Like volume 7, The Devil is a Part-Timer! volume 14 is full of side stories involving the characters set at different times throughout the series. The author says by reading this volume, “it should help you understand the world of Devil on a deeper level than before. I’d like to pretend to believe so, at least, but I’d be lying.”
Because why worry about the Sephirah or Laila’s plan when we can see a Great Demon General swoon over a free kitchen appliance?
Volume 14 has six stories, and Wagahara smartly saves the best for last. Emi’s early days on Earth have always been a mystery, as despite finding herself alone in a strange land, she managed to score a decent job with a very nice apartment. Well, we finally see how the Hero got such a sweet deal: with a little bit of luck and accidentally scaring the heck out of a lady by being mistaken for a “samoorai gosst”. While the series presented early Emi as an angry, stubborn person, here we see her as the Hero: she’s trying to figure out what to do while also worried that others are suffering at the hands of the Devil King. Yet she’s also the vulnerable Emi we see later when she returns to Ente Isla, a young girl missing her friends and wanting a decent meal. The Devil is a Part-Timer! started off around the time the Hero and the Devil King reunited, but it’s easy to forget all those months they spent adjusting to Japan.
Unfortunately, no other story matches this one in importance and/or entertainment. Showing Emi and Chiho becoming friends or Emi dealing with her conflicting emotions regarding Acieth as her father’s foster daughter have their significance, but they are also accompanied by significant patches of dullness. It’s the other characters in these stories that bring them down with forced comedy: Emeralda and Albert stuff themselves with sushi, and Maou wants to keep his old feature phone when smartphones are already becoming the rage. Erase those three from these chapters, give the pagetime to the stars of the chapters, and they would have been better.
As chapters throughout the series, they might have been okay. But piling up on top of these mediocre shorts are chapters involving Ashiya drooling over his new pressure cooker, Maou not realizing he has holes in his pants, and Kisaki’s rival. According to Wagahara, the latter was hinted about in the second volume. But I don’t think anyone cared. In fact, he brought in a character from the anime version in order to make her, Kisaki, and Kisaki’s rival a threesome that have known each other for years. Kisaki and Tanaka, when they face off, they scare everyone around them, and it’s a gag that feels reused from Miki Shiba, the landlady. Either way, the included poster shows another face-off of this pair, so if you do read this volume, make sure you skip it until after Tanaka is introduced.
The holes in the pants also seem strange. Yes, Ashiya had been missing for a couple of days doing a temp job, but three pairs of pants all with the same holes? And he didn’t notice beforehand?
Whatever.
In fact, that’s how I felt about much of this book: whatever. However, Emi’s story about her early days in Japan is like a beacon in the bay for The Devil is a Part-Timer! volume 14, and it managed to salvage the entire book for me.