This seems well-made, but I’m a little confused about what it’s going for beyond just “demon lord cool, cyberpunk cool, so what if both??”

Like, cyberpunk by its nature almost always has strong anti-capitalist themes, and some elements of the setting do point in that direction. On the other side, though, our hero is a demon lord, a role that carries with it (mostly just implied so far) monarchy/feudalism and racial hierarchy. It just seems very odd to me that they seem to be framing him as an underdog hero (from the proliferation of magic abilities and from the genocide of immortals), when his (current) goals are not really a good counter to the world’s dominant ideology.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that a see a lot of questionable paths the story can take from here, and if it treads carefully I think it could be a good story, but I don’t really have any reason to trust it yet. I have a friend who picked it up this season, so I think hearing about it secondhand will be enough to sate my curiosity, lol. I give the premiere a 3/5.

Cool world and interesting setting. I’m not really feeling the MC so far though. He wants to try and conquer the world again, but like, why? Sounded like they were the bad guys, so why should we care? Sure, it’a a cyberpunky world so there’s probably rampant corporatism and whatnot, but not sure totalitarianism is much better. Or are they going to pull a ‘the demon lord was a good guy all along’?

But only 1 ep is out so far, so maybe I’m spouting nonsense and I should not speculate this much yet. It’s just that I can see this going in a, imo, boring/generic direction pretty quickly, despite the cool setting.

I think the best way to describe the first episode is… almost reverse Samurai Jack.

@rikka@ani.social

The Great Demon Lord, who was defeated by the Hero 500 years ago, finds himself resurrected in a cyberpunk world with fantasy races, and his formerly mighty magic is now obsolete with little implants that literally everyone has that allows them to perform magic faster than he ever could.

This makes him a fish out of water in this new world, where his mighty abilities are now obsolete.

One of his former lieutenants owns the (obligatory cyberpunk) Evil Corporation that sells these implants, and takes out his long repressed resentment on his former boss.

It’s good. The writing is good, the direction is good, the world building is interesting, the characters are sympathetic and their motivations are believable. Not bad for a JC Staff production.

I’m a little wary that this good setup could go sideways in the following episodes, but this seems worth watching for now.

p.s. The OP is good.