The Great Jahy Will Not Be Defeated!

Episodes 6-7

One of the highlights of my week has been watching The Great Jahy Will Not Be Defeated!, not because it's particularly fresh or outstandingly animated, but because there's something about this show. I think it's because it wholeheartedly leans into the tropes that structure Jahy's reverse isekai life, adding this certain comedic pizazz to Jahy's antics. That's why I suppose episode 6, "The Great Jahy Doesn't Seem to Stand a Chance…” had me pretty hyped, and let me tell you, episode 6 and episode 7 deliver some good jokes.

We come to Jahy post-cold, and post-encounter with the Magical Girl. And let me tell you, everyone's favorite demoness is on edge at the mention of multiple “Maho-” jokes, ranging from talking about furniture (maho…ghany) to some students talking about an actual mahou girl. It's good table setting for Jahy's ongoing trials and tribulations against the world's most abnormally normal Magical Girl, which is what I want to briefly talk about in this rather meaty review.

We don't actually meet Jahy's Greatest Foe until we're well into episode 6, but when we do, she's far from what you'd expect. Instead of the blonde Magical Girl we met last week, we're faced with a pretty typical-looking teenager rocking a brown school uniform and a high ponytail. And oh yeah, she's incredibly unlucky, to the tune of falling down a water main, getting a potted plant dropped on her head...just a bevy of bad things. Turns out, the Magical Girl who took out the second strongest entity in the Dark Realm is kind of just a hella clumsy teenager who… is barely hanging in there most of the time, and it's comedic gold

I like this because a competent foe doesn't really suit Jahy, who is kind of a hot mess. She's especially a hot mess this episode when she gets rip-roaring drunk in a scene that's part-sweet, part-utterly relatable, and wholly Jahy. (Credit to the series just not sexualizing Jahy like it could have the morning after: I had one fear, and it didn't come true!)

And that's really what The Great Jahy is good at: it is at its funniest when Jahy's having a midlife crisis and the people in her life (like her enemy, the Magical Girl) are upending trope after trope. It excels when it leans into being a slice-of-life comedy and uses the fantasy elements of the reverse isekai situation to toy with Jahy trying to adult. At least, that's how it is for me, and how I imagine a lot of viewers probably feel. And like I said, this isn't new: there are loads of shows who have done parts of The Great Jahy just as well, if not better. But the execution is what ultimately matters at the end, and Jahy executes its comedy pretty dang well.

Thankfully, Episode 7, “The Great Jahy Doesn't Play!” is much the same, but instead of returning back to the intrepid heroine and her conquest against the magical girl, we get an exercise episode, a “Jahy can't sleep” episode, a “Jahy nearly fights a child” episode, and finally a “Jahy looks for more mana stones with a new friend” episode all rolled into one. I genuinely don't have much to say here other than like… Jahy is relatable: I, too, can't do push-ups, need silence at night, embarrass myself in front of kids, and also enjoy hunting for treasure with others. It's a kind of a messy, go-nowhere episode that's perfectly enjoyable, but definitely not “episode of the week” material, nor incredibly memorable.

To be sure, there is no shortage of gags in episode 7, but the popular saying “comedy is subjective” is especially applicable here because most of them are not necessarily bust-a-gut funny, at least to me. Outside of some scenes that were very relatable as someone who just turned 29 and would like to get some sleep (I'm talking about Jahy enduring noise so loud she turned into the “I didn't Get No Sleep Cuz of Ya'll” meme. Utterly. Relatable.), and some solid “training montage” and “let's find some treasure” BGM, I found this to be a somewhat average episode with a plot that I'm not too deeply invested in.

We also get the first earnest boob joke in the series this episode, and while it's played for some quick fan service, it's surprisingly not bad. It helps that Jahy is kind of weirded out too, which like… mood sis, didn't get the point of actual titillation in the cold open, but hey: you do you, The Great Jahy Will Not Be Defeated!. It's also over so quickly that it isn't worth harping on, really.

In the end, The Great Jahy Will Not Be Defeated! is still really, really funny and really, really great. The jokes work, as does the vivid and varied cast that makes up Jahy's quickly expanding world. I remain intensely invested in Jahy's desire to return the Dark Realm to its former glory, and hope that the series will keep up the good antics. And while these definitely don't offer as much plot progression as I'd hoped, they're still both perfectly fine episodes that are still solid entries into the series as a whole.

Shoutout to the two after-credit shorts this week: episode 6 features “The Great Jahy's Cooking 3-Minute Show”, and episode 7 features a follow-up scene to the beginning of the episode re: diets and weight gain. Admittedly, episode 6's was the stronger of the two, featuring Jahy making her special stir-fried bean sprouts with some impeccable comedic timing sprinkled in. Admittedly, I might have to whip these up next week, just for the Instragram, y'all.

TL;DR: The Great Jahy is exactly that: great, and if you're not watching, well… why not dive deep into the world of everyone's favorite demoness today? If you need some levity in the year of our lord, 2021, you honestly can't go wrong with this very fun and very funny reverse isekai about one demoness' attempts to survive and maybe even thrive on this beautiful blue marble of ours.

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The Great Jahy Will Not Be Defeated! is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.

Mercedez is a JP-EN localization editor & proofreader/QA, pop culture critic, and a journalist who also writes for Anime Feminist, where she's a staff editor, and But Why Tho?. She's also a frequent guest on the AniFem Podcast, Chatty AF. When she's not writing, you can find her on her Twitter or on her Instagram where she's always up to something.