The Winter 2024 Anime Preview Guide

The Foolish Angel Dances with the Devil

Determined to protect his demon world from heavenly angels, demon Masatora Akutsu heads to earth, searching for a charismatic human to rally his kin. Masquerading as a high schooler for his recruitment mission, he's captivated by the lovely Lily Amane. But he's in for a wild celestial surprise, because she's his archnemesis—an angel—and she's set on reforming his demonic ways.

The Foolish Angel Dances with the Devil is based on a manga of the same name by Sawayoshi Azuma. The anime series is streaming on Crunchyroll on Mondays.

For the first part of the episode, I was waiting for the twist. Was it going to turn out that Lily actually wasn't an angel? Or was there something even more complex happening behind the scenes? But when the "big reveal" came, I was left with a far more important question: Why should I even care in the first place?

The setting for this one is a war between heaven and hell—and heaven is winning. While this sucks for the demons, is there any reason this matters to humanity? Is Earth going to be affected in any way? And if the demons can't even get off their lazy butts when faced with annihilation, they're not getting any sympathy from me. Likewise, I have no reason to root for the angels—especially if they're all as sadistic as Lilly.

So, if the overall conflict doesn't catch my interest, then the characters have to be able to—to make me connect with the story on a more personal level. Sadly, the series fails here as well. Masatora's heart is in the right place, but he's not exactly likable. After all, while he does some noble things, it's more by accident than anything else. He is consciously trying to be evil and manipulative—it's just that he's terrible at it. Meanwhile, Lilly lives a lie and enjoys the suffering of others—both human and demon judging from her actions throughout the episode.

With two unlikable leads and a greater conflict I have no investment in, I'm going to give this one a pass. And frankly, no amount of pratfall/sexually suggestive comedy or solid-looking action scenes are going to change my mind.

The title may have gotten this one reversed – right now, it's looking awfully like Akutsu is a foolish devil attempting to dance with an angel, and he's doing the box step while she's doing the Viennese waltz. She's also much, much better at her human disguise than he is, which right now may mean that Lily's been on earth longer or that she consumed the right brand of media before attempting to fit in. Petite and blonde, Lily is the girl all the boys in class are going gaga over, and there's a slight implication that that may be due to her only partially suppressed angelic powers; it depends on how literally you want to take Akutsu's shrieks about his body not listening to him after he first meets her. But the little, consistent glimpses we get of fangs in her delicate rosebud of a mouth are a clue that "angelic" may not mean the same thing when it comes to angels as it does when humans use the term…

The baseline for this is decent. Devils and angels fighting with humans caught in the middle is tried-and-true in fiction, and reversing their traditional roles does work to pique interest. However, two things drag this down in my estimation, and both are plot elements that I have a low tolerance for historically: mean humor and a particularly shrieky character. The latter, in this case, is Akutsu. He spends nearly all of the final quarter screeching, and a decent amount of time before that doing the same. It contrasts with the quietly menacing Lily, but if you're sound-sensitive, it can be a lot to take.

Interestingly enough, the loudest scenes are also the ones that bring in the mean humor; Lily, after mocking Akutsu for trying to unwittingly recruit an angel to the devils' cause, forces him into a collar as a mark of submission. It's meant to be funny – the comments about putting things in holes and the imagery that goes with them are reversing the genders on the traditional forced deflowering scene. This is played for laughs, and if it's not your brand of humor, it doesn't come off well, although I applaud the level of effort that went into the gag, right down to Lily playing with a sparkler instead of smoking a cigarette while Akutsu weeps on the ground.

Your enjoyment of this episode will come down to how you feel about that last section. If it doesn't bother you, this could be a fun rom-com. If it does, I'd go with Hokkaido Gals Are Super Adorable! for your Monday romantic comedy fix.

It's always frustrating to see a solid premise get hamstrung by wonky execution. As an elevator pitch, this show has a classic anime hook. A demon searching to recruit a new Antichrist to lead the hordes of hell winds up in a standoff with an Angel descended to Earth, and the two end up at odds both in the battle and rom-com sense. Yet, at nearly every opportunity, this premiere flubs the delivery, turning what could be a solid premise into a confused mess that feels vaguely unpleasant by the end.

For one, we spend too much time on the bait and switch. Even if you've gone into this blind and don't know that Lily is an angel at the start of the episode, the OP gives away the game a good 15 minutes before she drops the act, which means we only get to know the real character at the very end. This whole show will live or die off the dynamic of our titular leads, and holding out on that for so long doesn't give us a very good idea of what these two will be like going forward.

Maybe that's by design, because once our leads are out in the open, the chemistry they do have kind of leaves a gross taste in my mouth. I get that they're going for a subversion of expectations, with the literal angel being a domineering bully who wraps a collar around her demonic enemy's neck (weird how that's a trend this season) while making the process sound like she's pegging him. Still, the delivery feels too mean-spirited to land. Akutsu isn't mean or cocky enough for the assault to feel cathartic, and the episode ending on his miserable sobbing just isn't funny.

Maybe, with the premise established, the episodes after this will be able to flesh out a more entertaining dynamic. It could work out if these two can establish an antagonistic rapport while toeing the line of inter-army, unholy fraternization. There are a few funny gags throughout the episode, and even some nice animation cuts during the climactic fight. The parts are there, but I remain unconvinced that they'll assemble them right.