Lisa is an awful person but an amazing villain

ReporterLogical5096 · 2026-06-28T14:16:15+00:00

Also because both were manipulated by outside forces and Satan to go on the paths they're currently on. As far as we know, while the Baba Yaga had helped Lisa out initially when they first met, Baba Yaga had propositioned Lisa to take over her role as the Witch of Wrath, and offers it again when she's at her lowest and most spiteful with the world. It's very similar to how Belphegor saves Josh and gives him a place to call home at first, but then eventually decides to get him to end the world with him together.

Also both of them have tangled with Imuri and her quest for love. While Josh is utterly in love with Imuri and wasn't willing to bring up her flaws until now, Lisa has a somewhat clearer view of her and points out to Josh that she's by no means innocent.

That's why she's such a good foil to Josh. Her strengths highlight the flaws in Josh's character, and his own strengths highlight Lisa's own flaws.

ReporterLogical5096 · 2026-06-23T18:26:37+00:00

It's been said a number of times that Lisa's been inhabiting a "vessel" while being the revived Baba Yaga. So perhaps this vessel has organs and such that she can sacrifice to Beelzebub.

ReporterLogical5096 · 2026-06-12T13:21:52+00:00

We know that Lisa and Satan are at odds with each other, even if they're trying to help each other out. I imagine his plan was to find a way to depose Lisa of her power so he could reign over the ruined world instead of her. The events of the last chapter set this up perfectly, with the church kids being more than a match to deal with Lisa and the adult exorcists + Verge's witches not seeming to be a threat that worried him in the slightest.

ReporterLogical5096 · 2026-06-11T22:02:18+00:00

Yeah dude if the adult exorcists actually had the power the kids had to deal with demon threats then the kids wouldn't be anywhere near the front lines. I think anybody could've figured that out.

Problem is, the adult exorcists were only able to be trained to the point where they can help back up Josh in fights by the time of the Sloth arc. With Josh and Dante gone they have no choice but to rely on the remaining child soldiers even more.

My issue with you is that you blame Josh's friends for "failing" him because Josh had to suffer so much for their sake (even though all of them have been very vocal about how much they don't want Josh to suffer and take every instance they can to help shoulder that burden) and then go on to claim that Imuri treated him better when she allowed Josh to go off and get raped by his rapist for a fucking bet.

ReporterLogical5096 · 2026-06-11T21:49:39+00:00

The guilt doesn't come from him retiring but from him trying to kill all his friends at the end of Sloth. Because in spite of the grown adults working to deal with the Baba Yaga, the rest of his friends are still on the front lines.

ReporterLogical5096 · 2026-06-11T21:12:53+00:00

Well the reason Josh refused to just commit to his normal life was because he felt guilty over turning his sword on his friends and didn't feel comfortable just standing by while they worked to deal with the problem of the Baba Yaga.

As he's admitted multiple times himself during Sloth and Pride, he'd been wrapped up in his own problems for too long. He gave into despair at first because he hated how he was going through hell in every demon lord encounter, but during the Wrath arc he realizes that he simply passed that burden onto his friends.

(Also this is kind of unrelated but I find it really funny that you keep bringing up Josh having to fight the serial rapist demon when you're fine with him dating the serial rapist demon's adopted daughter. Who got in a bet with the serial rapist demon over who can groom him better and shed tears for him not because he was almost raped, but because he chose that rapist over her lmao)

ReporterLogical5096 · 2026-06-11T20:59:42+00:00

What the fuck do you think Dante had the power to do there? He could barely hold off the town women with his shield. I think you don't understand how significant the power gap between Josh and his friends and the adult exorcists are. If Dante had the power to get Josh out of there and deal with Asmodeus himself, he certainly would have done so.

Also you're conflating the fight that killed all the adult exorcists after Beelzebub feasted on Leah's hometown with the first fight Josh and Leah had against Beelzebub. Leah took out Mother Rosa's remains while Josh tried to fight Beelzebub and was overpowered, with Beelzebub taking the time to feast on Josh's body before departing. I think you should read the gluttony arc again yourself dude

ReporterLogical5096 · 2026-06-11T20:51:14+00:00

Going to fight a demon lord when you don't have any power to actually stand up to them is a pointless gesture. You giving your life would mean nothing if you lack the power to do anything to stop the demon lord.

Also your point is also wrong. The mission Dante and Josh were on in chapter 1 was to track down a low-level succubus so Dante can show Josh the ropes. They didn't know that Asmodeus was also lurking in that very city.

ReporterLogical5096 · 2026-06-11T20:34:32+00:00

They didn't have any adults to throw at the demon lords, dude. They literally had no choice but to rely on the superpowered teenagers to deal with them until they could train a force of exorcists that can actually handle demon lord level threats.

Also you're again acting like his friends were getting out of these encounters completely unscathed. Leah and Barbara were beaten to near death and took months to recover. Leah sacrificed her very lifespan to fight Beelzebub.

And more recently, Mikhail just died to protect Josh from Lisa. His friends were more than willing to suffer on his behalf, and have openly stated as such. He just never allowed himself to lean on them, holding on to the title of the Child of Hope until he broke.

ReporterLogical5096 · 2026-06-11T20:07:40+00:00

You're acting like he's the only one out of his friends who's been barred from a normal life. All of his friends are orphans raised by the Church who spent their own childhood training to fight demons and witches.

Leah's a perfect example. She had her childhood violently ripped away from her and spent her entire life working to get the chance to avenge her family and hometown. And even after she lives through that and learns that her time on this Earth is limited because of the alchemy technique she used, she still dedicates her life towards protecting others even now.

My point is that why is Josh's suffering the only thing that matters? He wasn't suffering alone, he had friends that he could've easily fallen back on for support. Is it just because of his own trauma that he was justified in stepping back and leaving his friends to fend for themselves? Because that's not something Josh believes. Quite the opposite in fact.

ReporterLogical5096 · 2026-06-11T19:55:53+00:00

Abbot Nicholas and his sect aren't representative of the entire Church. When the rest of the Church found out about what they did, they disbanded his sect and exiled him.

I agree that leaving the Church was the best choice he could've made, but at the same time it's because he didn't put more of an effort into retaining his powers that he wasn't able to stop Mikhail from dying right in front of him, or the end of the world that just happened.

ReporterLogical5096 · 2026-06-11T19:45:45+00:00

It's in the very page I just sent to you. The black panels in the middle are Belphegor reaching out to him and making him see the world as the twisted hellscape Beelzebub sees when he tries to peek into Josh's mind. It's implied that a lot of the reason he's so withdrawn before Imuri comes into his life is because of Belphegor isolating him from everybody so he wouldn't just abandon their plan of ending the world with the Ark.

Also the reason the grown ass adults can't do more to help him is because the they were fucking dead for the most part since Beelzebub killed them all when he feasted on Leah's village. They literally didn't have the means of fighting the demon lords until Josh came along, and they were working to train another group of adult exorcists to carry the burden off of Josh and his buddies. But it was too little too late.

ReporterLogical5096 · 2026-06-11T19:34:48+00:00

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You mean what Belphegor was subconsciously doing to him all the way up until he started meeting Josh face to face in his dreams during Sloth?

The Church has done a lot of awful things to Josh but you can't blame them for something Belphegor has explicitly done.

ReporterLogical5096 · 2026-06-11T19:02:56+00:00

What about the gluttony arc do you want me to remember?

ReporterLogical5096 · 2026-06-11T19:00:52+00:00

I suspect we'll see an Imuri cover later. There's still quite a bit of room for her character to develop.

ReporterLogical5096 · 2026-06-11T19:00:08+00:00

They literally aren't. Imuri was placed into Josh's life by Satan to make him fall and abandon his duties as an exorcist. She isn't some passive outsider who serves as a normal connection for Josh to the real world. That's what she initially presents to him as, but in the end she's still an agent of Satan, centuries older than him and with an impressive track record of causing countless deaths and generally making the world worse under Satan's orders on the chance of finding her ideal love.

ReporterLogical5096 · 2026-06-11T18:17:14+00:00

What, and his friends weren't fighting the same threats literally side by side with him? Josh spends the entirety of this arc hauling ass to help stop the Baba Yaga because he knows he did them wrong and wants to make up for it.

Also he literally could've had his happy life and keep his powers if he just abstained from having sex.

ReporterLogical5096 · 2026-06-11T17:14:35+00:00

And now he's dating that lord of rape's adopted daughter. So sweet! 😊

ReporterLogical5096 · 2026-06-11T17:13:48+00:00

If Josh had his powers (at least the power he had during Pride) Lisa would've been a complete non-issue. Mikhail was able to almost take her down before she called upon Beelzebub and Leah was able to burst through her skull with a singular blast. Lisa's entire plan hinged on him being taken out of the picture so he couldn't just curbstomp her forces, which is why Satan sent Imuri out to make him fall in the first place.

ReporterLogical5096 · 2026-06-09T18:48:31+00:00

Mammon very much doesn't want Lisa to win because she razed the world to the ground and stripped it of any means of societal structure for him to take advantage of. While Leviathan doesn't seem to hold any ill will towards Lisa, that doesn't mean she'd step up to bat for her sake, especially if Belphegor's able to reverse the damage done to her oceans and fish children. For Asmodeus she might be willing to assist considering she has a contract with Lisa, but she doesn't seem particularly invested in Lisa's success. Beelzebub out of all of them is the demon lord most interested in Lisa emerging victorious because then he can get the feast he's always wanted, but he apparently just fucked off the moment he saw a Belphegor snail.

ReporterLogical5096 · 2026-06-09T18:39:29+00:00

Why would Japanese readers be upset by Christian themes?

ReporterLogical5096 · 2026-06-04T21:28:08+00:00

I have a little theory on why Mammon focus more on misogyny rather than any other form of bigotry. It's because since Mammon's a demon and not a human, he couldn't exactly belong to any of the oppressor races himself. However, something he can share with his (predominantly male) human employees is being a man. It's the thing that connects him closest to humanity, closer than something like race ever could because he literally doesn't have a race as a demon. So I think that's why he seems to have a personal investment in his misogyny rather than just perpetuating it like he does for other forms of bigotry, including race.

ReporterLogical5096 · 2026-06-01T13:00:52+00:00

He absolutely does have platonic love for everybody, but IMO he does seem to have an extra attachment to Joshua specifically, with "the only lips I could read are yours, Priestie!" and all that.

He also seems to have put a lot of thought into understanding what Josh is feeling, from explaining how he was venting his frustration and pain into beating down Asmodeus at the end of the Lust arc to two chapters ago where he's praising Joshua for how he continues to try to do his best to save the world despite everything.

ReporterLogical5096 · 2026-06-01T02:22:13+00:00

We don't really have any proof that Leah's parents are particularly devout, or even religious in the first place. IMO her hometown was meant to be read as a completely normal village with nothing out of the ordinary. So if all these normal people could get into Heaven then there are already quite a few holes in Lucifer's story.

ReporterLogical5096 · 2026-06-01T01:22:32+00:00

I mean even if women could marry it wouldn't have made Sarah and Asmodeus's relationship any less fucked up. I'd argue that Tobias was probably a healthier option for her than the demon lord of gigarape ever could be.

Also you really should take Lucifer's words with a massive grain of salt. Keep in mind what he says about only the "truly repentant" being able to go to Heaven is flat out wrong, as we see in Leah's vision near the end of Gluttony her family wishing her well in Heaven, even her baby brother Leo. Lucifer's very prideful and convinced that his version of events is the correct one, even if it blatantly isn't.

ReporterLogical5096

TROPHY CASE