The Demon Prince goes to the Academy

School arc is the best part and it’s pretty great.

(SPOILER)

Love how he got a bunch of wives in the end

Ugh, I'm tired but I'll still write this review to the best of my abilities. I want to get this out there, but I may be biased to this novel due to how much I loved it at first sight. I still hold this dear to my heart. It was also one of the first novels I read. I'll cover pretty much the important parts without spoiling the actual events. Well... I'll do my best I guess. 

I've read this for a while now, when the translator was still solo-carrying us on his back while it had around 200 translated chapters (I think it was 150 or less, but I've forgotten). I'll break it into action, world-building and romance/harem so it has some structure and is easier digestible. This is going to be long, but well... I like being thorough; superficiality is for the weak. 

In short, the first 430~ chapters are pure gold. The action is good; Character development is good; Romance is good; Story is good; Pacing is good; Writing is good; Everything is simply great. And here is where things go wrong. After 430~ the author simply chooses to discard his strongest card, the academy trope and forego to a worse one. From 430~ until around 700, everything has gone down in quality. From amazing -> decent/good. This is also what a lot of people talk about, the abysmal fall-off. Still, the chapters are not garbage, but certainly worse. Its like being served the Gods nectar and then going to Big Macs, our palette is already spoiled, there is no way for us to go back to mortal food. This is also why recommending this novel can be difficult to some. You are given the greatest gift before descending the fiery pits of earth and meeting the rest of us there. I could be overreacting though, who knows? Find out yourself.

I just want to mention that most things written below are regarding chapters 0->430. The negatives are already mentioned above, and you can understand that the positives will go slowly downhill. I will write a small paragraph about it at the end as well! Do not worry. 

The [story, world, plot, lore], basically whatever you want to call it, of this novel is not anything exceptionally unique. It is a typical reincarnation inside a novel, but the minor twist here is that the MC is also the author who has written the novel. The MC, a novel-writer, was infamously known for his bad writing skills. More so, he was known for his amazing skills at screwing up his novels. He would write an amazing novel for the first half, before ruining it by the later half... wait... this sounds familiar? Oh- its exactly what the real author did. It seems he has attained foresight by the grace. To be able to predict the future. 

The actual story begins with the MC, in his measly mortal body in earth, getting a cardiac arrest while reading hate comments. Dying, and is given the options afterward to: 

A. go to earths lowest fiery pits due to his bad writing

B. Choose one of his own written novels, transmigrate to a random character, and (hopefully) survive there for a happy ending. 

Our MC chooses B. He picks a story which starts after the end of a big war between humanity and the demons. It was supposed to be a slice of life happy story about the humans who have won the war, and are celebrating, but he did not wish for his novel to be too fun to read, so he inserted random gate incidents for variety... which also wipe out 90% (I think, otherwise 80%) of the world...  The MC is, thus, transmigrated into the body of Valier, the last royal blood of the demon king. Jokes on him for thinking he can be a human and have an easy life, the grim reaper had our backs.

He has to somehow escape the palace where he is in, to... well... survive. And as you can judge by the chapter amount, he escapes. The first 20 chapters are basically a bit of lore dump, nothing too major, mostly the author informing us of the world structure, and the Academy which is certainly the most important story aspect. Three supporting characters are introduced, a blood-sucking vampire (please take me!), a lycanthrope (woof-woof), and a... a... ??? I forgot what the monster is called, but it's basically a shapeshifter. How they meet is something for you to discover. Anyhow, the shapeshifter gives Valier, the MC, his family heirloom which is a ring that can alter the users appearance. As you can guess by the title, due to unfortunate events (from the MCs perspective), he is enrolled into the academy, specifically in the royal class (which is the highest ranked class). Using the ring, he adopts the alias of Reinhardt, a war orphan, with a human appearance (no horns or red hair which is demon royalty's trademark features). He tries to not stand out, but it fails hilariously, so he adopts the stand of a bully... You heard me right, a 30-something y/o in spirit is now bullying fresh out of breast-milk brats (I think they are 16-18 y/o).  

I forgot to mention his golden finger. He is given a system, containing his stats, abilities and so on. Funnily enough, he is F+ ranked in most stats, quite the useless fellow if I may say so myself. The system works on a point-based structure where he can alter and even get sneak-peeks of future events using those points! He can also buy skills and so, but they are veeeeery expensive, so he can afford only the lowest scrap. The way to get points is through missions and altering the future (so avoiding bad endings). The missions are... uh, quite interesting to say the least. The superior beings are basically torturing him with those. I think this covers the beginning of the story well enough. It's a good academy novel (430chap) before it becomes an okay civilisation sim 101. 

The next topic I wish to cover are the characters. The characters are good. Me like Ellen... Ellen is life. Jokes aside, the characters are very good. Certainly the foundation of this novel. They are well written, with depth and emotion behind them. We have Valier/Reinhardt, our emotionally unstable MC (goes from calm->angry quicker than a Porsche goes in 0->60); Ellen, a cold and detached but exceptional swordswoman; Harriet, the strongest mage in the academy, daughter of the strongest mage in the continent; Charlotte, {Spoilers, I won't talk} ; Bertus, royal prince of the empire where the academy is in; Ludwig, MC of the novel which Valier/Reinhardt wrote. This is not even the basic cast, because more characters are introduced, in the first 50 chapters but I'm allowed to not remember every detail now, am I? Well, tl;dr the characters are amazing, and the bread and butter of this novel.

Now, the spicy part! Romance. This novel is a harem, it has a true harem ending, meaning no introduction of multiple love interests to be later thrown in the dirt. The romance is peak! Simply gold in my opinion. It's a slow burn, where the MC tries to get stronger to avoid the destruction of the world, while building closer ties to the characters. The female love interests do not fall in love quickly, so it's not a boring trope of: MC rizzing all girls through his strength, or shallow female characters with 0 emotional stability. It takes time for the romance to bloom, and it's satisfactory from our point of view... well... until chapter 430. Later on, it becomes more tedious and feels a bit of a sob story in minor parts. So tl;dr romance is a slow burn.

Lastly, I wish to talk a bit about this. I have bashed the novel multiple times for falling off. I felt the need to do so because while the first 430 chapters are absolutely a 10/10, the fall off is not small. It does not transition from 10/10 -> 9/10, it's more drastic. I personally say 10/10 -> 7.5/10, but most would say 5-6/10. And I can certainly agree and understand, I'm simply more tolerating in general (At least that's how I cope). The chapter from 430-750 go up and down in quality, sometimes regaining it's former charm, sometimes losing it. Some say the drop off is not that great, others say it's abbysmal. I personally am between those varying opinions. So, for the last time, I warn thee. This novels is amazing early, but halfway starts getting worse. Still more than readable and enjoyable, but nowhere near it's glorious peak. However, I still believe it's a staple in academy & harem novels and is a must read. 

Wish you the best in life, Goodbye🧐 

This review was written by Mc itself in chapter 24:-

[So the biggest reason for this novel’s failure, the reason all the readers who kept going until the middle of it fell away, was…

I didn’t have the talent for writing these kinds of stories until the very end. As the events and materials I had planned out were depleted, my writing lost its way and as a result I lost my motivation to move the story forward.

Therefore.

I just flipped the table.

This crazy novel only came into being because of the author’s lack of ability to create any more events.

…In the middle of that story…

…I made Gates suddenly opened.

This was called self-satisfaction.

Naturally, the readers dropped the novel in disgust of that sudden development. But what should I have done? At the time I thought that would be the best development. Of course, it would have been better if I had just ran away, leaving it unfinished as usual, but then I had a sudden compulsion to complete it somehow.

If you do stupid things, one day you will end up paying for them.]

it not great compared to lotm,ss or any other masterpiece but it's quite enjoyable for me. It's good, recommend to read if you like  academic setting. 

Read till the end while it was definitely a slow burn all the way through. But it's still one of the actually good quality novels and should deserve a better rating.

diaoshspwisjspwnzsh sisgaopaoaksjs auqoobwheen sistsaopw suarqoq sizpspfkf a aiebdbirek siaosnrbe auisjebe wgaiepwps sushdhdb aiqhagsbdd pouuurf

Mesmerizing for exactly what it is 

One of my favorite novels for having a complete no loophole story 9 out of 10 at least. It has been an amazing journey and the emotions are so well conveyed, I felt every second of that sorrow and really believed in that love. It was such a beautiful story with great character development and it's not written for the readers to love but feels more like that the author didn't mind being hated just to be true to the story, the ups and downs of each character were crucial to what made this a perfect romance (the chivalry kind).

I heard a ton of hate comments for this novel and how this tumbles after 400s but I gotta tell you it was that was what made this even better, the distrust the feeling of betrayal and everything made it even more worth reading.

PS: A song that suited this novel according to me- Those starry blue eyes