"Hey, you said you wanted a little sister, right?" First year high school student, Toujou Basara, was suddenly asked by his father and fell into a state of panic. On top of that, the eccentric father told him he will be getting remarried. He then departed overseas after bringing Basara two beautiful step-sisters. But Mio and Maria's true forms are actually the newbie Demon Lord and a succubus!? Basara was almost entered into a master and servant contract with Mio, but a "reversed" contract was formed by mistake, and Basara is now the master!? Moreover, Basara is being hit by ecchi situation one after another due to the contract, but Mio's life is being pursued by other demon tribes and hero tribes!! The most powerful contractor's desire action drama begins!
tl;dr: An action harem series with a lot of ecchi, a well written plot, and a well fleshed out cast of characters with great character and relationship arcs.
This series begins with Toujou Basara unexpectedly gaining two stepsisters: Mio, the daughter of the former Demon Lord, and her attendant, Maria. Basara himself isn’t a stranger to the world of Demons, seeing as he’s a former member of the Hero Clan, a group dedicated to protecting humans from Demons. However, after an accident where his powers went out of control he was exiled from the clan and began living the life of a normal student. But now . with Mio’s being targeted by both the new Demon Lord’s faction and the Hero Clan, he’s forced to reawaken his abilities to protect her. Unfortunately, his strength isn’t at the level necessary to do so. But thankfully Maria has a plan that involves using magic to link Basara and Mio in order to make them both stronger through what is called a Master-Servant contract. The thing is that Maria is a succubus, and thus the magic is pretty lewd.
This story is a mix of comedic slice of life and more serious action/drama, and overall, it handled the blend of the two really well. The goal of Basara and company is ultimately just to live like normal humans. And in the case of most of them, that means living like normal high school students. They spend a decent amount of time doing so, though even when things are completely peaceful the Master-Servant contract ends up triggering and causing various ecchi mischief. In addition to this pretty much always being really amusing, it also often does contribute to character arcs and relationship development. Also, I think this series has the best handling of ecchi I’ve ever seen. In most series ecchi gets repetitive pretty quickly because it quickly hits the maximum level it’s going to go and then it just stays there. This series has a very steady escalation curve wherein it starts off not that extreme but ends full H, which made it interesting and enjoyable from beginning to end.
Though Basara and his friends just want to be left alone, the rest of the world unfortunately isn’t willing to do so. And thus, they often have to be proactive in dealing with problems before they become too much to handle. There’s a pretty interesting plot with a good amount of solid world building regarding various factions that Basara has to navigate not just through defeating his enemies but also through dealing with the political situations surrounding the conflicts. Basara is very interesting when it comes to dealing with all this because he’s very pragmatic and is willing to do things that are pretty sketchy, though the plot doesn’t require him to do so all that often or do things that are beyond the pale.
There are ultimately three main factions, the Demons, the Heroes, and the Gods, though each also has various subfactions with the plot heavily centered around the conflicts between said subfactions. The plot does a great job at fleshing out the demons and telling their story to completion. The plot does a decent job in terms of the heroes, but it definitely felt like there was more left that wasn’t dealt with. The plot barely even touches on the Gods in what felt like a pretty big omission as there was a major plot thread related to them left unresolved. In one of the afterwards, the author mentioned that he was planning on writing a story featuring Basara’s father as he deals with said plot thread, but it seems that’s not happening, so it seems that plot will remain forever unfinished.
Action wise for the most part is pretty basic, but pretty solid. Characters have pretty clear ability sets that grow over the course of the series. There’s a good amount of variety so things don’t really get repetitive. And in general things flow pretty well with a lot of cool moments and satisfying victories. The action in the final arc felt like a break from that in that it felt like it was overtly convoluted and random. It’s heavily tied to the classic Japanese elements, the classic Chinese elements, and how the two are connected. Elements played a part in the action even before this, but in a more generic fashion. This felt a major escalation in complexity. On top of that, it also ties things heavily into very specific geography. There’s similar things before this, such as Byakko’s relationship with the cardinal direction west, but the final arc escalates things to the point it feels like you need to have a pretty good grasp of the map of Tokyo in order to properly understand what’s going. I suppose in regards to both the elements and geography the issue may arise from the fact that the target audience generally does possess preexisting knowledge on the subject that I do not. But as most reading this review will fall into the same category, I think its still fair to say that I felt the action in the final arc was hard to follow and dragged on too long.
Character wise, overall, the series has great character and relationship arcs. As mentioned, there’s a good blend of serious and comedic moments, and this brings out different sides of characters and helps flesh them out. There’s also a lot of variety to the heroines and they have great chemistry not only with Basara but also each other. As a result, everyone is pretty likable and it’s easy to get invested in everyone individually and the group overall. There are also some pretty great side characters. The primarily highlight being Lars, who’s just as cool if not cooler than Basara. It’s pretty rare for the protagonist in the genre to have competent and cool male friends, so he was certainly a very pleasant surprise.
There definitely were a few weak spots in terms of the cast though, mainly towards the end. In addition to Basara, the heroines that have great character and relationship arcs are Mio, Maria, Yuki, Kasumi, and Zest. With Hasegawa it felt like the writing trying to portray her as a mature and wise character above needing a character arc, so she doesn’t have one at all. She has a pretty solid relationship arc though. The other two heroines, Nanao and Celes, have character and relationship arcs that reach a solid enough conclusion, but they felt really rushed towards the end in getting there. There was another character, Rikka, that had a character and relationship arc that was slowly being developed throughout the series, but in the end the series ended without doing anything with it, which was pretty disappointing. Still, even with these issues, the ending and epilogue were still fantastic and an incredibly satisfying conclusion to the series.
I should also note that the art in this is downright incredible. The character designs are varied and amazing too. They’re also used really well in both the action and ecchi. The fan translation is a mixed bag since it involves multiple translators, but the weaker parts are mostly all towards the beginning so I definitely think its worth pushing through them.
The side volumes, Light and Sweet, mostly felt like a waste of time. They’re just fluff, but it’s not very good fluff and is much weaker than the main series. They’re not written by the author of the main series so I suppose that shouldn’t be too surprising. The art in Light is also from the artist of the manga, and it’s decent but nowhere near the main artist of the novels. The art in Sweet is done by the same artist as the main series, but for the point in the series that it takes place the art is pretty weak compared to the surrounding novels of the main series, so I can’t say I was all that satisfied with it either.
