The following contains spoilers for Season 3, Episode 8 of Welcome to Demon School, Iruma-kun!, “Can We Make 100 Friends?/The Students I’m Proud Of,” now streaming on Crunchyroll.
Welcome to Demon School, Iruma-kun! is a comedy isekai anime starring the kind Iruma Suzuki, a blue-haired boy who found himself in the demonic Netherworld one fateful day. By now, in Season 3, Iruma has established himself as the Netherworld’s most unlikely but famous hero, so now it’s time for other Babyls students to get in the spotlight.
The Fall 2022 anime season has been generous with glow-ups among the Royal One students, and Episode 8 gives Garp Goemon his turn. Garp isn’t just Iruma-kun!’s token swordsman — he is actually a good-hearted demon boy who borrows more than a few ideas from Iruma’s own playbook.
How Garp Goemon Became Everyone’s Best Friend
The Harvest Festival is a fiercely competitive and challenging event, testing Babyls’ students like never before. Many demon students have already failed, usually by overexerting themselves or taking the challenge too lightly, but there are exceptions. While Jazz and Allocer use trickery to steal ingredients and Elizabetta X seduces her way to a high score, the abnormal class’ second-most wholesome student, Garp Goemon, shines in his own special way. Demons are prone to competing or backstabbing one another as Netherworld natives, such as Kiriwo or Sabnock Sabro, meaning demons make relatively few friends. However, the power of friendship is real for Garp Goemon.
Garp is a total deredere, similar to Iruma himself, and most demons think that’s foolish and naive of him. No one can become the demon king or make it big by being nice and selfless, or so the Babyls students think. Episode 8 shows Garp embracing the power of friendship in full, all out of genuine, honest compassion. That’s just his nature, although previous Iruma-kun! episodes only hinted at this. Now Garp is proving it for all to see, and even the exasperated tsundere Agares Picaro can’t deny the appeal of Garp’s wholesome ways. Like Iruma, Garp has an ENFJ personality type, meaning he has a personal code of honor and spends time thinking up new ways to help people and inspire them. Garp easily could have been the protagonist of his own side story, and he’s got the guts to back it up.
Garp ends up inviting over a dozen more demon students into Agares’ castle, and the teachers, who watch remotely, are impressed. It’s crowded in the castle, but everyone is getting along and there may be strength in numbers. That, combined with Agares’ castle walls, makes the Garp/Agares team safer and more secure than ever — and they didn’t get that way with lies and tricks.
How Garp Goemon Embodies Netherworld Social Norms
Garp’s outstanding personality suggests that the Netherworld’s society is more nuanced than one might expect. This may be the demon underworld, populated with horned and fanged humanoids, but it’s not exactly Hell. It’s mostly the first-year Babyls students who try too hard to act tough and prove themselves, such as Sabnock Sabro and even Asmodeus Alice. Over time, these students learn the value of friendship, patience and honesty, and it pays off for characters like Garp, Alice, the himedere Azazel Ameri and even Elizabetta X. Babyls is a place where young demons learn how to be responsible adults, and that means shedding childish recklessness and pride in favor of humility and selfless strength.
Thus, the Netherworld’s society is defined not by demon-style aggression but by human-style virtues, many of which Garp embodies. So far in the Harvest Festival, recklessness and aggression rarely pay off. Instead, the Royal One classroom’s students succeed when they patiently train to learn new techniques, embrace the power of friendship and think ahead. Iruma did just that with his emphasis on survival, and Garp does the same with friendship. These two boys already know what it means to be a grown-up demon, meaning they’re ahead of the pack. Now it’s up to Agares, Lead and the others to follow their example and grow up as demons.
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