Iruma-Kun: Welcome to Demon School #2

The second of the extra-long intro chapters is a bit better than the first. It has most of the same issues, but there's more to like alongside it, and the art seems to be getting a bit more consistent in quality. It's still not anything to write home about visually (mostly. It's complicated), but I feel like it's figuring out its art style and deciding how it actually wants everything to look and feel, rather than just sort of blindly fumbling at that.

The issue starts with more context on exactly how the sale of Iruma's soul to the demon grandpa happened. Only a little bit more, though, because there really isn't that much more to know, heh. It kinda came out of the blue for all those concerned. However, it does at least show us exactly when and where Iruma draws the line and will give an outright "no" answer even to people who he feels as obliged to as his (admittedly not-so-loving) parents.

It still required him to do a quick double-take after reflexively starting to consent. But regardless, he did ultimately say no. And, in his inner monologue in the previous chapter, he was able to be outright contemptuous of his parents when describing their behavior here, even if he doesn't appear to have had the courage to tell them that out loud.

So, with that background in mind, we now jump a day or two back ahead to Iruma trying to explain to his "grandfather" that he doesn't feel safe attending demon school with classmates who are legally permitted to kill him and biologically hardwired to want to eat him. Said demon granddad is named Sullivan, apparently. Presumably his last name is Leviathan or Azrael or something, given that the other demon who's been named so far is Alice Asmodeus lol. Anyway, after his near-death experience with Alice yesterday, and the ocean of social and political unknowns that come with him apparently having Alice as a minion now, Iruma really wants to know if there's a way he can still be Sullivan's grandson without attending the school. But, the sight he's treated to when he comes home makes that difficult for him.

Lavish dinner. Lavish breakfast the next morning. New tailored clothes and hand-embroidered handkerchiefs, the latter having been sewn by Sullivan and his butler Opera (last name presumably Mainyu or something) themselves. And, in light of all those, Iruma can't bring himself to do it. Seeing how eager Sullivan is for his "grandson" (who he's already convinced himself he loves dearly and is deeply attached to) to make him proud at school, Iruma's nerves fall short of the critical pressure needed for him to put his foot down.

So, back to shonen murder school he goes!

It turns out that Sullivan isn't the only demon in the know about Iruma's nature. Opera the butler is also aware. And...Sullivan's answer to the latter's very reasonable questions about why leave much to be desired.

So, Opera might end up being a liability.

That one panel also seems to imply that Sullivan might have an ulterior motive for doing this whole thing - other than senile delusion - that would turn him into a much more conventional Sensei (a plague be upon his house). If this turns out to be the case, I will wilfully misinterpret the story in order for it to not be the case, as this will improve the experience for both myself and my own readers. It's still far kinder treatment than Sensei deserves.

So, first proper day of school at Bablys Demon Academy! The first morning will have the freshmen summoning their familiars. And the quality of familiar that they summon will apparently determine the "ranking" that they start their academy career at, whatever that means. Alice is eager to explain the ropes to Iruma, and is surprisingly unsuspicious about the alleged grandson of the dean not knowing the first thing about how any of this works.

As an aside, Alice Asmodeus (or "Azz" to his friends) apparently uses male pronouns. He looks like a guy too. I kinda assumed they were just an androgynous-looking girl due to the first name, but I guess Alice is a boy. Okay then!

So. Familiars are artificial(-ish?) creatures created from the smoke of an extinguished fire. Demons use their personal seals as part of the spell diagram to call them into existence, or to call them from wherever they otherwise normally exist, or however it works. And, the staff member who will be overseeing the familiar-summoning process is a textbook dark bishie boy named Kalego Naberius who has a bad attitude at the best of times and an even worse one right now.

He's kind of a dick to everyone, but the primary target of his ire is, well, primarily targeted.

Apparently, Naberius was also the guy in charge of running the orientation ceremony yesterday. And he wasn't informed that Sullivan was adding a new student to the roster. Or that Sullivan was going to unilaterally have him make the introduction speech instead of the aristocratic prep school star Alice, who Naberius had spent a good deal of time coaching for this. Or that he was going to have him cast a dangerous, ill-advised spell onstage in front of everyone in lieu of an actual speech, encouraging reckless behavior for the entire student body all in the name of a dickwave by the dean.

He might not be handling it very well, making it the students' problem and all, but it's hard not to take Naberius' side in the abstract. Since, like. He's completely in the right about this. It's also made clear that this is just the latest in a long series of stupid bullshit that Sullivan has spontaneously inflicted on the school staff on a whim.

Naberius makes it clear that anyone who fails to summon a familiar will be summarily expelled. Which appears to not be the usual policy, based on everyone's reactions, but I guess he has the authority to make these kinds of snap decisions.

...again, there's an implication here that he doesn't think Iruma will be able to do the magic properly. Despite him not having any reason to suspect that Iruma lacks typical innate demonic magic (if he knew he wasn't a demon he'd already be eaten, no?). As far as Naberius knows, Iruma has cast a powerful spell and won a deathmatch against a magically powerful (if not yet properly trained) opponent. He's acting like he expects to be able to easily get rid of Iruma here, but I'm afraid I can't follow his train of thought.

On the other hand, Iruma is feeling like this might be the reprieve he's looking for.

Getting expelled by a bitchy professor with a grudge would let him get himself out of danger and also follow his conflict-avoidant tendencies. It's perfect!

...I'm not sure why he thinks that getting expelled won't result in his "grandfather" disowning him. And subsequently eating him. Given how much Sullivan seems to see the school as synonymous with his person and studenthood as synonymous with childhood, I think that this is a distinct possibility. I guess Iruma might just be too scared out of his mind to think that far ahead, though, so I won't judge him too harshly for not considering this.

Anyway, Naberius wants to expel him, and wisely or otherwise Iruma wants to be expelled. Between the two of them you'd think they could manage, but...unfortunately they're foiled by another punchline in dire need of setup.

No, seriously. This one could have been brilliant - like, laugh-out-loud funny AND legitimately brilliant as a dramatic plot twist - if only the needed premises were established before rather than after the event. My frustration with how this was done is damned near tangible.

"Summoning" and "familiar" mean different things depending on whether humans are doing the summoning or if demons are. Demons just get little smoke-critters. Humans get demons. Since Naberius is making everyone use his own personal sigil to summon their smoke-critters (so that he will have intimate awareness of exactly what's going on and thus know if and how anyone is cheating), any summoning spell that a human attempts with it will be locked onto Naberius. And um...apparently the ritual process is the exact same either way, with the race of the caster being the sole differentiating factor.

So, Iruma summons Naberius into the spell circle and binds him to his will, transforming the powerful professor and school authority figure into his slave. Thereby cementing his fearsome reputation even further in the minds of all the staff, students, and probably greater demon society beyond the school.

Like I said, if only the comic hadn't told this in a way that forced it to explain the joke after the fact, this sequence probably would have won me over to the comic right then and there. But...god, the author's comedic timing is weak. The jokes are good conceptually, but with few exceptions they're just not being told well at all.

There is at least some good physical comedy involving Naberius's feet and head being in different places as Iruma inadvertantly tries to summon him up through a glyph written in a room he's already standing in.

Now you're thinking with portals.​

So, that part is cute even if the way it's drawn seems unintentionally confusing.

Anyway, the resolution of this sequence is Iruma basically just continuing to blunder his way into being a dark lord of hell. An escalation over what happened with Azz in the previous issue (really, Azz and Naberius were both reacting to the same slight-by-proxy from Sullivan through different channels, and ended up meeting more-or-less the same fate). The familiar-summoning spell apparently comes with a time limit of one year, so Naberius at least is off the hook by next schoolyear. We don't know when or if Azz's subservient period ends, but Azz seems to be fairly happy as a lieutenant of Iruma's provided that Iruma keeps scoring additional wins that reflect well on himself by proxy.

Thing is...the nature of the reputational boost Iruma gets here is one I have to question. It's totally unheard of for a demon to bind another demon as a familiar, and everyone reacts to this development by concluding that Iruma is some kind of unique superpowerful dark messiah or the like. But...it's also established that everyone knows humans can bind demons as familiars. And humans, despite having this ability, aren't viewed with any kind of awe or respect by demonkind. Quite the opposite from what we've seen.

We already have had some classmates comment on how small, frail, and un-demonic Iruma looks. If he's now doing this thing that humans are considered unimpressive for being able to do, but that would break everyone's understanding of their world for a demon to have done, well...improbable though Iruma's situation here is, I feel like people would start to suspect.

True, we did have that anecdote at the start of the first chapter about how demons are kinda dumb and easily fall for tricks that cater to their biases. But in that case, the joke is just "look at this human dance in circles around creatures that are dumber than humans." Which...stops being funny pretty quickly after the first couple of repetitions.

Heh, though I guess Sullivan being incredibly quick to capitalize on it is amusing enough in its own right.

Either he's been waiting for a chance to put uppity underling Naberius in his place, or he already completely forgot that his "grandson" is an adopted human and actually believes everything he's saying here.

In other positive news, Azz's own familiar is this cool snake dragon thing.

See? Now here's some good art! Both for the familiar, and for Azz posing with his new summon. The author *can* draw much better than she usually draws, apparently. It's probably just a matter of her not knowing how to do so as quickly as needed in order to let one's talent show through in the lunatic manga publishing environment.

I suspect the art for this manga will get much, much smoother as the author figures out exactly how much quality she can squeeze into the limited worktimes available and how to space the good stuff out.

...

Daily reminder of how much great art we haven't gotten in the last few decades thanks to these working conditions.

...

So, that's chapter 2. It's better than the debut issue, like I said, but there's still a lot of room for improvement. I'm certainly not invested in Iruma as a character yet, or in the setting, but that could change pretty soon if the next few issues keep picking up at this pace. For now though, I really don't have much more to say.