悪魔とドルチェ 第1巻

A funny shoujo romance with a great premise that unfortunately goes nowhere

悪魔とドルチェ is a shoujo manga about a high school girl named Mayuri Oguma who has two passions in life: baking delicious pastries, and summoning demons from hell to do chores around the house for her in exchange for said pastries. The author, 鈴木ジュリエッタ, is famous for her long-running manga (and later anime) 神様はじめました.

This is a 花とゆめ comic, so it has full furigana except for the handwritten parts — some dialogue asides, the author side-bars, and the afterword are all handwritten, so nothing essential. The vocabulary is typical and the demons don't talk much differently than the regular characters do — the worst I can say of it is that sometimes I had difficulty figuring out who was talking, and had to reread sentences because of it. I'd say it's right on par with other shoujo manga around this level, so if you can read something like Sailor Moon you won't struggle with this.

I enjoyed the story well enough, though not quite as much as I liked 神様はじめました. It's a typical romantic comedy, and there's no adult content whatsoever (no kissing, even). The protagonists are likable enough, but I feel like the pacing is a little too quick — the relationships progress too quickly, and the chapters feel disconnected from each other. The art isn't terrible — the boys, naturally, are very cute — but Mayuri is drawn very homely and I can't tell if it's on purpose or if the mangaka was still developing her style.

In any case, I can't give this manga a strong recommendation, if only for the reason there's just two volumes and it's been discontinued so there won't be any more of it. I suppose if you're really entertained by the premise and loved 神様はじめました, you might want to give it a shot, but only if you can find it cheaply and easily.