It’s been fifteen years since Akira Ono, a man whose eyes are always pixelated, created Infinity Game, his vintage MMORPG passion project, and put it out for the world to enjoy. Back in the early 2000s, it took the video game scene by storm. His anonymous NEET friend told him to share a little when he became a millionaire, but ultimately, Akira’s resistance to collaborating with any videogame company (and thus losing full creative control) eventually meant he couldn’t monetize his success. The friend still calls him to report that the cows are not working properly in this or that game, because Akira is just your standard programmer now, working for one of those giants he wouldn’t sell his game to. Infinity Game is not doing great lately. Its fanbase has been dwindling, and alas, everything ends tonight. Last walkabout, last game, and then the whole thing will be erased. As Akira monologues to the final boss on the screen—a tough-looking guy in a suit dubbed “Demon Lord”—the unthinkable happens. I’m kidding, of course: he wakes up inside the world of the game, as one would expect. With one punch, he saves a tomboyish girl, a pariah in her village, from the monster chasing her. More girls loom on the horizon. Business as usual.

Back in 2019, our writer Stardf29 reviewed the first season of Demon Lord, Retry here. I’m happy to report that, since that time, this light novel adaptation has fixed one of its main issues: the art now looks noticeably better. Our Demon Lord doesn’t have an impossibly long jaw anymore, and the visuals do the job. The opening and ending sequences are good, with a few striking images here and there. Sadly, though, its other problem still stands. The story feels dubious, going back and forth, and oddly downplaying itself. Our protagonist goes with the flow, somewhat apologizing for the silliness of it all, like a Marvel character of the post-Endgame era. This show has potentially powerful themes: the tragedy of a creator closing up his world, the fight between an artistic vision and the need to make a living, the adult salaryman lost in the fantasy he lovingly crafted as a teen, the pariah who gets treated like a human being. But the execution is fumbled and absent-minded, generic to a fault, with details that actively alienate us from what we are seeing. No eyes, jokes in the serious moments, fights that are over as soon as they have started, the redhead going to the wrong hot spring—oh man, the list goes on. There might be some potential and uniqueness buried under the surface of this uber-generic isekai, but if so, this Demon Lord needs yet another retry to unearth it.

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Demon Lord Retry! R can be streamed on Crunchyroll.