The demon I've been fighting for a hundred years is actually my beloved darling!?

For a hundred years, humans and demons have hated each other and fought without end. At last, the Demon King and　the Hero come face to face, each intent on killing the other. But five years later, the two are enjoying a romantic getaway　on a tropical island!? What happened!? Where will their runaway romance lead?

The Demon King and the Hero's Elopement Vacation has story by and art by Baseu. English translation is done by lapin, Inc. Published by Kadokawa (September, 2026). Rated M.

Rebecca Silverman
Rating:

This is hardly the first manga, BL or otherwise, to ask the question, “What if the demon king and the hero were madly in love?” but it's a genre that's enough fun for that not to matter. In this iteration, Demon King and Hero stop their war to run away together to a small tropical island town, where they're known as Damon and Hiro and are beloved by the townsfolk. It all starts off very cute and fluffy, especially when Damon's former aide Blitz shows up and is aghast to walk in on the pair in flagrante delicto.

But this is not, as it turns out, the syrupy story it at first seems to be. Blitz's arrival is merely a harbinger of the fact that both Damon and Hiro are deliberately putting off some very difficult decisions, each for their own reasons. Hiro's situation may actually kill him – he's bound to the talking sword Al, and their contract stipulates that Hiro must kill the demon king or his own life will be drained by Al. Not that Al wants to do this, but it's how these things work…and Al has his own goals that require Hiro's energy, making things trickier. Each day that Hiro doesn't kill Damon is another one where his life runs down faster than in the usual way of things, and that could be a major problem.

Damon, on the other hand, has been alive for hundreds of years and is just tired. He's tired of being in charge, he's tired of hating humans, and he's tired of not allowing himself to be happy. While Blitz can't understand this even a little, Damon's exhaustion is leading him to take refuge in self-indulgence. There's a manic edge to his pursuit of happiness that's almost unsettling once you spot it. And I don't even want to think about what he'd do if he learned of Hiro's bargain with Al.

The result is a story that's a bit unbalanced. We're meant, from Hiro's stoic mien, to assume that Damon is more in love with him than the other way around, but I seriously doubt that that's actually the case. The performative aspect of their relationship feels like fanservice (in a couple of senses of the term), and that doesn't always work. That said, I certainly wasn't ever bored reading this, and I like details in the art like the way Damon hides his pointed ears when he's out and about and the fact that “demons” is a catch-all term for anyone not considered “human,” which opens the door to some hard conversations later on. Underneath the froth there's some real substance, and I'm curious to know if it can be developed.

Bolts
Rating:

Well, I can say with certainty that I originally didn't know which direction this story would go. The title is already odd, so I appreciate the first couple of pages fully establishing what the initial tone was going to be. What if the hero that was meant to take on the demon king secretly fell in love with him and the two just wanted a vacation off to the tropical islands while everyone else is wondering what the hell is going on? That is an amazing basis for an adult comedy, and a good chunk of these chapters really lean into that absurd tone. There's something really funny about seeing other people react to the two leads just being unapologetically flirtatious with each other. There are a few sex scenes between them that do establish that this love and sexual attraction are real, but even when things get titillating, there's this vague air of comedy that permeates throughout. Everyone is begging the hero and the demon lord to take things seriously, but all they want to do is make out all day.

I could read an entire phone book's worth of pages about these leads goofing off because it has so much comedic potential. Ironically, though, what makes me hesitant to continue the story is when it suddenly decides that there are some points where it needs to treat things seriously. Obviously, the hero and the demon lord suddenly going missing isn't going to make everybody happy since these two technically made promises to their respective races that they need to follow through on. While I thought that was going to aid with the comedy setup, it actually ends up becoming a serious source of conflict that technically isn't resolved after this first volume

This is where the comedic overtones get accompanied by a dark, sinister undertone, since it's clear that the hero and demon do have some kind of plan to address these things, but everything is kept so vague and unsettling, especially when it comes to the pasts of the two leads who might be hiding more from the audience than the story lets on. There are even major threats involved and a potentially cataclysmic fallout to their relationship that is definitively not treated as a joke. I think there are two types of stories that are being told here that are both equally interesting on their own. But by attempting to meld them together, what I'm left with is this uncomfortable hybrid. I love a lot of these dramatic and comedic scenes on their own in a vacuum, but the fact that the story keeps flipping back and forth between them gives me severe whiplash. By the fourth chapter, it does feel a little bit exhausting and disappointing because I don't know how far the story is going to be able to explore any of these interesting ideas when they're constantly at war with themselves. Overall, I do want to recommend this story because of the interesting ideas that it is playing with; I just wish it had better established its foundation before going all out with some of its ideas so early on.