An Archdemon's Dilemma: How to Love Your Elf Bride - Reviews

The best part of the series is that sweet feeling in heart brought by the romance between Zagan and Nephelia. I’ve re-read the story from the beginning for that reason whenever I’ve returned to the series with new volume after a while. The visuals in that regard are very good, it conveys emotion and overall atmosphere really well, even if the series is not top tier art. It has great moments of melancholic, awkward, sweet and funny interaction between the couple. Both seem to have experienced hardships in their past, which gives them common ground for understanding of each other. The story as it is progressing seems to be with heavy focus on relationships. Through romance the main male character Zagan becomes more social, whereas main female character Nephelia finds strength and meaning. With the change in Zagan his social sphere expands with several side characters [1]. Each of them is enjoyable in different ways. However, it has one rather cliché character [2] you can see coming from miles away.
Everything happens in fantasy settings, which isn’t bad either. It has magic users devoted to studying magic and increasing power. They are considered in the world to be the bad guys, because they have generally low regards for lives of others. The best and most powerful among them are titled as daemon lords. Only thirteen are bestowed such title [3]. In opposition to the magic users is the Church with holy knights. Interesting part and key to the main story is secret behind the daemon lords [4] and holy knights [5]. It has bit of mystery side to the story. There is some action as well.

I’m going to check LN and maybe read it. Overall, I like the series so far.

Japanese difficulty 5/10 (see my profile for details about various difficulty scores)

As usual for the series targeted at mature audience it’s mostly without furigana – not recommended for beginners. I would say the difficulty is average.

This review is written after reading 8 volumes (all existing at the time).

Spoilers

[1] I like the fact even some antagonists or seemingly antagonist characters become friends of Zagan and Nephelia.

[2] The child looking evil daemon lord.

[3] Zagan is chosen as replacement for one of the thirteen, which deceased at the beginning of the story.

[4] Connection to daemon god and daemon race.

[5] Connection to gods’ magic.

It is good. At first I thought it to be some episodic romance fantasy but story progresses soon involving magic-demons-mages...  Each character has wonderful backstory of their own. 

If you like magic-fantasy genre it is your thing.

In a world where all mages are seen as callous and devoid of morals, Zagan is a mage who appears to be callous and devoid of morals. But then fe falls in love at first sight with an elf girl, Nephie, and buys fem at the slave auction. And though fe starts softening and wanting to be kind, fe doesn't know how to properly express femself and ends up coming across as brash and condescending. The first section of this manga plays into this miscommunication for some cute humor; it eventually becomes less of a focal point once they have Nephie and others be able to recognize feir true feelings beneath feir awkwardness. At that point, the manga starts focusing on undercovering some of the ancient secrets of magic relating to the demons, the demon lord seals, and the inscriptions on the holy swords. I like the direction the manga is taking. Zagan is made into one of the 13 demon lords and has confrontations with other mages (Barbaros, Fol) as well as with the holy knights from the church (Chastel, Raphael). Fe gains some allies, develops goodwill among the townspeople, and basically starts creating a makeshift family--all things which fe would never have done with feir previous loner attitude.

[Reviewed at chapter 22]

(TEEN) Honestly, this storyline couldv'e been better. The title? Like, PLEASE. Art was okay but didn't often showed the characters full profile. Art was often a black comic strip with eyes. No "character page" telling who was who. First time reading was kinda hard to follow. Not interesting.

Eh, it's not good but not bad either. The plot is really generic, the action is generic, the way the characters act is generic so you get bored easily. It started off really good, you expect to have some kind of mix between comedy and dark humor with a bit of gore element but it quickly turn into some kind of harem. Villains are not actually villains and the people who want to kill the mc are not actually bad. I hate this greater good thing where characters play the villain role to then wait before their death to reveal the truth that they were in fact doing some good. It's annoying.