Welcome to Demon School! Iruma-Kun Volumes 11 and 12 Review

After the fight against the demonic beasts at Walter Park, the members of the Misfit Class have become famous—not only among their peers, but also among the rest of the demon population. Especially Iruma, who cannot go anywhere without being recognised; the paparazzi seem to follow his every move. And that’s why he and Asmodeus find themselves spending time at Clara’s house, together with her family.

Iruma and his classmates are trying to enjoy the summer holidays as much as possible before the start of the new semester, but unfortunately some family obligations don’t allow Asmodeus and Ameri to spend all their time with Iruma, leaving him alone with Clara…

And with the summer vacations coming to an end and the start of the new semester, the Misfit Class is in for a new round of torture… oops, I mean training. In fact, thanks to their performance at Walter Park, the professors at Babyls decided that in order to keep using the Royal One classroom, all the students need to be at least rank Dalet (4) before the end of their first year. As Dalet is the minimum level needed to graduate Babyls, which students have six years to reach, it’s going to be quite the journey for the Misfit Class to get there in only six months. While their professor Kalego is a sadist and enjoys torturing his students, he also takes his role as an educator quite seriously, so he selects specific instructors to train the students in pairs, based on their abilities. Too bad those instructors are known to be weird and ready to push their students to their limits.

The Misfit class is in for a wilder ride than usual, but they won’t let the instructors get the better of them. Whatever torture/training the instructors put them through, the Misfit Class will succeed and beat the odds at the Harvest Festival, the last exam of the first year, which will help determine their ranks.

After the excitement and action seen in the past couple of volumes due to the attack at Walter Park, Volume 11 gives Iruma and the rest of the demons of the Misfit Class a few chapters to enjoy their summer vacation as students should. These chapters highlight secondary characters, giving them a chance to shine and be the protagonists for once, while Iruma, Clara and Asmodeus take on a secondary role. It’s only toward the end of the volume that the story picks up again, when the Misfit Class is introduced to the new regulation they must fulfil to continue using the Royal One classroom.

To say the Misfit Class is in despair is an understatement, but as the readers know, when they reach rock bottom, our favourite demons know how to climb back up, even stronger than before. And that is exactly what Kalego is planning for them! The instructors he’s selected are brutal and don’t take pity on their students; they push them to their limits until they are broken. Well, the students don’t have any plans to take the torture disguised as training in silence, but they work to get stronger to beat their own instructors.

When everyone is being paired up, Iruma ends up with Lied and Professor Robin, who also asks for help from a relative, Bachiko, whom he considers an elder sister. She’s a new character and she’s quite peculiar; she looks and act like a spoiled child and ends up keeping Iruma under her wing… as a gofer! Well, if the training is successful or not will only be revealed in the upcoming volumes once the Harvest Festival is underway. While the readers get the gist of the training the Misfit Class are undergoing, we don’t know the full horror for them (fun for us) they’ve been subjected to, but I’m pretty sure it won’t take much longer to find out.

The story in the published volumes so far has finally reached the third season of the anime, so for those who have watched it already, you know what’s about to happen, and it will be nice to finally go further into the story than the Harvest Festival. Although Season 4 of the anime has been announced, there is still no indication as to when it will air on Crunchyroll.

Between Volumes 11 and 12, both translator and letterer change, but there is no interruption or weirdness in the translation and dialogues, so you’ll only notice if you look at the copyright page. Both volumes also keep to what we have seen so far in each volume about having translation notes at the end to clarify or delve more in depth into something mentioned or someone introduced in the demon world.

While the story is still full of comedy and school life anecdotes, I think with the training for the Harvest Festival, it takes on a slightly more serious tone as it sets the foundations for the demons in the Misfit Class to climb the demon ranks and grow both personally and in terms of their power.

Welcome to Demon School! Iruma-kun is written and illustrated by Osamu Nishi. It’s published in the English language by Vertical, a Kodansha imprint, and Volume 13 is scheduled for release in April.

Our review copies from Kodansha were supplied by Turnaround Publisher Services.