The Devil Is a Part-Timer!! Season 2

Episode 8

I must admit, I'm kind of at a loss about what to talk about here because aside from maybe one or two conversations and a change in location, this episode is set up in almost every sense of the word. I'm personally a little annoyed and surprised that the whole thing regarding the landlady clearly knowing everything about the whole situation was completely dropped here. While the apartment is fixed, she still seems to be nowhere to be found and the team still needs to find work because McRonald's is still closed down. So now we're left with what feels like a complete repeat of the set up that we got just a few episodes ago: convenient situation presents itself where the gang is able to go to a far off location for them to get some work done only to be followed by Emi and Suzuno because they can't trusted the devils, and then the episode ends with some supernatural implications. I'll save my thoughts on the eerie foreshadowing and set up for next week because depending on how that's handled, I might need to call bullshit, but for now I'll try to squeeze out as much intrigue as I can from the episode even though I feel like I just summed up everything.

It's nice to see a little bit more of Chiho and the rest of her family because she is sort of becoming a personal favorite of mine this season. Again, she doesn't have any supernatural powers or any real connection to the fantasy world, but she does have a good heart, a surprising amount of patience and she genuinely seems to want everyone to get along. I liked the scene where she and Maou were just walking under the stars and she said that she wants to do her best for everybody. The relationship that she has with Maou does feel cute and genuine even though there are some snags that I don't think the stories ever really going to address such as the fact that Chiho is well aware of the fact that Maou has technically done some pretty horrible things and at least indirectly led to the deaths of a lot of people. In fact, that's even brought up here as part of the reason why Emi followed them because she personally felt uncomfortable with demons working on a farm when they were the ones responsible for destroying the farmland that she grew up on.

The conversation that Emi and Maou have while tending to the plants was interesting because it almost feels like Emi is trying to convince herself that she's still this hardened warrior that will kill Maou at a moment's notice, just other things that keep getting in the way. But if he learns to feel remorseful for his actions during that wait time, then maybe some of that anger will go away. Obviously she sticks to the fact that she will kill him no matter what and to be honest I don't think the show has done a good job of addressing why Maou doesn't fully deserve that. If anything, the problem with satirizing the show in such a way while also leaning into serious discussions is that it does lead to instances where I wonder exactly where Maou's character arc is going to go. I think that given his experiences and given his backstory, he has the capacity to feel remorse for his actions and in some cases I think he does. However, there are some actions that you don't really walk away from outside of extenuating circumstances so I wonder if the show will at all address that in these last couple episodes. Given the show's pacing though, this is probably the last arc of the season so who knows what type of payoffs will get before we reach that end.

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The Devil Is a Part-Timer! Season 2 is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.