Alternate universes aren't just the stuff of fanfiction anymore. Or rather, they never have been; it's just that a lot of early fanfiction is rarely referred to as such. But how else would you describe 19th-century American humorist John Kendrick Bangs' Hades series, which began with 1895's bestseller A Houseboat on the Styx, where he throws the famous dead together on the eponymous houseboat and sends them on zany adventures? hiroja's Welcome to Demon School, Iruma-kun: IruMafia Edition may not be quite as highbrow (although Bangs would surely laugh to hear his book described as such), but it takes a similarly bizarre premise and runs with it: what if Iruma and all of his acquaintances were mafiosi instead of demons?

To hear hiroja and original series creator Osamu Nishi talk about it, it seems that at least half of the entire point was hiroja's desire to draw everyone in natty suits. A self-proclaimed suit sommelier, hiroja's love of the fashion is apparent in every single panel of the book. The fits, the cuts, the hats, and the patterns, everything about the suits is perfectly tailored to each character's style and personality impressively. I'm hardly an expert on suits, and even I was impressed, even if the symbolism of putting Iruma in white and everyone else in darker colors is a bit on the nose.

That's because, adopted grandson of a demon or a mafioso, Iruma is still Iruma. In this version of the tale, he's living in a tent under a bridge in the slums at age five, cheerily giving his food and money away to any thug who asks for it nicely enough. When he stumbles upon a man bleeding on the street, he promptly takes him home, patches him up, and feeds him his only loaf of bread. Not long after, the man shows up in a limo – he's Don Sullivan, head of the Babel Mafia, and he has a burning desire for a grandson. Little Iruma is freaked out at first, but ultimately is won over by the promise of food – and Sullivan's kindness in allowing him to also adopt Opera.

Opera is perhaps the most changed character in this version. We first meet them chained up in Sullivan's torture chamber, where they're casually throttling guards with their feet. Sullivan plans for Opera to be killed, but Iruma recognizes a fellow slumdweller, and his first action as Sullivan's grandson is to beg for Opera's life. Where original Opera is a smooth operator (with a hinted at difficult past), IruMafia Opera is vicious and always up for bloodshed. With a perpetual scowl on their face, Opera's one loyalty is to Iruma, even if they don't always understand him. And yes, this Opera is also explicitly agender – in a four-panel strip at the end of the book, Iruma asks Opera their gender, to which they reply, “Who gives a shit?” Honestly, I wish more people responded that way to such invasive questions.

Perhaps because of the setting, IruMafia is substantially more violent than its parent series. Most of the violence is fairly tame as these things go, and gore is kept to a minimum level given the subject matter. There's plenty of opportunity for Iruma to exercise his amazing avoidance skills, and in some ways, the joke plays better here. There's a grittiness to the world that is striking with Nishi's character designs (ably copied by hiroja), and the humor is a little less airy than in the original, which, again, makes sense with the setting and premise. Still, everyone we've met so far is largely recognizable, with Opera being the major surprise, even though they are still clearly Opera. And something about the way chain-smoking avaricious Kalego's familiar form is worked into the story is particularly funny.

The whole cast isn't here just yet. Because the story proper starts when Iruma is five and Opera is a pre-teen, there isn't time to bring everyone in. Opera, Iruma, Sullivan, and Kalego are the original cast members for this volume, although Asmodeus does show up on the final page, which is enough to make me want to read the next volume. (I also really want to see how Clara and Ameri are used.) This is a mildly insane, very entertaining romp of a book, and assuming you don't mind the mafia being used for humor and the very random bits of Italian thrown in, it's a safe bet for Iruma fans – and fans of a sharp suit.