Beelzebub was perhaps the one show I regarded as a safe bet prior to the start of the season since the manga is one of the stronger WSJ titles (not that impressive of a feat, let’s be honest). This is a show that got just about everything wrong. Its biggest sin is clearly failure to stick to the source material. How difficult can that be? The story is already there dammit! Instead, we get inferior and incoherent changes to the story, some truly retarded filler scenes in front of the school food stall (the bread and the milk scenes…), and never mind in the first minutes we already have the electric shock joke and the pee joke.
There are other problems. Sub-par art (crying Baby B’el’s pacifier looks like a clown nose, why?), poor casting (Baby B’el sounds bad, a problem when he “speaks” all the time) and poor pacing. Hilda’s introduction to the family was probably the best scene but only because it was played completely straight. Problem though, Oga slept for three days before that and Hilda and Baby B’el were presumably already staying in his house for that period of time. Like I said, incoherent.
This attempt at adaptation is like aiming for the moon with the rocket in Jules Vernes’ novel, and already off by a mile before exiting the atmosphere. Disappointing and heartbreaking. Just go read the manga and forget about this mess.
