Having finally read the last volume nearly one year after it came out, I can finally make a conclusive review on this series that feels I have been following for so long. I came across Shinmai Maou not through the anime but simply because I was curious about it after seeing some of the illustrations online, seriously if you haven't already, check out some of these illustrations, they honestly made me immediately wanna read the novel. I disagree with the other review here, if you are in for the ecchi definitely pick the LN over the anime, as far as ecchi goes I haven't seen anyother series that go as far as this one, clearly crossing the line to hentai on later volumes, it gets so ridiculous that the anime had to pretty much censor or cut most of them. And this is one of the things that I liked the most about the series, I know most people don't like when a series is just fan-service and nothing else, but this one does a fine job of balancing both while having some of the best ecchi scenes LNs can offer. I like the progression from vol. 1 to vol. 13, the scenes get more and more lewd as the series progress and by the end of the story it's pretty much a hentai with most scenes being described in detail and with illustrations.

One thing I do agree with the other review is that the final arc of the series was disappointing, the demon realm arc that the anime covered was actually pretty fun and interesting in the LN, much better than how the anime adapted, but the final arc basically throws everything that was build up aside, and introduces a villain that the readers had forget about and frankly didn't care for. The final arc can be best summarized was one really long confusing battle that can be very tiring to read, one of my main problems with this series is how bad some of the writing is, I'm not a very critical reader nor I'm trying to come across as a writing expert, but from the translations that I have seen, it really annoys me how the author has to overly explain things way too much, a character will make a decision and then explain 20 different reasons why that's the best decision possible.

But either way its one of my favorite series and I definitely enjoyed my time with it, the art is great, the storyline can be fun at times, and I pretty much like all the characters, the way their relationship develops over time I feels is really well done and one of the series strong points. As far as ecchi light novels go this is one of the best and definitely worth a read if you are into that sort of thing.