light, frothy, and inconsequential entertainment to distract us from reality, that shows like The Demon Girl Next Door warrant continuations, or that could just be my wounded reviewer pride showing. But, I did kind of enjoy the first season. Hopefully I’ll kind of enjoy this second season too.


Yuko Yoshido is a pretty normal schoolgirl. She lives with her mother and her little sister, and attends high school. Her family may be poor, and her health has always been frail, but other than that, she’s completely mundane. That’s until the morning she wakes up with a pair of horns growing out of her head, and a demonic tail.


She gets an explanation in her dream from an ancestor named Lilith. She’s the heir to the Dark Clan, but in their endless battles with the Light Clan, they suffered a defeat and had their powers sealed, one of the reasons that Yuko’s family has been cursed with eternal poverty. But now the seal is beginning to break, and Yuko has awakened to her demon heritage. Lilith tells Yuko that all she has to do is to defeat a member of the Light Clan and sacrifice her blood and she will come into her full power.


The hard thing will be to find a member of the Light Clan, but luckily for Yuko, a magical girl named Momo Chiyoda goes to Yuko’s school. But Momo is insanely powerful, and has a lot of experience defending humanity. Yuko’s just a weak, frail girl with horns and a tail. So when she challenges Momo to a duel to the death, Momo can only take pity on her. It’s the start of a strange friendship...


12 more episodes of The Demon Girl Next Door are presented across two discs from MVM.

Disc 1
1. Yet Another Showdown! The Magical Girl Has a Brand New Appearance?!
2. Urban Exploration! The Troubled Mikan and the Excited Demon!
3. The Dark Witch Returns! With Steam From Hell!
4. A New Species Discovered! The Town Cafe is a Demon Lair!
5. Demonic Awakening! Forge Your Own Path!
6. Vow Under the Setting Sun! The Path Forward for Demonkind
7. A Short Break!! The Demonic Summer Festival
8. Sparks Fly?! Light and Dark Go On a Joint Excursion!
9. Pitch-Black Feelings!! Darkness Peach Returns!!

Disc 2
10. The Ancestor’s Dojo?! Demonkind’s Ultimate Weapon!
11. New Semester! The Magical Girl’s New Duty!
12. A Ritual in Darkness! The Demon’s New Ally!!

Picture

The Demon Girl Next Door gets a 1.78:1 widescreen 1080p transfer on these discs. The image is clear and sharp, colours are rich and consistent, and there are no visible problems with compression, aliasing, or even banding. It’s a nice comedy anime, which means bright colours, and unchallenging world designs, while the characters are cute and memorable, with some nicely accomplished costume designs. The animation is smooth, and does more than enough to tell the story and express the show’s sense of humour. It might not be the most visually complex of anime, but it is put together really well for what it is.

Sound

You have the choice between DTS-HD MA 2.0 Stereo English and Japanese, with subtitles and signs locked during playback. I was happy enough with the original language track, the actors were suited to their roles, and made them distinctive, while the subtitles were timed accurately and free of typos. The music is quite nice, and I grew fond of the opening theme. The stereo did enough to get the show’s action and effects across well.

Extras

You get two discs which boot to static menus. The episodes are followed by translated English credits.

The extras on disc 2 comprise the textless credits, one opening and two closings.

There are also The Demon Girl Next Door Minis, 24 short animations split into 6 batches of 4, running to a total of 25:32.

Conclusion

I have a problem with this show, one which I had with the first season, and one which carries over to this second season as well. The Demon Girl Next Door is a perfectly pleasant show, but I find it eminently forgettable too. It’s a bit of supernatural slice of life where the cuteness of the characters is the most important thing next to the trivial minutiae of their everyday lives. It could be big and momentous given the nature of the characters, the magic involved, the various curses and the back-stories and so on. But this is a show that will always choose to downplay any drama, in favour of keeping things light and unchallenging. If you invest in the characters, care about this world, which I can see as likely, especially if you’re a fan of the original four panel manga, then this show will be a lot of fun. But if you’re just dipping your toe in, taking a chance on the anime at random, then it might not be so easy to find its appeal.


However, I did find the second season to be a bit more consistent than the first, managing its plot developments without sacrificing its comedy for an atonal episode of seriousness here or there. It also introduces more wacky characters into the mix, especially when Yuko gets a part time job at a cafe run by a magical tapir of all animals, where a fox girl named Lico tends to add all manner of magic potions to the cafe’s wares.


Over the course of these episodes, Yuko discovers her father’s legacy, a mutable magic staff that conforms to its wielder’s magical powers and in Yuko’s hands spends most of its time as a fork. Momo’s search for her sister Sakura unfolds in an unexpected way, and she also has to deal with her inner demonic side, which starts cropping up when she least expects it. They also get to the bottom of Mikan’s curse, which tends to bring misfortune to all around her. While all this is going on, Yuko continues with the mission assigned her by her ancestor Lilith, to gain a vassal to give more power to her demon side. Given that her target is Momo, this usually means the girls hanging out, deepening their friendship, and doing the usual ‘cute girls doing cute things’ shtick that is expected from a show like this.


Here’s the thing... I enjoyed the second season of The Demon Girl Next Door, and maybe even a little more than the first. It’s delightful, it’s heart-warming, and it has a charm that is very effective. It’s very much a feel-good anime. And for me it’s such an ephemeral show, that if I hadn’t been taking notes while watching it, I would have been hard pressed to write anything in this review, the episodes are so forgettable. The Demon Girl Next Door Season 2 is available direct from MVM’s webstore Anime on Line, from Anime Limited, and from mainstream retailers.