Leung Ito

Izumo Ito's Machikado Mazoku

Reviewed by Anson Leung

(Penguin, 2021)

Izumi Ito’s Machikado Mazoku manga is about a normal teenage girl, Yuko Yoshida, who one day awakens to find herself with a pair of demon horns! While she is understandably confused about the situation, she soon learns she comes from a long line of dream demons. These demons used to be powerful, but after being repeatedly defeated by magical girls, they started to look more and more human over time. Their ancestor, Lilith, is sealed inside a statue, and needs large quantities of blood from a magical girl in order to free herself so she can start the process of reclaiming the dream demons’ power. Do not worry, though. This story does not delve into horror or violence. It is a comedy series, and before Yuko even manages to come close to being able to defeat the magical girl, she is humiliated several times in lighthearted ways. She ends up being friends with the magical girl, and they start training her to become a respectably strong demon!

The main strong point of this manga is its ability to see humor in a situation, and “go for it”. In the first fight against her magical girl rival, named Momo, she is hopelessly outmatched. Rather than going with simple and recognizable concepts that similar manga go for, such as having the magical girl simply defeat her with ease, or knock her over and end the fight in one single move, the author decides it’d be a perfect opportunity for Yuko, known by her demon’s name “Shadow Mistress Yuko” or “Shamiko” for short, to try and fight the magical girl with all of her heart and soul. Which, because she was born relatively weak with a medical condition, as well as short, results in her lightly punching Momo in a similar way somebody would knock on a door. Repeatedly. Her punching form is bad and results in a scene that is reminiscent of a child throwing a temper tantrum. All of these things put together make it comedic. She’s supposed to be fighting a serious fight, but all of her efforts amount to an offense that is very much not threatening in the slightest. Momo then instructs her on how to do better, and after she improves her punching form in the next minute, Yuko actually looks happy with her improvement. But Momo can only give her the “faint praise” of suggesting she try long range weapons the next time they fight each other. Which results in Yuko running away, literally crying tears, and shouting “Don’t think this means you’ve won”. All in what was supposed to be, from her perspective, a serious fight. This is captivating, since the reader probably thought of these jokes ahead of time, but similar manga to this one usually never acts on them—at least as frequently—and goes for more cliched humor instead. Every time a chance for humor comes up, there’s a risk and reward system to consider when trying to decide whether to stay in the box or go outside of it. Most of the time, Machikado Mazoku goes outside the box and pushes the joke as far as it can.

Machikado Mazokou shows you mainly the perspective of Shamiko as she slowly gets stronger and stronger throughout the series. She starts off with a strong attitude, especially against unfair hardship, such as a curse that forces her family to live on a strict budget. She also has a strong moral compass. But, because she has been hit with a magical curse before she was even born, her body was always weak. She is also a bit naïve and lacks cunning, which is ironic for a demon. At first, going for exercise and getting some basic muscle on her arms is treated by her as a great feat, even though her overall physical stats are still far below average. As time goes on, she starts to gain actual demon powers, such as the ability to enter dreams to manipulate the emotions of others. Later on, she gains the ability to transform into her “super state” and gain a 20% boost in her intelligence and physical abilities. And her most powerful weapon is the “Whatever Staff”, a weapon that can transform into anything that resembles a stick in the real world, or at least anything that has a handle on it and that resembles a stick. Because of this loophole, she can make items that aren’t necessarily considered sticks, such as an eggbeater, a fork, and a chainsaw—semantics are in play here, since she can come up with a way to justify a chainsaw resembling a stick. The reader can see her progress as she makes increasingly dangerous and powerful weapons. But it doesn’t stop there. She can, as of the latest chapters, even make mythical weapons, such as a rod that heals people of their injuries. As long as the weapon even vaguely represents a stick in structure, she can make it come to life, provided she gains enough magic power through training. Slowly, but surely, she is becoming quite powerful.

There are conflicts in the story that Yuko contends with. The first one is to defeat Momo and free Lilith from her statue. Getting rid of the curse that forces her family on a strict $400-a-year budget is also treated as a top priority. She must also help her increasing circle of friends and allies along the way, such as freeing her friend Mikan from her bad luck curse and stopping a magical girl from hurting a demon acquaintance over a misunderstanding. The biggest one, or at least narratively the final one, is to defeat Momo to prove she’s strong enough to survive on her own. The reason Shamiko’s alive, despite having a curse placed on her during birth, is because Momo’s sister, Sakura, became a physical energy core. She then lodged herself into Shamiko’s body to sustain it. Becoming strong enough to defeat Momo through magical means proves she can survive without any outside help, allowing Shamiko to take the core out without consequences. This will bring Sakura “back to life” when Sakura reverts to her magical girl form.

Another thing this manga does really well is making conversations feel realistic, rather than following “tried and true” manga comedy formulae. For example, in one chapter, Shamiko asks her friends what “special moves” they have. Presumably, she wants to learn a new demon/ supernatural-related move. She asks her friend Anri while she’s working at her job. Anri, rather than answering Shamiko’s question with indifference, like standard manga comedy dictates, is instead visibly under stress—her eyebrows show it—that Shamiko would callously intrude into her workplace asking such a trivial question. Another example is when Shamiko uses her staff of healing on her leg bone, and Anri feels enough gratitude to buy Shamiko some croquettes. Shamiko is excited that she can have one, but Anri simply points out that Shamiko performed a medical miracle. Most manga would be tempted to simply end the dialogue at “Thank you, Anri” with an excited voice coming from Shamiko. My favorite example of these realistic conversations is when Shamiko loses weight after using her ”Whatever Staff”. Every time she uses the healing rod power, it seems like she becomes thinner. Shamiko brushes this off as her diet working extremely well, while Momo says “there’s a possibility your life is in real danger”. Which ties into the manga’s most unique selling point—its underlying darkness. For all its comedy, the manga is obfuscating a world where magical girls hunt demons for “reward points” that grant them material. The magical girls are more or less amoral. Shamiko’s poverty is played for laughs. Momo’s trauma involving her genocidal friend is also addressed once and subtly brushed under the rug. But the most standout event comes from Shamiko entering Anri’s dream to retrieve a croquette recipe. All she has to do is look at the book, record the recipe, and get out. The author could have made it lighthearted and have the story be a good arc. The author instead emphasizes the implication that Anri has repressed memories involving her siblings’ death, and that her entire happy-go-lucky demeanor she has had from the beginning of the series is in fact a coping mechanism for her true feelings. This is the same story that had Shamiko start crying over having to pay 5 dollars back to Momo. In this situation, 5 dollars is all the money she had from her newfound raise in allowance her mother gave to her.

There are quite a few important characters in this manga. Shamiko is a hard-working, cute, and loveable demon who never gives up. Momo is a stoic magical girl who befriends Shamiko and tries to better her physical conditioning and magical powers. Anri is the happy-go-lucky best friend of Shamiko, who won’t hesitate to help her in serious situations, and who teases Shamiko when she finds it amusing. Mikan is a friend of Momo’s. She is a kind and helpful magical girl, and somebody who has a tremendous bad luck curse placed on her. Lilith is Shamiko’s ancestor. She is in some ways more powerful and wise than Shamiko. Yet she is also clueless and happy-go-lucky in other ways. Finally, Sion is a friend of Shamiko who at first appears human, but is also a demon and is later revealed to be integral to the story.

Machikado Mazoku is a manga with an endearing protagonist. She is an enormous underdog at the beginning. But she gains power not only through her hard work, but also with her growing list of friends and allies she makes along the way.

Anson Leung is a graduate of the University of Alberta’s Bachelor of Commerce program. He is an Alberta-based writer who loves all forms of writing, including poetry and article writing. In his spare time, he loves playing tennis and board games.