The Devil Is a Part-Timer!, Vol. 5 (Novel) (The Devil Is a Part-Timer!, 5)

Enjoyed the read. Quite a few shockers in the end. And slight mingling the past with present is really exciting things up.

So, some more events befold The Devil King... I mean Sadao Maou. With MgRonalds closed down for renevation, and being out of work all is not well at the Devils Castle. Luckily his landlord lands him a part time job working at a beach house! Emilia however does not trust him and decides to follow him... But what is that uncertain feeling in her chest? Why does she, the future slayer of The Devil King suddenly think his snile is handsome? Well, you will have to buy this to find out!

El volumen 5 no es tan bueno como los anteriores, hubo partes en que podia habermelas saltado y no hubiera afectado la historia, es divertido ver a los personajes en situaciones de la vida cotidiana ya que algunas cosas ignoran, pero esta vez se me hizo muy aburrido.

love the story

The beach vacation from the last book is over. The Devil King, his two remaining followers, their arch enemy and her support, and the high school girl who is caught up in this whole mess are now back in the city. Sadly, they barely get a day's rest before something else decides to come along and smack then square in the face.Maou, Ashiya, Urushihara, and Suzuno have returned to their rebuilt apartment building, with Emi and Chiho in tow. We get a funny scene of poor Maou and Ashiya trying to move some heavy furniture back into their apartment, with Urushihara guiding them so they don't bump into anything. Fed up with waiting for them to clear the way, Suzuno busts out her Holy Force and what follows is basically a bunch of heavy objects--washing machine, fridge, boxes full of stuff--seemingly floating up the stairs to the two apartments. They're not actually floating, but Suzuno is so short that she can't be scene over the stuff she's carrying. It's classic goofball humor that this series has nailed perfectly as supposed enemies bicker more like longtime friends that bitter rivals bent on killing each other.After everything is unpacked, the gang takes a look around their refurbished room and begins to notice a few small changes. Leaking sinks are fixed, brighter paint on the wall; little things like that. But then, Urushihara--being the tech nerd shut-in that he is--makes a big discovery. The villa has been upgraded with an HDTV hook up.And so, the plot of the newest book gets underway: the Devil and his crew are off to buy a TV! Oh, and Suzuno is coming too, because she wants one also.I'll be honest, about the first third of this book is a bit...slow. This is mostly due to the fact that it is devoted to budget talk, and how the crew is going to afford a TV on the limited income (remember, Maou is still out of work). Luckily, Rika comes along at Ashiya's request, and she teaches the demons the tricks of haggling, but it's still a lot of consumer talk that kind of drags. Yes, it's funny watching Suzuno slowly come to realize that she's viewing the demons as friends--and possibly even more, but that's just my theory--and thus she gets upset and pouts, but buying a TV can only be so exciting to read about.Thankfully, there's more going on in the story. Rika (for those that don't remember, she's Emi's friend from work) becomes a fawning school girl around Ashiya, and everyone figures out why except for Ashiya himself. Watching Emi beat her head against her desk as she realizes her best Earth friend has a crush on her sworn enemy is amusing.Speaking of Emi, she's off on her own quest. Suspecting that the mysterious woman who knows Alas Ramus is still somewhere in Japan, she jury-rigs a Yesod fragment tracker in hopes that it will point her in the direction of the woman--who Emi is pretty sure she knows the identity of, but doesn't want to get her hopes up.Lastly, a strange signal has been going out over TV waves, causing some to explode, while others simply go white. And for some reason, Chiho has been put in a coma because of this strange event. Urushihara reveals that he probably knows who is behind it because Gabriel paid him a visit, warning that The Observer is here--another angle named Raguel, and that he's behind the the strange event that put Chiho in a coma.Thinking that Raguel is after them again, or at least the Yesod fragments, and upset about Chiho being harmed, Maou, Emi, Ashiya, Suzuno, and Urushihara (yes, even him) set off to find the new angel and take care of him. But instead, they find out that something much more serious is going on, and that the implications could end up destroying heaven and unbalancing the Earth.SPOILERS FOLLOW:Emi learns a truth (one I've long suspected myself), and thus her entire resolve is shaken. She also learns that angels aren't some higher life form, but just another type of being that humans have attributed divine powers to for some reason. Why else would an angel be able to have a child with a human?Suzuno comes to the realization that heaven, and its angels, don't really care about the people back home, and that crushes her spirit a little.And the demons learn that Raguel isn't actually looking for them at all. In fact, he wants them to stay far away. He's been sent to find someone else, someone who started this whole mess when she stole the Yesod fragments and saved Satan all those years ago.With everything everyone believed in suddenly thrown into chaos, it's going to take some new power to pull the gang out of this mess. And wait until you see who that person turns out to be.SPOILERS END!!!!Some notes:Suzuno FINALLY gets a real fight scene. I was kind of bummed that she was left out of the battle in the last book, but not here. She gets a chance to show her stuff, and she is not messing around.Urushihara has also grown even more, going so far as to actually take the initiative in the plan to find Raguel. And, once again, it's implied that he knows more about what is happening than anyone else. He's just too lazy to care--or perhaps he's hoping that if he ignores it, it will all go away.Did you watch the anime? Do you remember in the ending that Chiho was shown with a bow doing archery? Remember how nothing ever came of that? Yeah, well, turns out that her being able to do archery is important. She's not longer just sitting on the sidelines anymore, if you know what I mean.This book gives us even more of a glimpse of the overall plot, but some readers may find it a bit frustrating because it's never actually EXPLAINED why the angels are doing what they're doing. I spent a good deal of the last part of the book fretting that I had missed something, up until the point when Maou asks what's going on and Raguel replies, "Like I'm going to tell you that!" So no, you didn't miss something. The angels are keeping their secrets for now.Finally--and I've brought this up before--it's kind of hard to tell who is talking at certain points because clauses such as, "Maou said" or "Chiho replied" are not used here. This is because, in Japanese, each character talks in a certain way and that's sort of lost in the English translation. But here it's REALLY bad. There are times where there are upwards of five or six characters talking and I found myself getting confused. I almost took off a star for this, because there are even paragraph breaks that seem really out of place, thus adding to the confusion. Just don't be surprised if you end up having to re-read a few sections just to figure out who said what.Bottom line: this is probably the first book in this series that is FULL of plot information. While the consumer purchasing part of it may leave you going, "Can we stop talking about budgets and haggling please?", once that part is over, get ready for some serious info dumps. We still don't know exactly what is happening that is causing heaven to panic, but there are plenty of clues littered through the story. For those of you who have been hungry for more information on the grand scheme of things, this one is far and away a must read for you.

As my headline for this volume suggests, there the usual sense of humor and lightness throughout the novel, but there’s also some very serious action that ties much of the events together with what is happening at the time of this novel and sets up what we can loosely expect for the next volume. There’s plenty of implausible other-worldly shenanigans, but they do make more sense when viewed through the lens of the bigger picture being developed around the universe in this series. A fun read with a slight mystery/thriller vibe in this one, I am looking forward to the next volume.