The Devil Is a Part-Timer! Volume Six, at the time of this writing, is the first of the light novels to not be adapted for the anime. However, since there’s supposed to be more coming out for the anime in 2023, I suspect that the story in this volume will be part of the forthcoming continuation of the anime.

If you’re an anime-only fan of The Devil Is a Part-Timer!, I would highly suggest stopping here and not continuing to read this review for now in order to avoid getting potential spoilers.

The Devil Is a Part-Timer! Volume Six
Written by: Satoshi Wagahara
Publisher: Kadokawa Corporation
English Publisher: Yen On
Release Date: December 13, 2016

It turns out that Volume Six has a strong focus on Chiho and her desire to learn how to do an Idea Link so she can communicate with Emi, Maou, and the others if she finds herself in trouble again. After what happened with Chiho near the end of the previous volume, Emi and Suzuno decide to give this a shot. While this is going on, Emi finds herself feeling conflicted about her motivation to pursue Maou, since she learned from Gabriel in the previous volume that her father is still alive.

In the anime adaptation of Volumes Four and Five, the only reason given for the MgRonalds to close temporarily was to update the equipment. However, in the light novels, this is only part of the reason… the other reason is to renovate the space on the second floor to turn it into a MgCafe, which is a new section of the MgRonalds. Well, it turns out the existence of the MgCafe plays an important role in this story, so it’s going to be interesting to see how they deal with the dialogue change that was made for the reason for the MgRonalds’ closure. If I had to guess, I would say that they’ll ignore the fact that they left out the reference to the MgCafe in the anime and act as if it was part of the story the whole time.

The archangel Sariel reappears in this volume in a much bigger role than he had back in Volume Four. Believe it or not, he becomes important for Chiho’s training. To be honest, I hadn’t expected him to become an important character again, especially after Ms. Kisaki banished him from MgRonalds.

And speaking of Ms. Kisaki, she gets a bit of character development in The Devil Is a Part-Timer! Volume Six. We get to see her as more than just the MgRonalds manager, and that she has dreams and goals beyond the track she’s on now. While we kind of got to see a little more of Ms. Kisaki as a person in previous volumes of the series, this is the volume that really delves more into the person that she is.

This volume needs antagonists, of course, and two new ones are introduced: Farfarello (an Ente Isle demon from the Malebranche’s council of chieftains) and Erone (a mysterious young human accompanying the demon). Farfarello is determined to take Maou back to Ente Isla, because that was the mission he was assigned. It’s up to Emi and Suzuno to try to protect him from Farfarello, and the climax of the final encounter with this newly introduced Ente Islan demon was quite amusing.

After reading Volume Six, I’m looking forward to seeing how this story is adapted for the anime. I’d be quite surprised if this didn’t lead off the next section of the anime adaptation. If they do this right, there should be some great scenes coming up. And after reading this volume, I do believe it was a mistake to only do a single cour for the second season. The story in this volume flows quite well from the end of the previous volume, and I think if the adaptation had gone for two consecutive cours that it likely would have helped to strengthen the season. Obviously, the story in this volume wouldn’t cover 10-12 episodes, but this would have worked well to directly follow the end of Episode 12 of the second season. I would have been willing to wait a little longer for the second season if more time was needed to produce two back-to-back cours.

And I really like the fact that Chiho is becoming an even more important character in the series, and that she doesn’t have to feel she’s as much on the “outside” as she has in the past. By the end of this volume, she’s become much more embroiled in Maou’s inner circle, and will likely now become a target for Ente Isla (which was something both Emi and Suzuno were trying to avoid). I suspect that as the story continues, protecting Chiho from other Ente Islans that come to modern day Japan to try to target her will become a running thread. Of course, the others in this inner circle in Japan will likely be targeted as well.

After feeling like the story in the previous two volumes were essentially setting the groundwork for something, I was glad to see that the story in The Devil Is a Part-Timer! Volume Six finally feels as if it’s trying to go somewhere. It’ll be interesting to see how the story continues and how the characters evolve in future volumes of the series.

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