The Fall 2023 Manga Guide

An Archdemon's (Friend's) Dilemma: How to Babysit a Crybaby Knight

What's It About? 

Archdemon Zagan hires his unsavory friend, the sorcerer known as Purgatory Barbatos, to guard Archangel Chastille Lillqvist from the shadows. Barbatos takes to watching over the girl—which really means watching her constantly screw things up, trust people she shouldn't, and inevitably bawl her eyes out. But something about Chastille and her waterworks may just have a special effect on the sourpuss sorcerer... The tale of this odd couple begins after the seventh volume of An Archdemon's Dilemma - How to Love Your Elf Bride!

An Archdemon's (Friend's) Dilemma: How to Babysit a Crybaby Knight has a story by Fuminori Teshima and art by Momo Futaba. The English translation is by Hikoki, with lettering by Chris Burgener and editing by DxS. Published by J-Novel Club (September 06, 2023).

Is It Worth Reading?

Christopher Farris

Rating:

As someone who can get annoyed with fantasy stories that take too long to load up their laborious setups (especially seeing too many of them in a row here during guide season), part of me appreciates it when one eschews all that and jumps in. However, in the case of An Archdemon's (Friend's) Dilemma, it may have skipped over a bit too much in the race to this in media res start. Sure, just getting to see the villainously tinted sorcerer Barbatos and lawful-good Paladin Angelic Knight Chastille get straight to barbing each other in this odd-couple fantasy sitcom setup is the whole point of this book. But there were many questions about the "how" of this arrangement that would have gone a long way toward contextualizing their relationship. Especially since that would be key to understanding who these people are and, thus, how much funnier their bouncing off each other is supposed to be.

The biggest issue is that one half of this arrangement, Lady Chastille Lillqvist, is the one who had her part of this plot most blithely skipped over. There are allusions that she attracted the attention of the Archdemon and wound up assigned his buddy Barbatos as a bodyguard. And there's an interesting implication that the burgeoning belligerent romantic tension between her and Barbatos puts him in a romantic triangle with his boss. But there's no elucidation on what this more broadly means for the world as the church and their Angelic Knights run it or how Chastille feels about it because she doesn't get much to do. She's more of a background element that motivates Barbatos's actions investigating and protecting her through the story, occasionally getting into arguments and scrapes with him because of her klutziness or their mutual inability to brew tea.

However, this issue doesn't sink Archdemon's Dilemma. The slack gets picked up elsewhere. Barbatos himself is excellent as the lead character; It's refreshing to have a modern, light novel-based fantasy lead with an actual personality, in his case, a grouchy, nominally villainous yet ultimately good-hearted bodyguard. And any anime man with the eternally exhausted bags under his eyes is automatically at least a couple of points hotter. But his inadvertent assistant, the newly hired nun maid Rachel, steals the show. Her uncouth fixation on the pair's "forbidden romance" and efforts in the face of regular accidental ruin by her charges makes her a more charming mess to root for than Chastille. She and Barbatos hold up a lot of the overall entertainment value. At the same time, it otherwise dances around the glossed-over setup and fantasy politicking that's supposed to drive the story. It makes this all messy, but still worth a quick look.