Demi-chan is one of the newest addition to the monster girl subgenre, which usually feature a human helpless male lead get stuck in a harem of mythical creatures, in form of oversized boob girls of course (why usually those monsters are in female forms anyways? Aren’t they sexless?). In this case, we have monster girls as high school students in an otherwise mundane ordinary world, where human begins to accept them as a part of society. With the help of a teacher who takes special interest in demi-human, those monster girls (called themselves as demi) starts to navigate their lives, opens up about their demi abilities and how they adjust those abilities to fit in with the environments around them. Demi-chan, as a result, tackles quite thoughtfully and sincerely about demi issues from multiple sides; from demi side, from those who do and don’t aware about them. The middle part of the show, however; dragged the show down by a passable but uninspiring slice-of-life tendency where nothing much happened. The final two episode picked up some of the show’s best spirits but as a whole, Demi-chan isn’t special enough or hard-hitting enough to really stand out in a crowd.
As you can probably guess from the title “Interviews with Monster Girls”, the show focuses on the main demi-human nature of our high school girls: vampire, dullahan, snow girl, succubus. By that the show comparing their true natures to those traits we all heard from mythology (Do vampires hate onion? How succubus work to attract male preys?), addressing their main concerns toward blending in with human world, and explaining their demi abilities so that those girls understand and be proud about their nature. One of the main moral question the show keeps asking throughout its run is that how we, the human people, should treat the demi girls most appropriately. Should we treat them like normal people, or should we care more about their monster’s attributes? Isn’t keep questioning about their “abnormal” nature a kind of discrimination itself? When you keep asking about those natures so many times it’d make the monster girls aware that they are different than the rest. For that Demi-chan argues that it is necessary for the girls to learn and embrace their own natures because those natures are a part of themselves and are what make them unique as a person. The human as well should learn and understand their concerns in order to really support them. Sometimes we do some discriminated actions to them without we knowing it (one of the lines from a recent film Hidden Figure really hits it home. The white boss: “Despite what you may think, I have nothing against y’all”. To which one of the black girl replied “I know, I know you probably believe that.” I totally agree with this thoughtful approach and to be frank this attitude is relevant to the people from ethnic groups in real life as well. I’m not going to touch on world political much but with Trump’s aggressive actions towards Muslim countries and border immigrations, sometimes what we should do instead is understanding each other’s points of views and acknowledge and respect their distinctive cultures.
Another strength of Demi-chan is this show has a lot of hearts. The show has its light-heart, sweet nature hanging in the air and many of those big emotional scenes are heart-felt and delightful. Well, you can argue that those moments (like Hikari confronts the bullied girls in the toilet, or Hikari encourages Tetsuo by the lake) are over-sentimental for its own good, but when its heart is on the right place I have no problem with that. It’s that sweet nature and the easy chemistry between those girls and Tetsuo that basically carry the show throughout its run. In addition, the sweet voice acting help elevating the chemistry as well. Of those characters, Tetsuo-sensei and Hikari are easily the best characters of the show. Hikari for her over the top but that’s-exactly-what-we-need carefree attitude, and Tetsuo for consistently helping out the girls with his kindness and he also grows from approaching the girls with curiosity into wholeheartedly caring about them. The second last episode where the show examines how close should he assist the girls is also a thoughtful, well-drawn conflict that help developing his character and making us see how much he means to other monster girls.
The introductions and then the interviews of our monster girls are easily the show’s best parts. After the interviews segment though, Demi-chan stumbles in finding a hook so it relies on some of its more questionable aspects: the romance and the slice-of-life approach. The romance is a totally dead weight, unfortunately, because this show doesn’t need any romance to begin with. Sakie’s crush on Tetsuo is more of a missed opportunity than a hit, because it’s awkward in tone and worse, gets pale very, very quickly. Kyouko the dullahan’s feeling towards her teacher is also the show’s low points, and there was more than one time that Tetsuo having a sexual tension towards her, which gives this show a rather bad taste. Secondly, after the interviews the show wanders around for “cute monster girls doing cute things” focus, that including the girls studying for the exams, enjoy reading old manga and swimming in the pool (really, we MUST have pooling episode in some ways). Those moments sure are cute and relaxing but they don’t really have much to say and it loses its steams by each passing episode. In fact, I don’t remember much what happens in those middle episodes because nothing really happened, nor mattered. Lastly, the new characters introduced in that period are unmemorable at best. The young boy and the detective adds little to the table, that Tetsuo’s scientist friend has no chemistry whatsoever with the cast, the human students don’t have much screen time to stand out and Hikari’s parents, while well-fleshed out, still remain underdeveloped. In fact, where is Himari in the second half of the show? It is a shame because she’s far more interesting than most of the core cast out there.
In the end, I’d only recommended the first 4 episodes and the last two, which would sum up to exactly half of its runtime. Except from its well-thought approach on the nature of the demon girls and the easy chemistry between our characters, the show leaves little impact and unfortunately, for me at least, the middle part really brings the show down to the point I feel it falls flatter and flatter as each episode passed. The last two episodes did regain some of its spirit but by then it was far too late. Still, I don’t deny that I have an easy time watching Demi-chan, it’s good to get sucked in their world and enjoy the band of demi-girls having fun times, but ultimately when it’s all done and gone I left without much personal attachments from any of this.