TheSocialite

A Serious Parable of Japan Immediately After WWII, Disguised as a Comedy

On its surface, The Devil is a Part-Timer is a reverse isekai where magical characters escape into our ordinary world and try to live ordinary lives. This show works well as a comedy; however, it works even better as a parable of Japan during the late 1940’s and 1950’s. Unfortunately, in that light it demonstrates Japan’s lack of remorse over its actions in World War II.

First I shall review it as a comedy. As a comedy, this show can be very funny. Making an isekai comedy highlighting the fish out of water trope is not a new idea; what is nice about The Devil is a Part-Timer is that it has three characters who are trying to adapt. By having three characters, this show gains the ability to have the characters discuss, complain and argue about the seemingly trivial minutia of life, instead of having it all explained in constant expository narration, like Overlord or Re:Zero. So in this regard it is similar to SAO or Log Horizon, but because the story mostly takes place in the real world, it gets to poke fun at things we all experience. The anime I would say this is most thematically similar to is the equally silly titled I Couldn’t Become a Hero so I Reluctantly Decided to Get a Job in that both deal with characters used to fighting trying to make due in a peaceful life. As a comedy I would rate this anime 4 out of 5 stars.

Where this show really shows depth though is as a Cold War parable. Maou/Satan clearly represents Japan with his typical Japanese looks and tall, blonde Ashiya/Alsiel represents Germany. Both characters were cruel demons in their home-world responsible for atrocities against humanity. Emi/Emilia represents the United States (I mean come on, her adopted name is Emi YUSA) and her magical sword is The Better Half represents the atomic bomb. Olba Meyer in a very interesting way represents China, but I can’t go into that without some major spoilers. There are actually many, many parallels to WWII and the cold war I could go into but this review would quickly become a 2,000 word treatise full of spoilers. And the author is clearly in on this, as in one of the light novels (yes, I was so compelled by my theory that I read the first five light novels to further confirm it) Emi ask another person if she and her sword are their world's atomic bomb.

I ended up enjoying this show far more as a parable and have re-watched it several more times than I otherwise would have just to catch all the details. But the most telling point is that after committing such atrocities in the war, Maou becomes a poor but hard-working, model citizen and employee after his defeat. This is exactly how Japan was seen after WWII by America. It is such a stark change that Emi asks how is it that Maou could be such a model person while Satan was such a monster, and that is how the west saw both Japan and Germany after WWII. And here is where it is more than a little disturbing: Maou doesn’t apologized or even attempt to explain his actions in the war, just as Japan has never apologized for its actions in WWII. 

This isn’t the first anime to reference the war either directly or obliquely, but it is the first that I’ve seen that admits to Japan’s war crimes, even if it refuses to apologize for them. The previously mentioned I Couldn’t Become a Hero, So I Reluctantly Got a Job can also be viewed in this light. The difference there is that the character Fino represents the children of the WWII generation and the premise is that she, and by extention modern Japan, should not be held accountable for the sins of their fathers.