Beelzebub

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Good comedy, funny characters, weird school life, great fight scenes… if you you're looking for these standards then Beelzebub is a good choice for you.

Beelzebub was really one of my favorite manga, they were many funny moments that made me laugh for good…the fight scenes were good and interesting , it follows the story of Oga Tatsumi… a junior delinquent student of Ishiyama high school, who (by chance and in a weird way) get to meet baby Beel (most people prefer to call him like that)…who's a son of the demon's lord, strangely baby beel liked Oga from the first meeting (thanks to his vicious ... appearance) and this is where everything begins.

Story: the beginning of the story is really interesting…Oga (the protagonist) finds himself obliged to carry the demons' lord baby on his back as he attend his school (hence the name of the "Badass rearing Baby")…since it's a school full of delinquents Oga finds himself in many troubles…later he finds himself dealing with the demons too…which makes the plot really exciting and laughable, sadly because this manga went axed I just had to hate the ending…the series ended quicker than expected so there were many question marks (easily put this way), it's not like it's a bad ending but it's really a disappointment.
My rate for the story 6 out of 10.

Art: the art was really fine since it's a comedy story, I liked the settings, the characters designs were good…well I can't find any flaws and in the same time I can't find anything special about the art, so simply my rate for the art 7 out of 10.

Character: the personalities of the most characters fit well with the background of the story; no matter how serious they seem most of them have a humor side, what strange is that many antagonists will have a twist and turn to be supporting characters throughout the story; I really didn't mind that at all (well same thing happen in a lot of anime&manga stories) since the Ishiyama gang are the ones that keeps this story lively… especially Oga and Baby beel with their random personalities and their main supporter...Furuichi Takayuki, and of course I don't forget the best two female characters...Hilda and Kunieda Aoi.
My rate for Characters 7 out of 10.

Enjoyment: I really loved Beelzebub, I didn't find any arc to be boring and I really enjoyed reading it… but this work went axed (don't know the reasons) so the author somehow was obliged to end the story in a way you must hate (but I guess it couldn’t be helped)… so the only thing I hated about this manga was the ending (and of course the most important things about a story is its beginning and ending).
My rate for Enjoyment 7 out of 10.

Overall I rate this manga with a 7 out of 10, I can't say I hated this manga just because of its ending, I really enjoyed and laughed a lot while reading this work so I guess this rating is fair.

Thanks for reading :)
Sorry for any linguistic mistakes.

I have read my fair share of fantasy fiction and anything involving the demons tends to be on the darker side of horror and it is not usually fit for mainstream consumption. The ones that are mainstream, unfortunately, tend to be a mere shadow of the original.

Yeah, Beelzebub is nothing like that.

I wasn’t quite sure if Beelzebub would live up to its hype – despite the acclaim it has received. But within a few pages, it had me in splits.

To start with, Oga Tatsumi is a terror to be reckoned with. He picks up a strange green haired baby who, he’s informed, happens to be ... the son of the Demon Lord. Enter Hilda, the violent wet nurse; the Tohoshinki, the four big powers at Ishiyama High and Furuichi, the only normal guy.

Hilarious shenanigans ensue.

Aside from the ‘life raising a young demon lord’ thing, the other central plot point within Beelzebub happens to be power struggles on various levels but without the politics and with 100% more humour. Baby Beel and Oga seem to get inadvertently caught up in them and deal with it the only way Oga really knows – with sheer brute force.

They’re not kidding when they call him the ‘Strongest Delinquent’.

Probably the biggest plus point of Beelzebub is how it constantly delivers. I have read through 167 chapters and, so far, there hasn’t been a single one of them that I’ve disliked. It (literally) punches any conventional proceedings in the face – screw super-stretched out fights with ‘evil’ villains waxing eloquent on their greatness, Oga just nonchalantly takes them out with one of his attacks before they can do a thing.

The humour is not sophisticated – given that it’s a shounen, Beelzebub has a juvenile edge to it – but perhaps that’s what really increases its appeal. There no talk of adhering to the principles of Shounen Jump, there’s just a lot of bizarre situations which are brilliantly interspersed with even better character interaction.

Speaking of characters – practically everyone within the main cast is either: a) a Demon, b) a Delinquent or c) Furuichi. So, you have chock full of comic opportunities that are rarely wasted and each of the characters are interesting and do not grate the nerves in any way.

Furuichi provides delightful ‘tsukkomi’, being the only sane individual throughout the manga and is usually the butt of several pervert/paedophile related jokes. The Tohoshinki are amazing – each of them is distinct and memorable, The Great Demon Lord is a hilarious, flaky individual who's sole purpose in life is to make you choke on your own laughter every time he comes up with a new frivolous scheme, Oga is a brilliant protagonist with both strength and denseness that is always amusing and Baby Beel is just plain adorable.

Another thing I approve of is the way the female leads – Hilda and Aoi – are portrayed. There is a distinct lack of airheaded, helpless bimbos which only adds to the Beelzebub experience and the two ladies are more than capable of holding their own in an all out brawl. I personally enjoyed the inclusion of an all girls gang, though I wish they had more panel time and the fanservice is not as blatant as it could've been.

Beelzebub’s biggest hindrance remains its art. If one were to compare it to other shounen series within Jump, it’s drawing style is heavily lacking. For one thing, the backgrounds in most panels are neglected and intricate detail is not present. Most of the men in the series adhere to a rather boxy build and it feels off sometimes. I have a personal gripe for the way Hilda’s shoes are drawn – the heels on her stiletto lace-up boots are just plain ugly.

At the same time, Beelzebub is suited to this sort of art and it’s not as bad as to be unreadable. The characters are well drawn with crisp, sharp strokes. The male character designs are varied, though I find that most of the female characters have almost the same base. But the latter can be forgiven since there aren’t many prominent females anyway.

That said, I commend the mangaka on his expressions. He captures the incredulous expressions so well, it certainly adds to the humour. I particularly love any of the ‘demon faces’ that Oga takes on from time to time.

Overall, Beelzebub takes a solid 9/10 since the art doesn’t deprecate the series’ enjoyment in any manner and manages to compound it instead, like any good manga should.

Beelzebub doesn’t make any lofty promises – I’ll take down the great demon king and save the world? No sir! – and continues on in its own charming, if somewhat dysfunctional, way. It captures you with its puerile humour, delinquent characters and the ever-loved high school setting with just a dash of Demons (who are equally hilarious in their own right) and happens to be the perfect mood-lifter right in the middle of any normal, tedious week.

Definitely recommended to anyone looking for a light shounen manga series.

EDIT:

Having finally finished the manga, I decided to bump down my score to a respectable 8, even though most of my other thoughts on Beelzebub still hold true in the intervening years I have been away from it.

On rereading Beelzebub as a whole, it's still hilarious and I must commend Tamura Ryohei's comic timing and exaggerated art for it. I did appreciate how Furuichi was ultimately handled though; he did remain my absolute favourite to the very end. I also liked the romantic resolution (rather, the lack of thereof) because it remained true to its characters.

The epilogue chapters don't add much to the story either; it's just more of the same - not that that was a problem with me. I was particularly happy with the chapter focused on Aoi, but apart from that, the rest were okayish.

Unfortunately, one of the many pitfalls the series encounters is at par for a cancelled series. The ending is rushed and much of the humour is sacrificed to get there, the ending itself is not really an ending at all and some characters remain underdeveloped (looking at you, Natsume).

I can actually forgive a lot of that because Beelzebub never promises a deep story and it gives you exactly what's on the tin. It has its problems but they never outweighed the good for me, so my enjoyment of this series remains at a solid 10.

In closing, I feel that Beelzebub should be taken at face value if one wants to enjoy it to it's fullest. I'm additionally glad that it was cancelled when it was, because it didn't overstay it's welcome (or maybe it did, but I digress). All in all, I look forward to what Tamura Ryohei comes up with next.

My issue with this series is that it could never truly decide if it wanted to be a comedy or a battle manga. Multiple times it felt like the author was about to ditch the main focus on comedy and settle for a battle manga as the world building for that kind of set up was quite good. However, the author always ended up taking it back to ridiculous comedy outcomes, which is fine when done properly. I feel as if this series could never really create a good balance between these two ideas and instead just awkwardly went left and right on the spectrum ... as opposed to creating a good balance between the two.

An example of a series that does this well would be Mob Psycho 100, and if you haven't read that then I highly recommend you check it out before bothering with this awkward/mediocre time sink.