There’s so much here that I like and it just didn’t click for me as a whole — magic, BL, interesting world building, solid art — none of it enough to make this something I really enjoyed. Dear Demon King has a complicated setup about a world where the demon king Kougyoku rules over a floating island full of magical beasts, and also the island has all of these gemstones full of magical power on them that humans want, and fifty years ago the humans attacked the island to try to steal the gemstones, and Kougyoku fended them off but a lot of the beasts died — but Kougyoku is bringing them back to life at a pace of only three a day because he’s the only magician on earth with enough power, and also he has a magical forcefield around the island and it flies from place to place……it’s a lot! Also, his manservant Topaz has a big crush on him, but Topaz is also a griffin who Kougyoku raised from birth. The plot is mainly about both of them liking each other but not feeling able to talk about it, along with more efforts by evil humans to kill various magical beasts that lead to Kougyoku getting hurt and having to make a big decision that will affect his and Topaz’s future.
The art here is good overall and as stated above, I like all of the elements here. However, there was so much going on that I found it draining to read and since it’s only one volume, it felt like the author was trying to shove everything in their brain into here without giving it space to breathe. There are a lot of side characters also jammed into here that I haven’t even brought up. The story has a bunch of miscommunication and assumption and missed opportunities to connect, all of which irritated me. The relationship between Kougyoku and Topaz also had a power dynamic that I was never fully comfortable with — Kougyoku raised Topaz from an egg and has spent his entire life with him, even though the narrative tries to argue that Kougyoku sent him away at one point so that he’d have the chance to live somewhere else and not stay with Kougyoku. Their dynamic never felt really romantic to me, personally, and I wasn’t very invested in them getting together.
There are some cute moments and interesting ideas here and I’m sure there are people that this is going to really work for, but it just wasn’t for me. Not a keeper.
