Anos Voldigoad ended wars between humans, spirits, demons and gods, then let himself be killed so the peace would hold. Two thousand years later he comes back to find that peace worked too well. His descendants are weak, their magic has gone soft, and the academy built to find his reincarnation refuses to believe he is standing in front of it. The Misfit of Demon King Academy turns that joke into 37 episodes across two seasons, and it earns almost every one of them.
The series aired on AT-X, Gunma TV, Tokyo MX, BS11 and Tochigi TV. It ran from July 4, 2020 to July 25, 2024. Silver Link produced the adaptation from Shu’s light novels, illustrated by Yoshinori Shizuma.
Trailer, via Aniplex USA.
A Demon King Who Wants a Quiet Life
The premise is a reversal the show takes seriously. Anos was the tyrant who wiped out humans, spirits and gods, but the source of his boredom was eternal war, not bloodlust. He reincarnates wanting peace. What he gets is a rigid society of royal demons ruling over hybrids, a false demon king named Avos Dilhevia wearing his name, and a population that has forgotten the real one ever existed.
That is a lot of machinery for a school story, and the show knows it. Anos enters the Demon King Academy, which gathers and educates anyone seen as his reincarnation. The academy cannot see through his power. It brands him a misfit instead. The title is not a metaphor for anything. It is an administrative error, and the whole first season runs on the gap between what Anos is and what the school’s records say he is.
Misha, Sasha, and the Necron Twins
The emotional spine of the series is the Necron twins, and it holds up better than the power scaling does. Misha Necron meets Anos on the day of the entrance exam and becomes his friend. She is the younger twin, a descendant of Ivis Necron, but not a pureblood like her sister. Tomori Kusunoki voices her. Sasha Necron is the elder twin, the original descendant of Ivis Necron, one of the seven Elder Demon Emperors, and carries the title Witch of Destruction because of her Demon Eyes of Destruction. Yuko Natsuyoshi voices her.
The show gives both sisters a reason to love Anos that is not just his strength. He saves Misha and destroys her fate. He saves Misha again, in effect, and that is what turns Sasha. She is a tsundere about it, and the series plays her flustered reactions for comedy whenever Anos gets close or compliments her eyes. It is a well-worn bit. It also gives the twins something to do besides stand behind the protagonist.
Lay Glanzudlii and the Old Promise
Lay Glanzudlii arrives as a transfer student and a member of the Generation of Chaos. He is the reincarnation of Hero Kanon, the human hero who made the deal with Anos two thousand years earlier. Takuma Terashima voices him. The reveal reframes the entire backstory: the sacrifice that created peace was a bargain between two people, not a victory.
Lay’s arc is the cleanest argument the show makes for itself. He is happy, in this lifetime, that he can finally be friends with Anos the way they promised. That is a small, human payoff sitting inside a story about gods and demon emperors. The Misfit of Demon King Academy is at its best when it remembers that the promise mattered more than the war.
The Cast Behind the Voices
The Japanese cast is deep, and the series leans on it.
- Yuuichirou Umehara as Anos Voldigoad (season 2; Tatsuhisa Suzuki voiced the role in season 1)
- Tomori Kusunoki as Misha Necron
- Yuko Natsuyoshi as Sasha Necron
- Takuma Terashima as Lay Glanzudlii
- Nene Hieda as Misa Ilioroagu
- Sayumi Watabe as Eleonore Bianca
- Misaki Kuno as Zeshia Bianca
- Wataru Hatano as Shin Reglia
- Kana Asumi as Great Spirit Leno
- Rikiya Koyama as Erdomaid Dittijohn
Aleks Le voices Anos in English. Brianna Knickerbocker voices Misha, Kayli Mills voices Sasha, and Griffin Puatu voices Lay.
Where the Two Seasons Stand
The first season ran from July to September 2020. The second ran from January 2023 to July 2024. That is a long gap, and it shows in the second season’s structure. The story has more ground to cover, more factions to track, and less patience for the small character beats that made the first run work.
The source material kept moving underneath the anime. Shu began the series as a web novel on Shōsetsuka ni Narō in April 2017. ASCII Media Works acquired it and published it from March 2018 to August 2025. Kayaharuka’s manga adaptation ran online from July 2018 to July 2021 and ended when the author died. The anime is one branch of a larger thing, and it carries the shape of a story that was still being written while it aired.
Why the Misfit Joke Still Lands
Anos is absurdly powerful and extremely intelligent, and the show never pretends otherwise. There is no training arc, no rival who can touch him, no fight he might lose. The tension comes from something else: a society that has organized itself around a lie, and a king who has to decide how much of it to tear down.
That is a sharper hook than the genre usually offers. The Misfit of Demon King Academy is not asking whether Anos can win. It is asking what happens when the strongest person in the room is also the most reasonable one, and everyone around him has built a hierarchy on top of his name without his permission.
The royal demons ruling over hybrids is the clearest version of this. Anos values his subordinates and friends, and the society that worships his bloodline has turned that bloodline into a caste system. He did not ask for it. He does not want it. The show is smart enough to make his kindness a form of pressure rather than a personality trait.
Where it stumbles is in the middle of the second season, when the plotting gets dense enough that individual episodes blur. Avos Dilhevia is a good idea for a villain, a false king wearing a real name, but the show spends so long untangling the mystery that it forgets to keep the twins and Lay in the frame. The comedic family scenes with Anos’s parents, which give the first season its warmth, thin out too.
What the Series Gets Right
The Misfit of Demon King Academy is a power fantasy that bothers to have a thesis. Anos is not interesting because he is unbeatable. He is interesting because he wanted peace, got it, and came back to find that peace had made everyone small. The Necron twins and Lay Glanzudlii give that idea a face.
The second season’s sprawl costs it some of the first season’s charm. The core holds anyway, because the show never loses sight of the bargain at the center of it: one king traded his life for a quiet world, and the quiet world got the wrong idea about what he wanted. That is worth 37 episodes.
KEY FACTS
- Score: 8.4/10
- Seasons: 2
- Episodes: 37
- First aired: July 4, 2020
- Last aired: July 25, 2024
- Network: AT-X, Gunma TV, Tokyo MX, BS11, Tochigi TV
- Genres: Animation, Action & Adventure, Sci-Fi & Fantasy
- Source: light novels by Shu, illustrated by Yoshinori Shizuma
- Studio: Silver Link
- TMDB audience score: 8.4/10 (877 votes)
8.4 of 10.
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