Anime Summer 2024: THE STRONGEST MAGICIAN IN THE DEMON LORD'S ARMY WAS A HUMAN, Ignoring Base Instincts

Can't we all just get along?

The Strongest Magician in the Demon Lord's Army Was a Human
The first three episodes are now streaming on Crunchyroll. Subsequent episodes will debut every Wednesday.

Ike has a dream. (No, not that one.) He lives in a world where warfare rages between the all-powerful demons and the overwhelmed humans. Ike, however, wishes for there to be peace, a noble dream if ever there were one.

One problem: Ike is a leader in the army of the demons. And he's a human.

The titular light novel series was first published in 2016, written by Ryousuke Hata and illustrated by Kuma. As a war-action anime, it plays out very well through the first three episodes, with plentiful battle scenes and a variety of settings.

Ike is a strong character, with good intentions and a worthy purpose in hiding his humanity. His backstory, delineated in the first episode, sets up his motivation, and also shows how he was able to rise so far in the demon lord's army, even though he is a human.

Conflicts come when his humanity is inadvertently discovered by Satie, a human girl, a problem that Ike solves by making her his maid. It's more challenging for Ike to deal with his new commander, Cefiro, who intends to enforce the demon lord's command to vanquish humanity.

As long as the episodes focus on the battle sequences, the show delivers a good wallop of action. The strategies that Ike employs to further his humanistic goals are also clever. The show's weak spot, though, is in trying to make the supporting female characters somewhat foolish, with Satie fawning over Ike and Cefiro so single-mindedly evil that she becomes easy to predict.

Summary: Overall, it's a decent adventure, and I'll keep it on my watchlist for now.