Mistress Kanan is Devilishly Easy – Episode 1

Content Warning: Fan service 

What’s it about? The Gourmet Devil, Kanan, has come to earth for one thing and one thing only: to devour a buffet of youth! So when she targets Youji Kyougi, she expects to start her smorgasbord of soul off right…that is, until she discovers he’s now her boyfriend!

We open on a neon pink view of Tama Municipal High School, cast in an eerie light by a bewitching devil in the form of a teenage girl. Over a thousand years old, Kanan has come to the human realm to devour souls. So when Youji Kyougi, a first year student, encounters her after school and stops being subject to her charms, the daughter of Beelkzabub and the famed Gourmet Devil is kind of stumped.

Why? Well, months ago when she left hell and its glutinous buffets, bunny-suit wearing servants, and skintight cat suits, Kanan expected to find the souls of humans more delicious than anything else, especially since her father made the same devilish trip himself. Upon installing herself at a human high school, Kanan quickly became the cream of the crop, allowing her to turn a typical urban high school into her own all-you-can-reap buffet.

Only back in the present, after failing to net Youji, she finds herself with a completely unexpected problem: he misunderstood her describing peeling his skin off with…well, oral sex, kicking off an oddball pairing as Youji eagerly pursues Kanan and she tries to fend of catching feelings so she can enjoy harvesting her human product.

Okay, so first things first: Kanan is a thousand years old but looks like a sixteen year old and it’s weird and it’s okay to admit that it’s weird especially because this anime starts off with a lot of horny energy, and I’m not talking about the fact that Kanan’s twintails are secretly her horns. Naturally, it only ramps up when Youji immediately declares them as girlfriend and boyfriend and eagerly pursues their dynamic.

I’m not saying this is bad, but I am saying it made me feel suddenly exhausted because I just don’t get why this couldn’t have been two adults and not two high schoolers. In fact, I think the “sexy” nature of the Kanan’s approach versus Youji’s incredibly disarming eagerness to have sex (he wants to go to third base immediately) would have been genuinely enjoyable if say, Kanan, a thousand year old devil with a bust size to rival Ilulu’s from Maid Dragon, were like… in her thirties and Youji the same. Or like, at least if they were in college. Having this set in high school just feels really uncomfortable because its focus on not just teenage sexuality but on fan service, even if there’s aspects of the plot that I kind of could see myself liking.

And I say this as someone who likes series that do play with this dynamic. I mean, hell, I love Kakegurui and a lot of the time, it’s innuendo and kink power play. But I feel like it’s more intentional with its usage and more clever: here Mistress Kanan just feels rote, featuring a devil who uses sex as the way she controls others only to be a virgin and “comedically” shy and a boy who’s horned up and ready to go but has a personality as dry as bluegrass in a Texas summer. I know there’s a market here—there has to be for this to be made—but I suspect I’m not ever going to be it.

I felt largely annoyed by Kanan: she’s constantly screeching in a way that does a disservice to what could be an actually interesting dynamic if a bit more well-written. It’s currently being localized by Seven Seas which, yeah, that makes sense. And while I doubt this story progresses too much beyond its immediate beginnings, at twelve volumes and counting, Mistress Kanan has plenty of material to adapt and ultimately, adjust since the manga is ongoing.

That said, don’t expect this to get a second season. (I’ll eat my Sketchers if it does.) This is the kind of one season, twelve-episode anime destined to fall to the wayside because its joke is so uninteresting after the first few times that you just kind of spent the premiere mildly checked out. That’s not to say that I hated this: in fact, it’s the opposite. I just felt so deeply uninterested that I’d rather have hated Mistress Kanan than anything else. 
Still, I’m glad for whoever is a fan: it’s always nice to see a series you like get adapted to the digital screen. Just…don’t expected me to suddenly biome a Mistress Kanan stan anytime soon.