How NOT to Summon a Demon Lord

Its has a bit too much fan service for my taste, but if you can overlook that its surprising good. You actually get invested in some of the characters, for me the characters of Emile Bichelberger were surprising good. In episode four Emile Bichelberger is badly injured and about to be killed, after valiantly facing a fallen, when the demon lord arrive and puts his hand on Emile saying he was a hero and that he would take it from here, I was moved. It has its share of silliness, but not as much as you would expect and the ending is reasonable. The tropes used are well worn standard ones but the execution is very good so they seem fresh.

But not a huge amount more.

This a bit of a "Isekai" at its core ( main premise) and it's atleast amusingly used to help explain away the "Harem" portion of the Anime. There is the typically Ecchi fan service, and some of it is a little better disguised / worked into the plot than many similar shows, and some solid character growth between the protagonist and his "harem".

Overall it's enjoyable, a good watch for the Covid-Crisis of 2020, and a second season was announced, but it's not groundbreaking.

I have to admit, that at this point people are just milking the into another world action harem idea and hardly have any original ideas anymore. Kono Suba was beyond great, Issekai no Smartphone was complete garbage (still unnecessarily famous) and this is something in the middle.

It's good in the sense that it makes me laugh from time to time and I keep coming back to it because of the entertainment factor. This is probably also due to my love of overpowered characters.

It's bad in the sense that except for the main character you can only see ecchi lolis throwing themselves at the Demon Lord. This is not creativity, it's very questionable softporn.....so basically what all teenage boys watching it long for. If I am completely honest, this anime would probably even be better without any nudity at all and adult women. Sadly, this is not what the current anime community craves for.

Main Character, plot and comedy is above average, everything else is over the top. It gets a solid 6 from 10.

The magic looks great and some scenes are fantastic but make no mistake, this is porn.

Sakamoto Takuma spends his days playing a computer game; he has got to such a level that fellow players call him 'Demon Lord'. Then one day he finds himself summoned into a world very similar to the world of the game. In this world he appears as his game avatar and has all the powers from the game. He was summoned by two girls who immediately cast an enslavement spell on him... unfortunately for them he has the skill 'Magic Reflect' so end up his slaves. The girls are Shera, a busty elf, and Rem, a petite pantherian. The trio soon get into a series of adventures and The Demon Lord is soon defeating everybody he faces; of course they gradually face tougher foes until they find the real Demon King and must battle to save the mortal races.

The idea of a character somehow being caught in world that is either an actual video game or just like one is hardly original but that doesn't matter as this series is quite fun. The fact that Sakamoto is ridiculously overpowered compared to most people he fights provides some laughs. The story is simple enough but, thanks to the likeable characters, it is a rather enjoyable. There is quite a lot of fan service which might bother some viewers even though, at least in the broadcast version, we don't see too much. The series comes to a solid conclusion which wraps up most plot details in an enjoyable way. Overall I'd say this might not be a must-see series but it is worth watching if you like the genre as it provides more than enough laughs and a decent story.

These comments are based on watching the series in Japanese with English subtitles.