Hataraku Maou-sama! (The Devil is a Part-timer!) - 04

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This episode of Hataraku Maou-sama! serves to contextualize the attitudes of some of the main characters.

We find out that Emilia is the daughter of an angel, and that’s why she was chosen to be the Hero.  She’s also the only person on Ente Isla who can defeat Maou because she’s half human and half angel.  And then we learn part of why she hates Maou so much—a few days after she was taken by the Church for training, the village in which her father lived was burned to the ground by one of Maou’s generals, Lucifer.  Now generally, I make the assumption that no character is dead unless we’re shown the body, but I think in this case it’s fair to assume Emilia’s father is dead, somewhat justifying (or at least contextualizing) her hatred of Maou.

One of the more shocking (or perhaps not so much) revelations in this episode is that Maou and Ashiya’s landlady, Miki-T, knows about the Sonar and Idea Link.  She also seems to know that Maou is more than he seems.  How does she know about these things?  What’s her endgame?  She’s definitely turning out to be an interesting character.

We finally get a look at the person trying to take out both Maou and Emilia, as well: none other than Lucifer.  Obviously, many questions arise with this revelation.  How will Emilia react to this, knowing that it was Lucifer’s army that destroyed her father’s village?  How is Lucifer able to so easily use his demon powers in this world when Maou and Ashiya can’t?  Why does he look so emo?  But in all seriousness, this episode ends on another cliffhanger that will keep me, at least, coming back for more.

The characters are really beginning to be fleshed out.  We find out that Chiho is the daughter of the police officer that Maou used his power on in the first episode in order to gain information.  We learn a great deal more about Emilia’s backstory than we previously knew.  We even learn about Yusa’s coworker’s past, and she’s just a side character.

The characters we haven’t learned the backstories of, though—and who I’m personally very interested in learning more about—are Maou and Alsiel.  I get the sinking feeling that we might never get more backstory on either of them, which would be a bit of a bummer.  However, with the revelation that Lucifer is the one trying to take out Maou and Emilia, perhaps the next episode will have some backstory on the demons of Ente Isla.