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BoysLove: Demon Girl Next Door, Sitcom Comfort Food in a Modern Fantasy Girls' Love Story [1]

['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']

Date: 2025-03-04

Demon Girl Next Door is not your average slice-of-life story. It mixes sharp writing with lovable characters to tell a wholesome story of people trying to make their town better. They manage to accomplish this not with garden variety community service but by stopping supernatural threats and helping their friends untangle mysteries about the town’s mysterious past. They manage to squeeze comedy, some light-hearted action, and reminders to try your best into every episode.

From here I’m going to dip into spoilers and talking more about characters, but I will say it is very chill story and besides a few major surprises (which I will dance around) there is plenty to discuss while leaving some surprises. I also encourage people to read media analysis because it gets me hyped for a story as long as it doesn’t reveal too much. But if you really want to try it while knowing nothing then stop here!

What the Story’s About

The story is a classic coming of age story about a girl who finds out she has magic powers. Yuko learns she has magical powers and starts developing them to try and improve things for her family. Her first task is to defeat another magical warrior that goes to school with her, Momo. Fighting Momo turns out to be biting off a bit more than they can chew as they end up getting distracted from their mission and hanging out with Momo and the rest of their school friends. Thus begins a heartwarming story of two girls who are meant to be rivals by fate but always end up helping each other and getting closer.

This one can definitely be classified under “subtle” girls’ love, the main characters never make outright romantic declarations and physical affection isn’t very present. Despite that people lift it up as very good girls love because the story is very much centered on these two girls working through personal issues and getting closer all the while. They become attached at the hip and they even make sly remarks about things like Yuko preparing Momo’s breakfast every morning. Stories like this may not satisfy the desire for overt romance, but many people enjoy a story mostly filled with women becoming very close friends/low key girlfriends for focusing on girls in a way that doesn’t solely center the romance.

This story in particular focuses on a diverse cast of characters who are quirky and interesting in their own way. They all develop as individual characters but also play into running bits that are pretty hilarious. One friend is into supernatural stuff, Yuko’s little sister is determined to become a master of strategy so that she can be a general in her army of darkness, and there’s another magical warrior themed around oranges who has a reputation of adding them to any food no matter how inappropriate for the flavor, Momo is known for being extremely obsessed with the town’s mascot character. If you enjoy goofy characters and nonstop jokes then Demon Girl Next Door will not disappoint.

That isn’t to say it’s all goofs though, things do get emotional at times as the characters start to unwind their past and understand why their weird city is the way it is. There are themes of addressing a lingering past. There is also a lot of hope because Tama City is a place where demons, humans, and warriors of life have peacefully coexisted in the past. This mix of occasional earned catharsis combined with non stop laughs the entire story makes it a very comforting and relaxing show.

I feel like that describes it’s appeal as best I can manage without getting into the meat of the story, so let’s proceed to that.

The Start of the Story

The story starts with Yuko Yoshida waking up to find horns on her head and a tail. She starts freaking out and asking her mom what to do about these mysterious protrusions only to find that they are completely normal for people from the darkness clan to develop as they age. She has never been informed that her father was part of a clan of demons and that as she gets older she could very well manifest magical powers.

Yuko has been sickly all her life and she has never had a normal school life before. Her health has only recently improved enough to rejoin her classmates and when she finally does return she ends up sprouting demonic horns overnight. She learns her family has a foggy history with magic and it is now her duty to fight magical warriors to regain power for her family, which has been cursed to live in poverty and have children in poor health.

If this sounds familiar, it’s probably because the show is starting with a trope I very much enjoy that I call “magic puberty.” You start the story with the character experiencing a big life change that is normal for someone their age that is that they had no idea about. This has been frequently in fiction discussing actual puberty to signify the passing of the character from the child to the adult world, usually represented by a barrage of changes manifesting rapidly after an unexpected one.

Magic puberty takes this concept and applies it to the magical realm. The character are not only experiencing social and physical changes that signify the protagonist entering into adulthood, they are also going through additional changes that mark the transition between the mundane world and the magical one. This is a very popular trope popular trope once you consider it’s prevalence, massively popular young adult fantasy franchises like Twilight and Harry Potter use the intersection of getting older and encountering magic as a basis for those kinds of stories.

After that brief interlude in the diary we join Yuko again, a newly minted warrior of darkness that needs to fight so her family can have a chance at an okay living. She learns that the nearest magical girl is actually another girl in her class. Yuko has no idea how to fight and is still physically weak from her illness, but she really tries to get motivated and fight for her family. It turns out that the magical girl is in her classroom and she is also the most athletic girl in their class.

Yuko works up the courage to challenge this girl named Momo Chiyoda and calls her out for a fight after class. She manages to fumble the dramatic title she came up with for the fight and squished “Shadow Mistress Yuko” into “Shamiko,” which becomes her affectionately teasing nickname for the rest of the series. Momo agrees on the condition they warm up before fighting so nobody pulls a muscle.

Yuko agrees to the terms and they go on a jog together. She still isn’t very fit after having a mysterious illness for so long, and she struggles to keep with Momo. Yuko perseveres and experiences her first runner’s high while barely managing to keep pace with her enemy. This goes on until they have run two miles and Momo says she is warmed up enough to fight. Yuko is impressed with herself for running that far but also finally snaps out of her running trance. All at once she feels the pain of having run that far with no previous training.

Momo hasn’t broken a sweat and Yuko is barely able to stand. She realizes there’s no way she could put up a fight anymore as well as the fact she’s two miles from home now and doesn’t have money for the train. Momo decides to have mercy and give a rain check for their fight, but Yuko still has to ask to borrow train fare. She gets home safely but now owes her enemy a few bucks.

This first arc sets the tone for the series. People pit against each other for reasons outside of their control end up working together and supporting each other, often in hilarious ways. I could go deeper into the story, but I think this part of the story really distills what it’s all about. I hope you’ll give it a watch and see how much fun it is yourself! Next time I will be doing an analysis of gay themes in Wicked!

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