- Titles: Mairimashita! Iruma-kun 3
- Genre: Comedy, supernatural, slice of life
- Episodes: 21
- Studio: Bandai Namco Pictures
TIruma is back and after all he’s been through, maybe he can finally enjoy his high school life…in the demon realm. It’s actually pretty nice! But it turns out that there’s no time to rest. It will soon be time for the Harvest and Music Festivals and Iruma and his classmates are going to have to train hard if they want to even have a chance to win. Heck, survival’s not even guaranteed. And they have added incentives this year since they all need to get their rank up to Dalet if they want to keep their fancy classroom. And you know how it is, once you have a taste of the good stuff, you can’t just go back! Like peasants. It seems that all the excitement has stirred up something dormant in Iruma. For the first time in his life, Iruma really just wants to win. For himself as much as others. The competition is heating up!
As you can imagine, I quite like Iruma Kun as a series. That’s why I’m here telling you about the third season. And these aren’t short 12-episode seasons either. They’re the strong stuff! I always wondered if the show would hit the point of diminishing returns. The premise can only stretch so far after all.
Production
At this point, it’s a little redundant for me to go through the production aspects yet again. The voice cast is the same and they do the same great job. The look is the same, bright flat colours exotic but ultimately uncomplicated character designs, and eccentric backgrounds.
Iruma-kun isn’t exactly a beautiful show and depending on your experience with anime, it’s not that impressive visually either but there’s something ultimately comforting about the look of it. It has a simplicity that is very soothing. This is partly why I just can’t shake the idea that Iruma-kun is aimed at a very young audience even though that might not be fair. It just looks like small children’s entertainment to me for some reason.
This said, this post has a ton of screencaps so you really should make up your own mind about that. I’m just going off faint vibes here.
Story & Characters
Basically, this season is a tournament arc and normally that would be great news for me. I like tournament arcs a lot. I love sports anime and tournament arcs tend to use similar tropes and pacing. That just adds to the feeling of familiarity and comfort for me. But well, I didn’t like season 3 as much as the previous 2 and I’m still trying to figure out why.
Ok, so the season can be broken up into like 2 and a half parts. The first part is the training arc. The students are divided among several mentors who all try to show them different and unique ways to bring out their full power. Iruma is originally paired with Lead under Robin Balse’s tutelage but ultimately gets a mentor specially picked for him by Sullivan.
We get to see Iruma struggle through his training while also getting glimpses of what everyone else is going through. I actually really liked this part. It felt dynamic and different. I really cheered when Iruma managed to summon his own bow!
The second part of the season is the actual Harvest and Music Festival which is a survivor-style competition where students try to get the most resources or steal them from other students, in order to rack up points while surviving in the wild.
And although there was definitely nothing wrong with this part. In fact, I can think of a bunch of great moments off the top of my head, I sort of hit a wall when I was going through these episodes. I don’t know if it’s the diminishing returns I was afraid of or something as simple as not being in the mood for this type of show but at one point I found that I had to really will myself to put an episode on. This is a shame. I like both the premise and the characters quite a lot but I just couldn’t get into the festival ambiance I guess.
The final half part is what I called set up for the future season and it’s cool! It woke me up and got me excited again about watching Welcome to Demon School Iruma-kun. In fact, it got me looking forward to the next season which is an accomplishment.
But I still want to figure out why I was less thrilled by this season. Maybe it’s because we hardly got to see Clara, Az, and Iruma together. I always liked their friendship and I missed it. We also didn’t get to see much of the president (Ameri) who is one of my favourite characters. The structure of the season made it so that the story kept jumping around from one small group of characters to the other and although it was nice getting to know some characters better, it also made it so I couldn’t quite get into any of their personal journeys as much.
It would have been one thing if Iruma-un had always been structured as an ensemble series but up until now there were clear main characters and this season, we just didn’t get a chance to see them much. Even though Iruma is still clearly the central character, even his own arc was a bit more restrained to allow time for the others. And the other characters haven’t been developed as much so I always kind of wanted to know what was going on with the characters I know and love.
Oh, also Iruma hardly goes home at all this season. That means way less Sullivan and Opera antics. They did put some in but very few and far apart.
I really sound like I’m whining because the show tried something new. I don’t want to sound that way. I like it when shows try to do something new, I want to encourage that. I really do. It just didn’t quite work for me this time as it has in past seasons. But I’m happy to see what season 4 will have to offer 😊
You might like this anime if:
Honestly, if you liked Iruma so far there’s no reason you wouldn’t like season 3
My favourite character:
Still Opera. Even used sparingly he’s great.
Suggested drink:
- Every time Sullivan frets over Iruma – take a sip
- Every time anyone gets a demon text message – take a sip
- Every time Az is happy – awwww
- Every time anything is heart-shaped – awwww again
- Every time Iruma takes out his bow – be impressed
- Every time Ameri shows up – cheer
- Every time romance is in the air – take a sip
- Every time anyone speaks of seduction – oh la la
- Every time we see the points – take a sip
- Every time dark Az comes out – hide
- Every time a lady blushes – take a sip
I save all my screencaps on my Pinterest and you can find more there if you are interested. But I still like to show you a few in the post. If you’re like me, screencaps are something that really helps you decide to watch an anime or not.
I gave up on this one after about four or five episodes after enjoying seasons 1 & 2. Just wasn’t doing it for me at all… :-/
I don’t know why but I guess it wasn’t just me
I liked season three okay, but I feel that I liked season one and two better. I think you’re right, there wasn’t nearly enough of the main trio together, there wasn’t enough Opera and Grandpa, and there just wasn’t enough focus on Iruma being his adorable cinnamon roll self. Of course, I loved the ending that was awesome! Some of Iruma’s classmates are truly sneaky! I also liked Iruma’s training arc, the scene when he finally summons his bow is really cool.
It was the same for me. I felt like this season wasn’t as good and engaging as the previous two seasons. I didn’t laugh as much as before, too. And I had the same problem to wrap my head around why it is like that. I enjoyed it from back to finish. They had several great individual moments with Irumas development in perticular. But also how his classmates developed. It’s nice to see that not everything needs to have our MC in it. His classmates form bonds and memories with each other without the need of Iruma. That’s something I’d wish more shows would do.
But somehow it felt a little off. Long after the show ended I thought about it again and it hit me. The moments I enjoyed the most were the different interactions and antics of our main cast together and with others. Especially Az and Clara play off so well of each other. And you can really feel that Ameri is missing.
So I came to the conclusion that I really liked what they did, but it was a little too dragged out. Did we need to see 2 kingdoms rise and fight each other over the course of the tournament? It was funny, but a little too detailed. That’s just an example. I liked that it happened, it had fun moments and was in their world a possible logical instance. But while watching it I couldn’t shake the off the want to know more about Clara for example and that they should finaly interact more again.
Well, that’s just my observation for this conundrum.
I really liked this season ! My favorite part was actually the outro, I thought it was one of the more unique anime songs and I found myself humming it during the day lol . Also I started playing the Yakuza series and was delighted to find out Kiryu is Sullivan ! Made me like Yakuza even more .