- You will be mine, Hero! - I refuse! & Please Make Us Human
Summary
Fifteen years have passed since the war between demons and humans
began. Human armies have secured a foothold in the land of the demons, but in
response the demons manage to occupy human territory, launching an offensive
against the Southern Nations. In the midst of chaos and suffering a hero arose,
his quest to defeat the demons bringing hope to the Central Nations. Then, for
reasons unclear, he left his companions and struck out to face the Demon King
on his own.
He reaches the castle of the Demon King, but it’s strangely deserted,
until he reaches the throne room and sees a figure facing the far wall.
Realizing it must be the Demon King, he draws his sword, declares that the end
has come, charges, and – OMG boobs! The girl identifies herself as the 43rd
Demon King – what? It’s the traditional title. He tries to repeat his
challenge, but she acts like he’s strolled in for a chat. Why? Because the time
has come – she’s going to make Hero hers. He says no.
He tries to back up his position with reference to the suffering demons
have caused humans, but she’s got a rebuttal for everything. Poor resource
management, politicians getting caught and trying to cover their own asses,
self-interested ‘charity,’ all the accusations he levels against the demons are
shown to be the result of human greed and warmongering. The Central Nations are
prosperous because the war, and the relief aid they send to the South Nations,
allows them to be, the South bearing the brunt of the fighting while the rich
of the Center hold balls every night.
Demons aren’t any different, she explains, but it’s the truth – both
sides are fighting because they need to
fight. If it stopped, businesses would be ruined, food exports would stop and
leave thousands to starve, and there’d be thousands more unemployed who know no
trade except fighting. The prosperity of the Central Nations would collapse,
while the kingdoms of the resource-poor South would go under entirely. That’s
why she wants the Hero – not just
because she’s crushing hard for him, but because she wants to join forces with
him to find a better way. He’s initially put off by her advances, but he
doesn’t like what he’s learned about the war and his own people either, so he
agrees.
Oh, and her horns are fake.
They set themselves up at a manor in a small, recently-established
village, using the cover story that the Demon Queen is actually a noblewoman
educated at the Holy Capital who’s come to teach the villagers new farming
techniques. One night, just as Hero shows increased receptivity to Demon
Queen’s advances, the moment is ruined when something spooks the horses. They
find two dirty, rag-clad girls hiding in the stables, whom their housekeeper,
Demon Queen’s long-time companion and governess Head Maid, identifies as serfs.
She wants to report them, arguing that it isn’t worth damaging their reputation
to start a dispute over escaped serfs, but Hero is against it and Demon Queen
ends up taking his side, giving the girls clothes and food. The eldest begs
them not to say anything for a few days, but Head Maid reprimands them for
trying to take advantage of their hosts’ generosity this way. And even if the
latter agreed, what are they going to do, beg in the streets? They’re serfs,
unable to decide their own fate and thus insects, unworthy of respect, and
therefore have no right to ask anything of their betters – in other words, not
even human. Unwilling to give up, the eldest says if that’s the case, then can
she please make them human? Impressed by her audacity, Head Maid agrees to hire
them as assistants, and Demon Queen also begins educating them alongside her
other students. They prove more apt pupils than their more privileged
counterparts.
Demon Queen’s plan to introduce four-crop rotation, superior
to the current three-crop system the villagers use, is initially met with
resistance, but once she starts teaching the sons of some of the local notables
her influence increases and she can start to create changes. Hero wonders when
results will become apparent, or what good they’ll do, but Demon Queen isn’t
worried. After all, she has a secret weapon…
Thoughts
So, is this Spice and Wolf:
Agriculture Version? Seriously, it’s got the same set-up: pseudo-medieval
setting, normal human man, supernatural woman, they team up. Granted, the plot
seems to be ‘save the world through-cooperation and understanding’ whereas Spice and Wolf was more ‘Take Horo home,
while Laurence tries (and generally fails) to make money in the meantime,’ so
it’s probably not gonna be them trying to reform a village forever, but these
two episodes still felt like someone took the latter and replaced the economics
with agriculture. Well, maybe ‘everyday life in a medieval village’ would
describe it better, but it’s the same basic idea.
And boy is it gonna feel weird calling these characters by names like
‘Hero,’ ‘Demon Queen,’ or ‘Head Maid.’ Seriously, the younger of the two
sisters goes around calling him ‘Hero,’ is that actually what others call them; don’t they have, like, real names
or aliases or something? They can’t very well go around calling her ‘Demon
Queen,’ after all. Eh, every time someone from the village addresses her, it’ll
probably just be as ‘milady.’
And speaking of demons, why are there demons at all when they look
physically identical to humans. More than likely that’s meant to be a satire of
how the other side in a war is often (pun not intentional) demonized when they
actually aren’t so different, it’s just that so far there hasn’t been an
obvious reason why they needed to be demons instead of just an enemy nation
that’s been built up as some kind of Mordor deserving of destruction. Or why
spellcheck doesn’t recognize Mordor; seriously, isn’t Lord of the Rings well-known enough? Back on topic…their home does look wasteland-y enough that maybe
there is a reason that just hasn’t been brought up yet.
One thing I’m worried about, though, is that the series will fall into
the Medieval
Morons trap with the humans. The demons are hinted to have greater
scientific and socio-economic knowledge than humans (Demon Queen mentions
pollution, which just makes Hero go ‘huh?’), and Demon Queen’s modern-sounding
understanding of things like agriculture and military campaigns is met with
resistance and disbelief. To be fair, this isn’t all outright stupidity – the
village elder has the well-being of the entire village to consider, so it’s
understandable that he’d be reluctant to risk a harvest to try out a system
that’s to him new and unproven, and the boys Demon Queen is teaching are young
enough to have never seen a battle, or likely been taught its realities, since
they’ve probably been groomed to potentially be future soldiers and thus would
be taught that it’s all glory and ‘kick so much demon ass all the girls will
swoon before your sheer manly badassness.’ Some of them are just not
well-educated in things besides war and fighting – that’s exactly what Hero’s
like, by his own admission, and he isn’t completely stupid, being willing to
listen to and be convinced by Demon Queen’s arguments and evidence. The real
thing that got me wondering about this was Head Maid’s reaction to the serf
girls, specifically her reason for feeling contempt towards them. ‘Serfs are
people who can’t decide their own fate, and such people are nothing but
insects, not deserving of compassion or rights.’ Well no shit they can’t decide their own fate, not when they’re dirt fucking poor. It frames the
institution of serfdom in a way that makes it so self-evidently wrong that
people would have to be stupid to accept the arguments in favor of it. Sure,
some people in the Middle Ages probably did
see serfs that way, but that’s nowhere near the entire picture of why it
existed. Maybe Head Maid is just supposed to be callous, and it’s not like she
holds that view rigidly, given how quickly she changes her mind once the older
sister shows some spine, and I’m worrying over nothing. But it skirts too close
to depicting a different era with different realities and worldviews through a
modern filter that makes it look like people back then only thought that way
because they were dumb and didn’t know any better, which is an easy trap to
fall into and especially common when portraying the Middle Ages.
So, not amazing so far, but not bad either. I’ll keep on watching for a
bit to see where it goes.
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