By Fuminori Teshima and COMTA. Released in Japan as “Maou no Ore ga Dorei Elf wo Yome ni Shitanda ga, Dou Medereba Ii?” by HJ Bunko. Released in North America digitally by J-Novel Club. Translated by Hikoki.

This series is trying its hardest to keep a good balance between the light-hearted romantic comedy that the majority of its readers are here for and the increasingly dark backstory that is constantly threatening to become the front story as well. That continues in this book, which has an awful lot of Zagan and Nephy being incredibly blushy and goofy around each other, wearing each others clothes, being in each other’s dreams, and generally being the most adorable couple around that haven’t even gotten to first base yet. Contrasted with that is the increasingly doomed Alshiera, the plotting, sinister or otherwise, of the various other archdemons, and the continued horrors being piled upon Dexia and Aristella. Fortunately, with one or two exceptions, this remains very readable overall, even if you are only in it to see when these two lovebirds will finally get it on. (Spoiler: don’t hold your breath.)

The main plotline involves Lilith, who is a succubus that controls dreams. She’s able to give Zagan and Nephy a shared dream (that, oddly, shows them in a Japanese high school) and is also trying to rescue a boy who is stranded in a nightmare. He’s connected to Alshiera, who is still slowly dying from events in previous books, and is trying to show everyone that this is fine and that she’s content with it, ignoring the fact that there are others who are absolutely not content with it. To make matters worse, Zagan and friends may have found Azazel, who is also in Lilith’s dreamland, and is likyly going to kill Alshiera once and for all. And, perhaps worst of all, Foll is going around asking everyone what they think about love. Is there someone actually interested in her? Or is she just a normal girl? (Well, a normal powerful dragon girl).

Describing the plot is somewhat difficult, as you can tell from the preceding paragraph, but it holds together pretty well. One irritating negative is a new character is introduced, and there is some anti-trans humor about them, so be warned. Still sadly very popular in Japanese manga and light novels. Lilith is, for the most part, taken seriously, and proves to be pretty awesome when she tries. I especially liked Alshiera gently trying to push Lilith away and get her to accept Alshiera’s death, and Lilith basically saying “nope, fuck that, gonna save you”. Zagan is also awesome as always, though there is worrying evidence that he’s pushing himself too hard that may come up in future books. Oh yes, and Kuroka gets drunk and horny on catnip wine. Let’s ignore that.

The series seems content to meander along, both in its romantic plotlines and its more serious fantasy-based plots. And we’re caught up with Japan, meaning we’ll likely be waiting even longer for the next book. Still, if you enjoy archdemons and elfs being super cute together, and don’t mind the occasional tonal crash when the bad guys have a scene, this remains a good series to be reading.

By Fuminori Teshima and COMTA. Released in Japan as “Maou no Ore ga Dorei Elf wo Yome ni Shitanda ga, Dou Medereba Ii?” by HJ Bunko. Released in North America digitally by J-Novel Club. Translated by Hikoki.

This has been such a relaxed, somewhat sweet series that it actually can be startling when bad things happen. For the most part, the bulk of this book involves building a giant bath at Zagan’s castle, which he doesn’t really care about, but the rest of his increasingly large cast of women staying with him want very much. There’s discussion of the different kinds of baths, lots of teasing of various people who are still not quite hooked up with anyone yet, and a huge fight between Zagan and Barbatos, taking out large chunks of the forest, that basically revolves around “is it OK to peep?”. (Zagan says no.) Even when we cut to the bad guys, things are seemingly a bit more calm, with the twin assassin girls being given pocket money and sent out to the city, whereupon they buy a giant parfait. Unfortunately, horrible things do still happen here, and there is actually a real plot burbling underneath.

It can be a bit difficult to figure out who the major evil that needs to be defeated is in this series. First of all, Zagan has ended up turning a lot of former enemies into his allies. Secondly, of the current evil forces group, the twins are actually very cute when they’re in downtime mode (which makes the fate of one of them all the more tragic), Shere Khan is essentially a non-entity here, and Bifrons, the closest thing we’ve had to a big bad to date, ends up helping Zagan at the end – sort of. He’s still plenty evil, as the leading archdemon will attest, but there seems to be something even more evil behind all this – perhaps related to Azazel. Speaking of the twins, the serious part of the book has them both realizing they’d sacrifice their life to protect the other one, and then getting in situations where this is required. It’s touching and also a bit horrifying.

Then there’s the flip side of all this, which is Zagan and company. He’s still trying to figure out his own past, and there are several new revelations here about his childhood with Stella and Marc. Indeed, one of Archdemon’s Dilemma’s conceits is that everyone has connections to each other person in the series that they either don’t know or forgot about – ranging from serious (Marc’s identity in the church) to somewhat comical (where Chastille learned how to be such a good swordswoman at such a young age). Zagan and Nephy, fortunately, just get to be a cute little couple, again not actually achieving a romantic breakthrough just yet but this time around they manage to have a bath together with washing of the backs, which is nice. Certainly they’re miles ahead of the other not-quite-couples in this book.

So yes, this is mostly sweet and fun, but be warned it gets quite dark about 3/4 of the way through. Still a solid entry in the series, though.

By Fuminori Teshima and COMTA. Released in Japan as “Maou no Ore ga Dorei Elf wo Yome ni Shitanda ga, Dou Medereba Ii?” by HJ Bunko. Released in North America digitally by J-Novel Club. Translated by Hikoki.

As this series has gone on and become a reasonable success, the author has sensibly decided to widen its brief. As such, the “will they actually do anything?” parts get smaller and less relevant as time goes on. This is not to say that they’re absent, however, and we do get possibly the funniest moment in this volume when Zagan thinks that he and Nephy are literally cursed to never get closer to each other rather than, as everyone else around them can see, just being two socially awkward dorks in love. Still, at least the two of them share a honeymoon suite. That’s progress? And they sleep in each other’s arms, and call each other (as they are under cover) as “honey” and “dear”. But yeah, that’s all you’re going to get. Honestly, even Chastille and Barbatos make more progress in this book than Zagan and Nephy, who are adorable but really should grow up the teensiest bit. That said, they’re ahead of Shax, Mr. “I had your underwear in my pocket for a reason”.

The main thrust of the plot sees everyone converging on the Holy City for various reasons. That’s where Azazel’s Staff is, which is highly important to every single faction in the series. So we get the Angelic Knights, who don’t know much about it but know it should not fall into the wrong hands; Bifrons and Shere Khan, who have sent two minions to destroy the holy treasure room to get it; and Zagan and Nephy, who are actually there to try to find Orias, who might be able to help her cure Kuroka’s blindness, but end up looking for the staff as well. As you might imagine, there’s a lot of fighting towards the end of the book, mostly involving everyone attacking Zagan and his mopping the floor with them. That said, in the final battle against one of the stronger Angelic Knights, he has to use martial arts, rather than sorcery, to win. He regards this as a loss. Everyone else thinks he’s simply ridiculously overpowered.

It is amusing to see how many of the characters are leading double lives. There’s a traitor among the Angelic Knights, and you might briefly be worried for Chastille, but everyone agrees her alliance with Zagan is far too open and honest; she’s not tricky enough to be the real traitor. Then there’s Michael, who is secretly an Archdemon, but is also not the actual traitor. We also continue to get more insight on Alshiera, who continues to stay true to the course of “blond underage vampire mistress” in modern Japanese works, i.e. she’s pretending to be an irredeemable bad guy but really fits the caring mentor role better. And props to Foll, who is growing powerful enough to take on Bifrons and deal him actual damage. Our little dragon girl is growing up.

We’ve now caught up with Japan, as the 10th volume came out there two weeks ago, so it might be a bit till we get it here. Till then, though, this is a good, solid entry in the series, provided you don’t care that Zagan and Nephy are the most awkward couple ever – still.