Two major events occur in volumes 11 and 12 of Sleepy Princess. Both of these events threaten Demon King Twilight’s forces…and Syalis’ restful sleeps! The first is the appearance of Sunrise, a popular and tremendous athlete in Goodereste that is a major star. Many ladies admire her, and that includes the Princess. This manages to make the demons jealous (and try to impress Syalis with the special talents they can do, but they fail miserably), but after Syalis leaves and goes to sleep, Sunrise announces she’s joining the hero’s party. Now the demons must find a way to force their “hostage” to not run away. It might involve Syalis going on an accidental joy ride.
The second major event? Oh, typical stuff: the demons start running out of funds. Let’s say this manages to begin a chain of money losses that leaves Syalis somehow the second contributor to why they can’t erase their debt.
While those are the two longer arcs in each volume, many other tales emerge in Sleepy Princess in the Demon Castle that make you wonder how many more references Kagiji Kumanomata put into this series. There’s a chapter where Neo Alraune ends up managing Syalis’ budding idol career in a way that is not at all a reminder of something called THE IDOLM@STER. There’s a chapter where we get another chance to appreciate Amuro, er, Triple Face, misconstrue anything Syalis does or says (Did the author work with Gosho Aoyama at some point with all these references? Just a huge fan?). And if you thought you could escape any Harry Potter references, just know you’re wrong when even the title of a chapter includes “The Chamber of Secrets.”
However, and while there are once again many fun and neat and strange chapters (the Demon Cleric attempts to find a home), the main focus revolves around the demons actually trying to be demonic. They are not amused that the suave, handsome Sunrise has captivated Syalis. With Sunrise declaring she’s joining the Hero’s party, the demons try and build a ride full of traps to defeat her. But Syalis took a test ride and since each trap was dangerous, they had to dispel each of them. So much for being evil demons.
Then of course, naturally, they start running out of cash. With little creativity in their bones, the higher-ups slash everyone’s bonuses until they can get out of debt. Would you believe it’s the Princess that temporarily helps the demons? Of course, her help involves using things that don’t belong to her, and that only makes everything worse. Somehow though, another person in the Demon Castle makes a weapon to defeat the humans that goes well over budget and plunges funding to a lower state! Adding insult to injury, it even resembles what the creator of said weapon calls the most aggressive creature in the castle.
*looks at Princess Syalis*
So in a classic Human vs. Demon battle, The Princessbot Mark III with the cute “Klangk” sound doesn’t work properly. It does begin working with the Princess napping inside it though. In short order, pride and fairness were lost this day.
These two volumes aren’t quite as laugh out loud as prior ones, but still highly entertaining. It is indeed hard to dislike volumes where:
A) The Demon Castle suddenly becomes the Chocolate Castle during Valentine’s Day.
B) You can somehow have a pajama party from hell…again, remember where the Demon Castle is at.
C) And finally, Princess Aurora Sya Lis Goodereste discovers that energy drinks INDEED can defeat her desire to sleep, which means, despite all of the threats around her, she’s finally uncovered her greatest evil…
So yep, Sleepy Princess in the Demon Castle still keeps being a fine, comedic read.