Name: Beelzebub SPOILER FREE REVIEW Type: Manga Volumes: 28 Chapters: 250 Status: Finished Published: Feb 23 2009 to Mar 13 2015 Genres: Action Comedy Demons School Shounen Supernatural Authors: Tamura Ryuuhei Story Art Serialization: Shounen Jump Weekly Hey Punk you wanna die? basically your comedic High School story with a delinquent twist except its a High School for delinquents and theyre all delinquents and there are demons as well stay with me now. The story starts up with our main protagonist Oga Tatsumi who is a delinquent among delinquents with an IQ of a potato might be lower with his solution to every problem being punching it in the face kicking it and if that fails punching it even harder and a junior attending Ishiyama High School for delinquents and called a demon for his brutal personality I found him to be a refreshing lead in this scenario a change from some sameold types of characters. The scene starts with him finishing off a gang foolish enough to attack him and then coming across a baby boy who popped out of some old dude because who needs biology BTW the babys naked even through the entire course of reading it. Ok where was I? Yeah Oga having no clue on how to deal with the situation takes the baby to his best friends house enter Creepichi I mean Furuichi the only sane and nondelinquent character and highly relatable in the entire read IMO with some of the best comedic moments as hes teased all through the story sad actually and a favourite of mine. He stood out like a sore thumb because he was the only one out of the bunch to react accordingly to the outrageous situations and had expressions one would expect if it were a normal story but this story is anything but normal far from it actually. Well turns out that the baby is the son of THE Demon King named Beelzebub IV Kaiser de Emperana surprising cute with him only ever uttering Dabuu well he is a baby after all. And has chosen Oga to be his parent to raise him into a demon lord fit to destroy all of humanity. This might sound all serious but trust me it isnt in the slightest. Now comedy is one of my very very preferred genres and its liked in general because its just there for the sake of entertainment no extra added stuff like deep plot or thought provoking dialogues just fun. And Beelzebubs take on this genre impressed me a lot. Beelzebub takes full advantage of that comedy tag by taking each and every situation and adding as much exaggeration as possible but not in a bad way. I would like to call this genius actually. Much like how Konosuba plays around with the isekai genre or how Daily Lives of High School Boys plays with the comedy genre Beelzebub plays around with it as well youll understand this once you read it or have watched/read the series I mentioned. That being said this has got to be among the best comedy manga I have read in a while it just doesnt disappoint or tries too hard to be funny. I guess I could say the storys flow is naturally comedic props to the mangaka on that. Though at times the story revolving around demons DOES get very serious major plot unfolds or boss fights and emotional character pasts/interactions but it always adds a touch of humor afterwards to lighten up the mood. Though one thing I was very disappointed in was that the story feels rushed in the later part of the manga short fights shorter character introductions which is generally the only complain I have about this. Though if this had taken its sweet time to explain and plot out everything near the end like from the start this wouldve been a 9 or possibly even a 10. Onto the characters this is where Beelzebub was great and somewhat bad at the same time. Great that it had some unique interesting characters which had good character development back stories and remained relevant to the plot till the end. I like it when a story keeps along all the characters it has managed to introduce in new ways but on the other hand bad that it left some of the characters totally unexplained they just felt relevant for a relatively short time and introduced some characters out of the blue. And I guess I kinda explained the lead characters in the start other characters youll have to see for yourselves such as the demon wait for it MAID yup demon maid Hildegard. Sounds cute doesnt it? Shes more brutal than Oga and thats saiyan something. Has sworn undying loyalty to Beelzebub and loves him like a mother shes here to act as a helper and to see whether all his needs are being fulfilled by the human host parent for little demon lord Beelzebub and for than often ends up beating the snot out of Oga for when he steps out of line thats comical in its own way. Now the art style nothing Id look at and say Whoa thats detailed. Just fine but not something that would get in the way of your reading. Character designs were OK but being an action comedy the things that were handled really well IMO were the expressions like Ogas demon expressions stating Im going to beat you into submission or Lolichi I mean Furuichis expressions for when he sees women or gets into some weird escalated situations. Enjoyment factor was a max 10/10 for me in this read. Ill grant it a RATING of 8.5/10 Couldve done better if it wasnt rushed like I mentioned but hey all in all this was a good and very enjoyable read nonetheless. So if youre looking for your next read with action or comedy this is a pretty good choice especially for comedy.
85 /100
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