Demon Lord 2099: The Complete Omnibus Review

Having reviewed the original light novel nearly four years ago, it was nice to revisit Demon Lord 2099 in this manga version. While we’ve seen the anime version of the series that came out at the end of 2024, the manga was until now the only adaptation of the story not available in English. Originally published in three volumes, Yen Press have released the entire work as a single omnibus.

For those unfamiliar with the series, Demon Lord 2099 follows the evil Demon Lord Veltol Velvet Velsvalt from the fantasy world of Alneath who, 500 years earlier, was killed in battle by the human hero Gram. Eventually his devoted follower Machina revived Veltol, but during the time he was away, a disaster befell Alneath called the “Fantasion”, in which this world merged with Earth. As a result, there was war between the various races and species of both worlds, national boundaries collapsed, and now the world mostly consists of city states which operate using “magineering” – a combination of Alneath’s magic and Earth’s industry, to create a magical cyberpunk world in what is now Earth Year 2099. The story takes place in the city state of Shinjuku.

Veltol decides to continue with his overall aim before his death, which is to rule the entire world. However, he faces several problems. One of his old followers, Marcus, has turned against him and is now using magineering to prevent Veltol from gaining power, designing magical computer implants that immortals like Veltol cannot use. As Veltol’s powers require him to have followers who believe in him, which he lacks having been away for half a millennium, he is easily beaten in a fight with Marcus. Machina helps Veltol get back on his feet, by making Veltol a game streamer working alongside a human hacker called Takahashi. As Veltol starts to regain his old powers however, he and his friends discover some horrible truths behind Marcus’s schemes.

Much of what is to be said in terms of reviewing the manga has already been covered in my previous review of the novel. The highlights are the setting and world building, with author Daigo Murasaki mixing the cyberpunk and fantasy elements to make a world that stands out from most isekai. Some of the best artwork in this manga by Yutaka Sakurai are the landscape pictures. The characters are good too, especially Veltol who is someone finds himself a classic fish-out-of-water in this new world, albeit a fish that can easily take you down in a single bite when he has the strength to do so.

The manga and the novel share the same translator, Sergio Avila, while the manga also credits the  letterer, Amethyst Xuan. Avila does sterling work with the translation, but Xuan’s lettering is most worthy of highlighting, using a range of different fonts, ranging from standard texts used in online comments, to a more excitable text used by Takahashi when gets loud. While the manga does contain some colour pictures at the start, this is it when it comes to extras.

The manga, the original novel, and the anime adaptation are all enjoyable in their own ways, and any of them are recommended if you want to get into Demon Lord 2099. While there don’t appear to be any plans for further adaptations just yet, it would be nice to see how such works would develop.

Read a free extract at the publisher’s website here. 

Our review copy was supplied by Yen Press.