Beelzebub Review: The Toughest Delinquent in School Has to Raise the Demon King's Baby

I read Beelzebub during a stretch when I was feeling pretty tired of "serious" shonen. Everything I was reading at the time wanted me to cry, and I just wanted to laugh. A friend handed me the first volume and said "the strongest guy in school finds a demon baby in a river," and honestly that one sentence was enough. I started it that night and the part where Oga pulls a grown man out of the water, the man splits straight down the middle, and a naked baby climbs out — I laughed out loud in my room. I was hooked from that single page.

What surprised me later was that I didn't just laugh. By the end I actually cared about this dumb delinquent and his demon kid. That sneaky warmth is why Beelzebub stuck with me.

Quick Take

• The most feared delinquent at Japan's most violent high school accidentally becomes the foster father of the Demon King's infant son, and the baby refuses to leave him
• A comedy-action manga that fully commits to its ridiculous premise, but hides a real heart under all the fighting
• 28 volumes, complete; rated T (Teen) — delinquent brawls and comedic infant nudity, nothing graphic

Story Overview

Oga Tatsumi is a first-year and the most feared delinquent at Ishiyama High, a school populated almost entirely by delinquents. One day, while doing laundry by the river, he sees a large man floating downstream. Oga drags him to shore — and the man splits in half, revealing a baby boy inside. That baby is Beelzebub IV ("Beel"), the infant son of the Demon King, sent to the human world to find a guardian strong and violent enough to raise him into a being who will one day destroy humanity. The demons looked for the worst human they could find. Oga qualified.

The turning point comes fast: Beel imprints on Oga and physically cannot be separated from him. A strange mark, the Zebub Spell (the fly king's seal, the demon royal family crest), appears on the back of Oga's right hand, sealing the contract. If Beel gets too far from Oga, or cries, he discharges a massive electric shock. The only way to pass the baby off is to find someone stronger and more evil than Oga — which becomes his running, doomed scheme for most of the series. Beel's maid, the demon Hilda, attaches herself to the household to oversee the upbringing, and Oga's friend Furuichi gets dragged into the whole supernatural mess.

The story escalates outward from there: Oga clashing with the Tohoshinki (the four strongest students of Ishiyama), the arrival of more demons from the underworld, and a climactic confrontation at the beach with the monstrous Toujou that ends with Beel's power surging out of control. By the end — across 28 volumes — the joke premise has quietly become a genuine found-family story, even though the author has flatly said Oga's only real passion is fighting and he never settles into romance.

Characters

Oga Tatsumi — The strongest, scariest delinquent at Ishiyama, and the world's least willing dad. He spends the early series trying to dump Beel on anyone tougher than himself, and the whole comedy engine is that it never works. His arc is the slow, grudging shift from "get this thing off me" to actually being the kid's father in every way that matters. He never says it out loud — that would not be Oga — but you see it.

Beel (Beelzebub IV) — The Demon King's infant son. Mostly naked, usually riding on Oga's back or shoulder, and electrically dangerous when upset. He's played as a real baby with the power of a demon lord, which is a much funnier combination than it sounds. His loyalty to Oga is the emotional spine of the book.

Hilda — Beel's demon wet nurse/maid, who moves into Oga's house to supervise. Composed, deadly, and completely unimpressed by Oga, she's the straight woman to the chaos. The author confirmed she and Oga never become a couple — Oga is too immature for it — which I actually respect; the book keeps the dynamic comedic instead of forcing romance.

Aoi Kunieda — Leader of the Red Tails (the girls' gang) and a Tohoshinki member. She develops a crush on Oga after meeting him while in disguise, and a recurring gag is her constantly misreading his blunt, non-romantic statements as confessions. She's a genuinely strong fighter who ends up battling alongside Oga rather than against him.

Furuichi Takayuki — Oga's best friend and the audience's stand-in. He's the normal guy who hears the insane story first and gets repeatedly pulled into demon business he wants no part of. The comedy leans on him hard, but he's also the loyal friend who never actually abandons Oga.

What I Love About It

The thing I love most is the gap between what Oga says and what Oga does. His entire stated goal for most of the manga is to get rid of Beel — to find someone stronger, pass the baby off, and go back to his normal life of beating people up. He says it constantly. And yet the baby is always on his back. Always. When a real threat shows up, Oga's first instinct isn't to use the chance to ditch Beel; it's to protect him. The manga never lets him admit this, and that restraint is exactly why it works on me.

There's a specific recurring image that gets me: Beel riding on Oga's shoulder during a fight, completely unbothered, while Oga wrecks somebody. On the surface it's a sight gag — a tough guy carrying a baby into a brawl. But the longer the series goes, the more that image means. The baby isn't scared because he trusts Oga absolutely. Oga isn't putting him down because, despite all his complaining, he would never actually leave the kid somewhere unsafe. Tamura draws this dynamic so consistently that by the back half of the series, that single composition — delinquent and demon baby, fighting as a unit — hits like the most honest declaration of love in the whole book, and neither character ever has to say a word about it. For a manga I picked up purely to laugh, that snuck up on me hard.

Memorable Scene ⚠️ Spoiler Warning

The beach arc confrontation with Toujou is the moment the series stops being only a comedy. Toujou is one of the few fighters who can genuinely match Oga, and during the clash Beel's demonic power surges out of control in a way it never had before. The scale of the discharge — the energy pouring out of this tiny baby and the sheer destruction around it — reframes everything. Up to that point Beel's electric shocks were mostly a punchline, the thing that zaps Oga when the kid cries. Here you suddenly feel the weight of what he actually is: the heir to the Demon King, capable of devastation, riding on the back of a high schooler who treats him like a son. The contrast between the cute crawling baby and that raw power is what I can't forget. It's the page where I understood the manga had been quietly building toward something bigger than its jokes the whole time.

Pros & Cons

Pros

• Commits 100% to its absurd premise — it never gets embarrassed about the demon baby
• Beel is one of the most effective comedy characters in any shonen
• Oga's unspoken attachment to Beel gives the comedy real warmth
• 28 volumes, fully complete, with a conclusion fans find satisfying
• Tamura's art is energetic and the fight choreography is genuinely fun

Cons

• The story depth is limited; it's a gag-action manga first and foremost
• The delinquent-school setting and "find someone stronger" structure get repetitive in the middle stretch
• There is no official English print release — if you don't read Japanese, that's a real barrier, and that alone means this one won't work for everyone

Is Beelzebub Worth Reading?

Yes — if you want a delinquent comedy that fully commits to a baby-raising premise and slowly earns a real heart underneath it. It's not deep, and the middle drags, but Oga and Beel are one of the better odd-couple pairings in shonen, and the complete 28-volume run sticks the landing. The catch is access: there's no licensed English edition, so it's best suited to readers who can manage the Japanese version.

Where to Buy

No English release yet. That just means you find it before everyone else does.

There's no licensed English edition of Beelzebub — the Japanese print and digital release is the only legitimate way to read the full series right now.

Find the Japanese edition on Amazon.co.jp →

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