The Devil Is a Part-Timer!! Season 2

Episode 1

On paper, the idea of a demon king getting reverse-isekai'ed to our world, only to get assimilated so hard to the point where he becomes an upstanding employee at a discount McDonald's sounds like a terrible premise for a show. But The Devil Is a Part-Timer! somehow made it work back in 2013, and it ended up becoming one of my favorite comedies of the past couple of years. In fact, in an industry that has become more saturated with isekais than ever before, season one still remains something of a breath of fresh air in 2022, embracing the tropes of the classic hero versus demon story while also leaning into the absurdity of the premise. Some of the dramatic sections do clash a little bit and some of the jokes don't feel as funny now as they were back then, but if you are a fan of the reverse-isekai genre or the fantasy tropes it plays with, then I would still highly recommend it.

The premiere of season two does retain a lot of that humor and spark that I found so appealing in season one. The writing is snappy, carried by over-the-top voice acting with characters that have all of their grandiose pretenses undercut by mundane and at times very petty scrabbles. In fact, as someone who still struggles to find the most optimal way to subsist in the hellscape that is our current economy, The Devil Is a Part-Timer!'s subtle commentary on budgeting and poor living conditions feels more relevant than ever before. The difference in animation style and character designs also allows the show to lean more into exaggerated reactions and expressions of its characters; it's a change that might take a bit to get used to, but a welcomed one that plays on the show's strengths.

That's probably what the first episode can best be summed up as: a warm and wacky welcome back. We don't get any dramatic beats or plot points aside from something teased in the beginning and the introduction of a new baby at the end. Like most premieres to follow up seasons, this is simply intended to cozy us in while also setting up the main impetus for what is to come. I am usually very hesitant when the next plot point for a plot-driven show is a baby, because it reminds me a little bit too much of that weird era where everyone thought that adding a baby to a movie or sitcom would suddenly spice things up when it almost always made things worse; that, and some whisperings from light novel readers that the segment of the source material this season appears set to cover isn't exactly as strong compared to what we have seen before. For now at least, I am more than satisfied and excited!

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