In a world where Demi-humans are steadily becoming included in Japanese society, high school biology teacher Tetsuo Takahashi ends up teaching three ‘Demi-chans’ and working with a Demi teacher, and takes the opportunity to interview them to learn more about them and their unique situations.
Based on the Manga of the same name by Petos and animated by A-1 Pictures, Interviews with Monster Girls could easily be dismissed as another supernatural harem story at first glance, but the series is actually a slice of life comedy and doesn’t devolve into such shenanigans, as Takahashi gets to know precocious vampire Hikari Takanashi, dullahan Kyoko Machi, snow woman Yuki Kusakabe and maths teacher and succubus Sakie Sato and unravels the legends around each of their kind through their discussions and his own research and how they relate to their struggles in everyday life in dealing with their unique situations.
For what could fairly easily be a flimsy premise, Interviews with Monster Girls has a lot of heart – Takahashi genuinely cares about his Demi students and wants to help them with their problems at school and home and discover what makes them unique in a fairly clear allegory for any kind of ‘otherness’ in Japanese society. Succubus teacher Sakie embodies this more than any other character in the show – as a succubus her natural aphrodisiac effect can cause chaos, so she lives far away from town, on her own, catching the first and last trains and dresses deliberately in a formless tracksuit and avoids physical contact so as not to draw attention to herself and cause problems. The Japanese saying “The nail that sticks out gets hammered down” comes to mind a lot with this series, and the show addresses this attitude in a fantasy-tinged setting quite well.
Interviews with Monster Girls is a cute and charming series with a lot of heart with fun characters and a good sprinkling of drama throughout, and also tosses in a bit of will-they-won’t-they between Takahashi and Sakie for an awkward romantic sub-plot which is quite amusing given her nature and his poker face so as to not make her uncomfortable. It’s a fun show with a fun cast that is well worth a look.
A review copy was provided by Madman Entertainment to the author for the purpose of this review.
