My Damon is the latest animated series from Netflix. Despite being set in a near future, post-apocalyptic version of Japan, it’s a Thai studio that brought us this, Igloo Studios.
My Daemon takes place in a near-future world in which Earth and Hell have collided due to a nuclear explosion. A kid named Kento finds a little daemon named Anna in this dystopian society, and he raises her to be his friend and partner. After that, the two set off on a quest to retrieve Kento’s mother.
My Daemon’s ending beautifully wraps up Anna and Kento’s journey and offers a peaceful end to the war between humans and daemons. However, it leaves room for theory, subtly creating the prospect of a My Daemon Season 2.
Plot
The concept here is a fairly simple one. It’s an adventure story with an often-seen child-befriends creature motif like ET, Lilo, and Stitch. It’s a kind of gist with a demonic flavor.
As in this version of Japan, a nuclear explosion caused the planet Earth and hell to cross paths, and that created a spillover of Daemons into our world. There are loads of different kinds of daemons with different abilities, and what we get is essentially Pokémon, where everything is a dark type.
The Daemons are extremely frowned upon by society, including by the generic religious nut who spouts the Daemons are sinful beasts.
But our hero, a young boy named Kento befriends a Daemon named Anna who can store things inside of her. A cool catch is that the things she stores remain in the state from when they were stored.
Kento’s mother is killed, so she gets stored away, and from there on out we go on a journey across Japan to find a very convenient time reversal Daemon to save the mother.
We even have a big evil corporation that gets in the way. This is The Daemon User Association, and they see value in Anna and want to capture her, dead or alive. This is announced by the chairman of the association, who had a character entrance so by the book that it was hilarious.
Season 2 Release Date
As of this writing, My Daemon has not been renewed by Netflix for a second season. But Netflix is always adding new anime series to its collection, and My Daemon is obviously a series meant to last for more than one season. The plot may go in a lot of different ways if people are into it, expanding the world, adding to the stories, and delving deeper into the interaction between humans and daemons.
If I had to predict a release date, then creating a script, animating it, and doing the dubbing and marketing for the show would at least take one year. Considering My Daemon gets renewed for a second season, I think My Daemon Season 2 might be released somewhere at the end of 2024 or mid-2025.
But My Daemon’s story has been expertly wrapped up to allow all of the plotlines to come to a satisfactory end. As a result, it doesn’t seem likely that the series will get a sequel. On the other hand, imagining a sequel where hundreds of years have gone and humanity once more turns to ruthlessly eliminating daemons is a very interesting idea.
In addition to dealing with the current threat, this hero would work to change the system and serve as a link between human beings and daemons. There is still hope for a far-off future sequel, although given My Daemon’s flawless ending, the possibilities for a straight sequel seem limited.
Review
There we have the story; now it’s time to talk about some good things and some bad things. Because, on balance, I thought the show was just an OK watch, not much that properly stuck with me while watching it or after I concluded.
This is possible because it’s got quite a lot of elements that I’ve seen many times in other forms of media. The kid loses a loved one and tries to get them back. The child befriends a creature that adult characters see as a monster, and journeys across a post-apocalyptic wasteland.
The ingredients here are ones I’ve savored often and yet it didn’t feel like My Daemon’s twist on those influences pushed the boundaries except for itself. There’s a formula here that some may very well enjoy and get caught in the whirlwind of adventure. But I’m sad to report that I didn’t get that same sense of wonder.
I kind of think that the premise here could have worked better as a game rather than a series. For the most part, it’s Kento and Anna moving through the wasteland, meeting some people. There’s some fighting, moving on, meeting more people, more fighting, moving on, battling across a wasteland trying to survive against humans and demons alike, with some platforming sections upgrading. There could have been some good potential to work in the gaming medium.
The Cons On My Daemon
The animation was decent in the action segments we received. But I felt like a lot of the series involved these big fight set pieces to a point where they became commonplace and less interesting with each new conflict. And I fully get that, it is an action fantasy series with the world populated by Lords of demonic creatures and nasty humans. If the overall story is Kento getting from A to B, then the options of what to do between A and B in this world are prone to limitations.
As such, I found the repetition in the story where each new location and battle felt like a reskin of something I’d already seen earlier in the series. If this show’s concept was preferred to be done with cinematic storytelling, I’m not sure if 13-20 to 30-minute episodes were the best format here.
If anything, I actually think My Daemon would have worked as an hour and 45-minute film. That could very well have done 45 minutes and cut some of the meat out of the middle that I initially enjoyed the taste of but grew tired of by around Episode 5.
I’m going to cite Nimona as a reference point. That was a Netflix animated movie from earlier this year with a big world involving the theme of monsters and how they are viewed by certain pockets of society, plus some action and an overall adventure. That was around the hour-45 mark, and I think it fits perfectly.
If Nimona had the same structure as My Daemon with 20 to 30-minute episodes, I don’t think Nimona would have been as effective as it was. So I do believe that some condensing could have made a big difference with My Daemon, concentrating it for a stronger.
The Pros On My Daemon
However, despite my reservations about the shore, there were quite a few things I did like. The designs of the Daemons, for the most part, I think were slick.
I appreciated how there were lots of different kinds of Daemons with different purposes and uses rather than everything being the same, every Daemon being identical, or Anna being the one and only Daemon.
Final Thoughts
My Daemon was rather a mixed bag for me. The problems I found, and didn’t ruin it for me because those were problems mostly derived from a sense of awareness rather than anything that directly spoiled the rather than being told.
It was a good concept for sure, but for me, it was the abundance of familiarities within the show itself that knocked some points off with that move a bit, meet people, fight something, move a bit, meet people, fights something format. Making the experience wombat didn’t sweep me up.
Luckily, some quite thoughtful morality tales and their lovable main character kept my attention as well as their quirky animation style and some unique design aspects of the world.
I still think that the pacing of the plot direction was things that could have benefited from a different medium than a full series to tell its tale. But for what it was on the surface, I think My Deamon was a decent watch that perhaps teen audiences would enjoy more than any other market share.
