Welcome to Demon School, Iruma-kun! may be an isekai anime, but this Fall 2022 anime actually has more in common with other “super school” anime titles like My Hero Academia or Kakegurui. Iruma Suzuki is remarkably similar to Izuku Midoriya, both being underdog boys who gained supernatural powers to survive in a school where everyone else has superhuman gifts.
On a more personal level, Iruma can be compared to Food Wars’ protagonist, the cheerful student chef Soma Yukihira. Soma doesn’t have magical powers, but he does attend a special school where he works his way from the bottom up, just like Iruma. Most of all, Iruma and Soma are relatively static characters who change everyone around them rather than change themselves while pursuing a goal.
How Iruma & Soma Invented Their Own Success at School
Iruma Suzuki and Soma Yukihira have many broad similarities in their respective journeys as school anime heroes. Soma may not be an isekai character, but he still visited a whole new world when he got enrolled at the elite Totsuki culinary academy — his version of getting isekai’d to the demonic Netherworld and Babyls. Iruma and Soma were both thrown into the deep end, figuring things out as they went while getting used to their bizarre new schools. Soma was surrounded by dozens of skilled chefs his age for the first time, and the kind Iruma is an otherworlder and the only human student at Babyls. To survive, both young men must get creative and figure out their own strategies for success on the fly.
Soma and Iruma have open-ended, resourceful mindsets, meaning they aren’t dedicated to just one fighting style or way of thinking. Babyls students like Andro Jazz and Elizabetta X have their own bloodline traits, and most Totsuki chefs specialize in just one cooking style, such as Italian food or smoked meats. This makes Soma and Iruma unpredictable in their respective stories, using anything they can find and allying with anyone to find success. Iruma keeps experimenting with the possibilities of his Ring of Gluttony, for example, and he figured out personal reasons for making his own bow and arrow under Bachiko’s tutelage. Similarly, Soma is an “anything goes” chef who will gladly absorb new ideas and make creative use of them to surprise his fellow chefs and the judges time and again. The only constant is that Soma always cooks for love — a lesson he learned from his parents.
Iruma & Soma as Inspiring Static Characters in Anime
Another important parallel between Iruma Suzuki and Soma Yukihira is that they change very little as students at special schools. Most fictional protagonists are dynamic and evolve during a story, such as gaining emotional maturity, boosting their confidence or changing their entire worldview. My Hero Academia’s Izuku has been reshaped by the people and experiences around him, but Iruma and Soma have not. Instead, they are rare examples of a static character done right. Static characters might make new friends and gain new skills, but on the inside, they don’t change. Instead, they change the people around them.
Soma inspired his classmates with his creative, optimistic and friendly cooking style, which helped Totsuki’s students fight back against Azami Nakiri’s tyranny and win. Soma inspired the dandere Megumi Tadokoro to stand up for herself, and he even influenced the lofty himedere Erina Nakiri. By the story’s end, Erina was much more like Soma than she’d care to admit. Similarly, Iruma has been a positive influence on all his classmates at Babyls. They are demons, meaning they are naturally aggressive, impulsive and chaotic, such as the troublemaker Valac Clara and the thuggish Sabnock Sabro, or even the lofty himedere Azazel Ameri.
At first, they were almost unpleasant to be around, but Iruma “tamed” them with his stable, kind human personality. By now, it’s not Iruma who changed but instead Clara, Sabnock and the other abnormal class members — all changes for the better. Stories are about change, so if the protagonist won’t do it, their friends and associates will instead, and Soma and Iruma both get the job done at their respective schools. That’s a new kind of strength; the ability to inspire and reshape a person just by being there and setting a good example. The students of Totsuki and Babyls underestimated these underdog heroes, but now they know better, and so do viewers.
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