This Week in Anime
Can't Someone Cut Jahy a Break?
by Steve Jones & Jean-Karlo Lemus,
One tiny former lead demon does her best to survive in the modern world...and is barely making it. Steve and Jean-Karlo try to find the humor under the crushing weight of adult responsibilities. Someone get Jahy an ice cream or something.
This series is streaming on Crunchyroll
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Spoiler Warning for discussion of the series ahead.
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Steve
You know, Jean-Karlo, after doing this column for this many years, I can't help but notice certain perennial patterns with the anime docket. For example, every season has five or six interchangeable isekai series. Every season has its high-profile Shonen Jump adaptation. And, perhaps most importantly, every season has a sitcom about a gremlin.
You know, Jean-Karlo, after doing this column for this many years, I can't help but notice certain perennial patterns with the anime docket. For example, every season has five or six interchangeable isekai series. Every season has its high-profile Shonen Jump adaptation. And, perhaps most importantly, every season has a sitcom about a gremlin.
Jean-Karlo
Ah, so that's where that thing went. Back into containment with you, rodent! It's for your own protection, Comiket is around the corner...
Ah, so that's where that thing went. Back into containment with you, rodent! It's for your own protection, Comiket is around the corner...
Sentenced to germlin prison for 1000 years.
Contrary to the title, it turns out it is actually laughably easy to defeat the Great Jahy.
Anime. Anime never changes...
This week, Steve and I were introduced to the Demon World's Second-in-Command with The Great Jahy Will Not Be Defeated!, an adaptation of the currently-running manga (available now from Square Enix!). What we found were more gremlins than a 1980s movie—also, scathing criticisms of capitalism.
Yeah it's a familiar enough premise—a former demon lord gets reverse-isekai'd and has to blend in with us regular ol' humans while she works on a way to restore her powers and realm to their former glory—but the show's main draw is that its anti-hero just happens to be a tiny creature in crocs who constantly gets dunked on.
There's a lot about this series that gave me pause at first. Jahy is designed to look like exactly the kind of character designed to appeal to those folks who got creepily obsessive over Kamui's thighs from Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid. After all, Jahy's got nothing but that shirt and Crocs to maintain her dignity. And while I'm not quite convinced of this series' comedic strength, I will say this: much like with Jahy herself, there's a good heart hidden in this series' chaff.
Honestly one of the first notes I made about Jahy in preparation for this column was "huh, this is surprisingly wholesome for an anime whose main character wears nothing but an oversized t-shirt." Like, there are winks and nods towards fanservice peppered throughout, but for the most part Jahy is focused on the goofs, which I agree is for the best.
And to be fair, even the t-shirt has a lot of thematic importance.
And to be fair, even the t-shirt has a lot of thematic importance.
There's room for sleaze with, say, Jahy's manager and her prodigious bosom or Jahy basically being dressed like someone's OC cosplay designed for an OnlyFans set (we've all seen the type!), but Jahy is surprisingly tame on that account. Outside of Jahy's minor wardrobe mishaps whenever she poofs back into her kid form, the show is fairly above-the-belt.
See, it's like this: Jahy was once the second-in-command for the Dark Lord in the Dark Realm, until one day a magical girl stormed her keep and destroyed her mana crystal. Sundering the Dark Realm, Jahy was flung into the human world, and without the power of the intact mana crystal to sustain her she was stuck in the form of a kid. She has a tiny fragment of it left that she can use to turn into her normal self for a brief period, but because she can't exactly track down the remaining shards of her crystal while living in a cardboard box or eating garbage, it's all she can do to save up her energy for her job at a local bar so she can cover rent.
See, it's like this: Jahy was once the second-in-command for the Dark Lord in the Dark Realm, until one day a magical girl stormed her keep and destroyed her mana crystal. Sundering the Dark Realm, Jahy was flung into the human world, and without the power of the intact mana crystal to sustain her she was stuck in the form of a kid. She has a tiny fragment of it left that she can use to turn into her normal self for a brief period, but because she can't exactly track down the remaining shards of her crystal while living in a cardboard box or eating garbage, it's all she can do to save up her energy for her job at a local bar so she can cover rent.
So you'd expect that one of Jahy's main sources of humor is the disconnect between her former demonic opulence and her present proletarian predicament—and there is plenty of that—but honestly the real draw of the series is that Jahy is poor as heck and has to deal with all the ensuing relatable bullshit we all deal with.
Yeah, that's something that really leapt out at me about this show. The comedy is frankly quite pedestrian. I know I've been hard on comedies for TWIA before, but I can at least say that the likes of Vladlove and Daily Lives of High School Boys had energy to them. The jokes may or may not have landed, but the shows put a strong front and that was enough to carry them. Comedy is just hard to grok when you have to bingewatch it on a weekly basis. But even outside of that, Jahy's jokes are kinda like WATAMOTE's in that it's all about Jahy being her own worst enemy, and while some situations can be kinda fun (like Jahy hiking in the perilous... hill behind her apartment complex), the real meat of the show is Jahy getting some much-needed pats on the back from people who recognize that she's in a pretty unhappy situation.
This is one of those weird cases where if I were the editor, I'd suggest the mangaka to backpedal a little and lean in on the emotional aspect. We've all been there: you're broke, you've got cheap ramen to eat for the next few days, a glass of apple juice is a luxury, and you don't even have the time to pile on more work because it's all you can do to maintain your current level of poverty. Jahy's her own worst enemy and ends up causing most of her own problems, but the show is at its best when someone sits down next to Jahy and commiserates with her and her sorry lot.
This is one of those weird cases where if I were the editor, I'd suggest the mangaka to backpedal a little and lean in on the emotional aspect. We've all been there: you're broke, you've got cheap ramen to eat for the next few days, a glass of apple juice is a luxury, and you don't even have the time to pile on more work because it's all you can do to maintain your current level of poverty. Jahy's her own worst enemy and ends up causing most of her own problems, but the show is at its best when someone sits down next to Jahy and commiserates with her and her sorry lot.
And if I were a producer, I'd generally avoid giving comedies full-length adaptations. There are precious few that can sustain 20 minutes of laughs each week, and Jahy could definitely use some punchiness. But it is comfy, and it does grasp at some very Real feelings when you're living paycheck-to-paycheck. Although, for as much as I will joke about it being revolutionary, I do need to emphasize that Jahy's two closest allies are her boss and her landlord.
God, I can't imagine how much of a drag Galko-chan would have been if it were a series of 30-minute episodes and not punchy 10-minute shorts... But yes, Jahy is nothing without her manager and landlady. A pair of sisters, Jahy's manager is motherly and patient and oddly at peace with Jahy being a magic demon from another world. She's constantly trying to work with Jahy, being fine with paying her early or giving her leftovers so she doesn't starve.
Jahy's landlady (who is her manager's sister) is much less outwardly nice, thanks in no small part to Jahy constantly trying to worm out of paying her rent. But even then, she shows on multiple occasions that she also recognizes Jahy as needing a lot of help. She might argue with Jahy or put her into submission holds, but she's still willing to keep an eye on the poor girl when she's bedridden with a bad cold.
Jahy's landlady (who is her manager's sister) is much less outwardly nice, thanks in no small part to Jahy constantly trying to worm out of paying her rent. But even then, she shows on multiple occasions that she also recognizes Jahy as needing a lot of help. She might argue with Jahy or put her into submission holds, but she's still willing to keep an eye on the poor girl when she's bedridden with a bad cold.
I do also appreciate that Jahy doesn't believe in paying rent.
She's right and she should say it. Her manager is ridiculously maternal, but the series just keeps circling back to how much Jahy needs someone to mother her from time to time. Jahy also inadvertently shows her smol form to her in the premiere, so it's kinda nice the show disperses that deception as soon as possible, because it emphasizes just how much of a capital-M Mom she is to Jahy. You can't spell "smother" without "mother."
She's right and she should say it. Her manager is ridiculously maternal, but the series just keeps circling back to how much Jahy needs someone to mother her from time to time. Jahy also inadvertently shows her smol form to her in the premiere, so it's kinda nice the show disperses that deception as soon as possible, because it emphasizes just how much of a capital-M Mom she is to Jahy. You can't spell "smother" without "mother."
Contrast that to how Jahy used to be in her old realm: as close to the top of the food chain as you can get, spoiled absolutely rotten, and not a single thing out of her grasp. Because of it, even when Jahy does meet up with one of her old sycophants from the Dark Realm, she can barely hold a one-on-one conversation with them because... what can she do? What can she say? If she admits she's in a horrible situation, she has to give up the last vestige of pride she's got left.
Not to read too much into a silly comedy, but even though Jahy says she had to fight tooth and nail to get to her position, it's clear that the power went to her head, and she took the lap of luxury for granted. And the thing about surviving in society for most of us is that we do have to sacrifice a lot of our pride to make do. So Jahy's a spoiled brat, for sure, but she's a spoiled brat with some pathos now that she's reached rock bottom. Even though this is a comedy, we do get to see Jahy grow up occasionally, and it's actually really nice.
Tho, amusingly, it also means she has to put up with her former literal footstool having all the prestige and power she used to enjoy.
Druj is good, by the way.
Tho, amusingly, it also means she has to put up with her former literal footstool having all the prestige and power she used to enjoy.
Druj is good, by the way.
Druj is also part of where the comedy falters. As it happens, Druj has adapted to the human world way better than Jahy has—to the point where she's recovered literal truckloads of mana shards. If she's such a simp for Jahy... why isn't she just giving them to her?
I mean Jahy tries to make it sound like she's doing even better in her own gem hunt, so maybe Druj just assumes Jahy doesn't have enough space to store all of it on her own. Which, considering the size of her shithole apartment, is accurate, but not in the way Jahy would like to admit.
By the way I also really like that Jahy's place looks and feels like a cruddy rundown apartment building. No furniture. No bathtub. Stained walls. Noisy neighbors. No sugarcoating here.
By the way I also really like that Jahy's place looks and feels like a cruddy rundown apartment building. No furniture. No bathtub. Stained walls. Noisy neighbors. No sugarcoating here.
And also, potentially haunted.
Look, Jahy's just not earning enough to live in a place without ghosts. Maybe if she pulled herself up by her crocstraps, she might be able to find a home that isn't tainted by the regrets of the damned. That's capitalism, baby.
She doesn't make enough to not live under attack. Saurva here still resents Jahy having been the Demon Lord's second-in-command, and will stop at nothing to kill her and take her place. Er. Assuming she can actually pull it off.
On the other side, she made a very big dog—that's fun!
On the other side, she made a very big dog—that's fun!
I know that's supposed to be some kind of karmic comeuppance for her, but it actually rules. Who wouldn't love a giant fluffy pupper?
But I can't say I don't sympathize with Saurva. There are many days when I wake up thinking the exact same thing.
Of course, the real threat is the magical girl herself. As it turns out, she's also in the Human Realm, and she's also hard at work collecting the mana shards.
Dark and gritty magical girl anime are a dime a dozen these days. Only Jahy is brave enough to explore the REAL motivating factor behind these frill-clad heroines: masochism.
As it turns out, misfortune falls upon any human who bears a mana shard. Shenanigans ensue.
I respect any anime that bakes cartoon slapstick into its lore.
Like, Jahy is much more frequently dumb than it is gut-bustingly funny, but it's a comfy kind of dumb.
Like, Jahy is much more frequently dumb than it is gut-bustingly funny, but it's a comfy kind of dumb.
Like I said, the emotional drama is better than the humor, but at least its comedy can hit some kind of high mark. Jahy's a lot of things, but at least it isn't boring.
Jumping back to Saurva, for instance, as soon as she says this, you know exactly how this sketch is going to progress. You've probably seen this exact sketch dozens of times before.
But it's still fun to get another very screencap-able moment of Jahy vehemently (and correctly) denying that rent is real.
And the sketch also ends on a really sweet note, with Saurva, like Jahy, finding relief in the small comforts that, for most of us, are all we can afford.
But it's still fun to get another very screencap-able moment of Jahy vehemently (and correctly) denying that rent is real.
And the sketch also ends on a really sweet note, with Saurva, like Jahy, finding relief in the small comforts that, for most of us, are all we can afford.
Speaking of small comforts, Jahy is at least able to make actual friends outside of her manager. Of course, her shapeshifting complicates that a little...
Not everyone has as open a mind as her manager, I suppose.
But then there's Kokoro, who Jahy is just entirely unprepared to deal with. Being just an innocent little girl, Kokoro seems to want nothing more than be nice to Jahy, which just beats the crap out of the demon-lady.
Again, it's a predictable sketch, but it's still really cute to see Jahy's brain give her a 404 error every time she tries to consider the possibility another person might have altruistic motives.
I'm also a sucker for a good diegetic sight gag.
I'm also a sucker for a good diegetic sight gag.
Again, this is where the real heart of this show shines. There just isn't much humor to be had in Jahy's antics alone, so the best parts are Jahy eating her humble pie while her friends keep the napkins handy. The bits where Jahy gets her tiny, tiny wins in an ocean of setbacks are genuine and heartwarming enough to make me wish they were the whole show.
I don't think The Great Jahy Will Not Be Defeated! is all that great as a comedy. The energy just isn't there, the visuals are a little pedestrian, and the timing can be downright lethargic for some of these jokes. When the façade is dropped and the characters are allowed to be genuine with each other is when the real magic happens.
It's definitely one of those comedies with one joke. But considering the joke is that Jahy is poor, depressed, has to defer her dreams in order to eke out even the most meager of livings, and desperately wants/needs a mommy gf, that's a pretty hashtag relatable joke.
I'm not sure I recommend Jahy. I think it would need more of the emotional bits before it can really come through for me. But it's still only 7 episodes in, there's plenty of time for it to really leave an impact with a nice, dramatic episode. And if it doesn't, then hey, someone has to get a kick out of a weird tan cat-gremlin that isn't that rotten Nagatoro.
Meanwhile, I think I have to reckon with the fact that I've now genuinely enjoyed both the Nagatoro and Jahy anime, so I'm going to do some soul-searching in the most appropriate place I can think of.
Mommy gfs agree, you deserve better than that!
That's a lie and you know it!
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