The Spring 2022 Preview Guide

The Demon Girl Next Door Season 2

Yūko Yoshida is a 15-year-old girl who awakens one morning with demonic power, and is tasked with defeating a local magical girl. She has horns and a tail, but truthfully less power than an ordinary girl. She struggles to lift the "curse of a 40,000 yen (about US$365) per month living." (from manga)

The Demon Girl Next Door is based on Izumo Ito's manga and streams on HIDIVE on Thursdays.

James Beckett
Rating:

So, here's a funny story: I somehow got The Demon Girl Next Door confused with last year's The Great Jahy Will Not Be Defeated!. Once I realized my initial mix-up, I spent some time scouring wikis to give myself a crash course on the basic premise, but honestly, I was nowhere near as lost as I feared I would be. If you ever needed proof that The Preview Guide sometimes works in mysterious ways, it turns out that I loved every second of this sequel, and it is easily the best premiere I've seen all week.

I'm sure there are plenty of in-jokes and callbacks I missed, but it's easy enough to get the gist: It's a world of magical girls and demons living in modern Japan, and wacky shenanigans are going to ensue when they try to get along. Yuko (aka Shamiko) is a fiesty but but well-meaning demon; Momo is a reserved and somewhat awkward magical girl; Lilith is Shamiko's ancestor that looks like a cartoon mascot sex toy for some reason; Shamiko's father is a literal cardboard box called Daddy Box, and her family uses him as a kitchen appliance and dining table.

You know. Your everyday sort of stuff!

Here's the thing: If an anime manages to make me laugh, it's already earned a hell of a lot of goodwill in my book, and The Demon Girl Next Door had me absolutely cackling. Even better, all of the jokes were rooted in surprisingly strong and deliberate writing, so I was able to catch up on a lot of the character dynamics and backstory. I learned that Lilith is a charming little gremlin, that Mikan loves putting lemons in food, and that Momo is almost certainly the best girl of the series and also definitely in love with her rival Shamiko.

I know that this one will likely fly under the radar since it's only streaming on HIDIVE, but if you take only a single thing away from my Preview Guide dispatches this spring, let it be this: this one episode of The Demon Girl Next Door made me into a convert, and catching up on Season 1 is going to become a top priority. It's that good. Do yourself a favor and give the series a shot.