Mage & Demon Queen | |
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![]() Malori "Mal" Crowett and Queen "Vel" Velverosa in an image appended to end of the webtoon's first issue in August 2018 | |
Author(s) | Kuru (Color_LES) |
Website | WEBTOON |
Current status/schedule | Ended |
Launch date | August 20, 2018 |
End date | November 1, 2023 [1] |
Publisher(s) | WEBTOON |
Genre(s) | Fantasy, comedy, yuri [2] |
Rating(s) | 9.78 Stars on WEBTOON |
Mage & Demon Queen is a fantasy-comedy yuri webtoon created by Filipino artist Kuru (Color_LES). [3] The series follows an adventurer mage, Malori, as she attempts to seduce the Demon Queen Velverosa of her RPG fantasy world. It began publishing weekly on WEBTOON in August 2018. [4] The eleventh-most popular comic on the WEBTOON platform; as of January 2020 it had 86 million views, [5] and as of December 2020 WEBTOON reported that it had 2.1 million subscribers. [6] In November 2019, WEBTOON released an official Spanish and French language version of the series. [7] The webcomic updates weekly on Webtoon, [5] and readers with the "Webtoon Fast Pass" can access pages earlier. By June 2021, 154 episodes had been published across three separate "seasons". [8]
In September 2019, characters from Mage & Demon Queen made an appearance in the ninth episode of WEBTOON promotional animated web series Let's Play, made to promote the Webtoon of the same name and the platform as a whole. This series marked WEBTOON's first foray into animation. [9] [8] [10] [11] In May 2020, Geek Tyrant expressed interest in a potential anime adaptation. [12]
Mage & Demon Queen is set in a fantasy world operating by the rules of role-playing games, where teams of human adventurers seek to challenge the Demon Tower, and whoever can ascend to the top floor and defeat and kill the Demon Queen Velverosa will gain fame and fortune and a rich reward from the kingdom, with near-unlimited retry opportunities thanks to resurrection magic. A particular thorn in the Demon Queen's side is Malori, a particularly powerful young mage that has repeatedly reached the top at the expense of her best friend Cerik, not to kill her, but to win her hand in marriage. [4] [6]
Plots in season two of the webtoon include the backstory of Velverosa and the King, Cerik being revealed as the original hero summoned to kill the Demon Queen, Princess Leora Siegwald seeking to seduce Malori and summon a second hero, and Malori being identified as a Demon Charmer and deciding to pledge allegiance to the Demon Army to end the war between the two. Plots in season three of the webtoon involve the return of Malori's mentor Cecillia and Velverosa's estranged fiancé Sepheron. [13]
The following characters are central to plot lines in the comic and make regular appearances:
The characters in Mage & Demon Queen are each defined by plays on various role-playing game stock character archetypes. According to columnist Avery Kaplan, "Queen Vel bears a striking resemblance [to Camilla from Fire Emblem , with] the world bear[ing] many striking mechanical similarities to the conventions of RPGs in general." [19] [4]
In an interview with Okazu , Kuru lists some of the sources that she uses for the Mage & Demon Queen series. [2] They include Hayate × Blade by Shizuru Hayashiya, Tamen de Gushi by Tan Jiu, Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid by Coolkyousinnjya, Tales of by Yoshiharu Gotanda, and Fate/Grand Order by Yosuke Shiokawa and Yoshiki Kanou. Other influences are Disgaea by Nippon Ichi, Ragnarok by Thomas F. Boyd and Rob Vawter, Kannazuki no Miko by Kaishaku, and Strawberry Panic! by Sakurako Kimino.
In 2020, WEBTOON announced that Mage & Demon Queen had been viewed over 86 million times, making it one of the top-30 most viewed webtoons on the platform. [5] [20] As of May 2020, Mage & Demon Queen is the eleventh-most popular webtoon on the platform, with over 2.1 million subscribers. [6]
In an article for the Polish publication Polter, columnist Szymon Brycki recommended the webtoon, saying: "I must admit that I am pleased with the [characte]r creation. These characters don't just consist of a desire to seduce or run away from another person, [but] their psyche and behavior are justified by their story and life events that we learn gradually as the plot progresses. Their relationship with each other is also changing", additionally praising "[t]he line style [a]s very cartoonish, the colors [for being] in the right shades, [with] the shading also leav[ing] nothing to be desired", before concluding that "what you can enjoy most about this webcomic is not the promise of a lesbian romance or beautiful drawings, but the humor present in each episode — [that] the comedic potential of Mage and Demon Queen is the greatest advantage of this work." [21] The Beat praised Mage & Demon Queen for "combin[ing] multiple genre frameworks to create a queer comic that feels familiar but fresh", and for having "[s]elf-awareness about its foundations [to] give [the series] the chance to deliver on the validation of its central queer romance – and that's something worth coming back for at least a dozen times", [19] with Avery Kaplan specifically in particular praising its "AU stories about the characters by Melathia the Lamia [for] allowing irresistible fan service as well as a fascinating perspective on the role of fan fiction." [22] [23] CBR reviewer Samantha Puc described the series' "characters a[s] interesting, the plot utterly original", also praising "the art [as] so perfectly detailed it's impossible not to get sucked in right from the jump." [14] A reviewer for The Geekiary praised the "attention to detail in the panels [as well as] the coloring", in addition to the "comedy, especially among the various demons, [of the] light-hearted romance with a heavy dose of adventure." [15] Wendy Lian Martin of Castle Swimmer described the series as "really good" comparatively with other webtoon series including Novae and Lalin's Curse. [24] while Makma referred to it "[as the] perfect blend of comedy and romance [against] a video game backdrop." [25] Additionally, Catherine Zaw of Geek Gals said that the comic is a "fresh unique twist on RPG game-based stories," which will draw in readers. [26]
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