Here’s everything that happened in My Daemon Season 1

My Daemon Season 1 is 13 episodes of absolute madness, with a breakneck pace and one far-out idea after another courtesy of Thai-based Igloo Studio. A lot happens, a good chunk of it important on a worldbuilding or character level, and some of it is rather difficult to make sense or, either deliberately or by accident. So, allow us to do the hard work for you. This in-depth recap includes everything — more or less — that happened throughout the season, or at least everything worth paying attention to. Major character deaths, cool monsters, nuclear options, and more — it’s all here for your reading pleasure. Thank us later.

Needless to say, this is a complete recap of My Daemon Season 1 and contains major spoilers for absolutely everything.

Episode 1 – “The Grave Journey”

The first episode introduces some of the show’s essential concepts. Chief among them is daemons, created from daemonium particles spread around the world from a nuclear test site. Humans hate them. But our hero, Kento, is raising one named Anna, who looks like a bald dog covered in eyeballs.

Kento has a daemonium particle in his body, which will kill him before he reaches adulthood. But that’s if he makes it through childhood. Within the space of one episode, bounty hunters are already looking for Anna. There are some humans, known as “Daemon Users”, who have their own daemons, but they’re controlled through a shock collar and used for menial tasks or other unpleasant activities. Anna is wild, and her ability – which is to “store” things in a pocket dimension to be regurgitated later – makes her of tremendous value.

After Kento and Anna are reported to the authorities, they’re pursued by a bounty hunter whose demon, Casper, can make anything it touches turn invisible. This guy accidentally kills Kento’s mother and is subsequently eaten by a newly freed Casper. Kento has Anna store his mother’s corpse, and they set out for Kyushu in search of a daemon that can rewind time.

Episode 2 – “A Tough Decision”

“A Tough Decision” finds Kento making new friends – and realizing that they might not be very friendly after all.

After some brushes with wild daemons in Kanagawa, Kento and Anna meet Uraga, a demon user who is accompanied by a balloon demon named Baron. Uraga relates to Kento’s quest since he’s also trying to save his young brother, who’s very ill. He’s working security for Tamayo Transport, protecting the employees Inou and Takeda.

However, when the Daemon User Association offers a huge reward for Anna, Uraga goes nuts. He pitches taking Anna by force to Takeda, but when the older man tells him he’s bonkers, he has Baron attack both him and Inou, seemingly killing them both. Uraga and Baron chase Kento and Anna for the remainder of the episode.

Episode 3 – “Friend or Foe”

“Friend or Foe” opens by continuing the chase that capped off the previous episode, which doesn’t end well for Uraga, who drives his truck straight off a cliff. Anna is saved from the same fate by a newly freed Baron, who mourns the loss of his previous… owner? Let’s go with that.

As it turns out Baron was a pretty nice balloon in the first place, so he intentionally wounded Inou and Takeda non-fatally. Both survive and catch back up with Kento.

The gang heads to a truck stop community where Kento can’t find anywhere to stay. His vagrancy leads him to meet Kaede and her shield daemon Igisu, who is curious about why Anna remains loyal to a human despite not having a collar. This seems like the start of a beautiful friendship.

The episode ends with a group of thieving kids antagonizing a daemon named Sanju.

Episode 4 – “Corrupted Soul”

“Corrupted Soul” is mostly a manhunt for Sanju, which trapped one of those aforementioned kids, Yuta, in the rubble when they tried to escape. So, the truck stop citizens, including Kaede and Kento, go off to hunt Sanju and get Yuta back safely.

These kids are scumbags. When Yuta is freed, he reveals that they stamped a bunch of stray daemons to pulp to earn a quick buck, and is pretty happy about this – unlike Kento and Anna, who’re distraught.

Even Sanju himself, a tree demon who grows another branch every time he’s harmed, is symbolic of humanity’s flagrant disregard for daemonkind. He has countless branches already. When Kento tries to empathize with him, Igisu takes the opportunity to kill him.

That night, those ungrateful kids who have just been rescued by Kento and Anna try to capture the latter for the bounty, so Kaede and Kento leave town.

Episode 5 – “The Collector”

While traveling through Nagoya, Kento and Kaede help out survivors of a crash. O, a giant kaiju-sized mutant spider daemon, goes on a rampage.

The kid in the crash is called Momoko. Her dad is Reiji. O takes Kento and Momoko away so Kaede and Reije go to the Daemon Users Association to hire a party to get them back. Reiji is a doctor and recognizes Kento’s facial discoloring from the daemonium particle. His wife died from the same thing, which is why Momoko considers all daemons her enemy.

O carries Kento and Momoko to the ruins of Nagoya City, all covered in webs. Kaede and the party arrive to help just in time for the episode to end.

Episode 6 – “Awakening”

During the rescue effort, Kento is in danger and Anna evolves into a much bigger and more dangerous form and messes O up. She can’t remember anything after. This is reported to the Daemon Users Association by one of the party.

Kaede calls Ms Ichinose at the Peace Organization. Storage daemons are apparently very dangerous and one made Seori Island disappear. This is significant since members of the Houjou family, including Kaede’s mother, were on that island. As it happens, the chairman of the Peace Organization, Kaede’s grandfather, established it to investigate the daemon he believed was responsible for the island’s disappearance. This is also why he, too, hates daemons.

“Awakening” ends with Kento being drugged and Anna being kidnapped by the Peace Organization.

Episode 7 – “Impurity of Peace”

“Impurity of Peace” is the first half of a rescue effort. Anna is being held captive and experimented on by the Peace Organization and its manic chief scientist Ogi, so Kento and Kaede have to work up a plan by persuading Ichinose to help them.

Through Anna’s examinations in the research facility, we learn she has no bones or internal organs. And you know what? I’m not exactly surprised to hear that.

While Kento and Kaede are infiltrating the facility, the chairman turns up and antagonizes Anna with a picture of Kento. He feels her going ballistic through the patch on his face.

The chairman reveals he is worried that the rim of the hole leading to Anna’s storage space is the end of the known world, and thus that if the hole keeps widening, the world itself is liable to disappear.

“Impurity of Peace” ends with Kento stopping by a tank in the research facility which contains a very creepy-looking demon that may or may not be made of hair and is wearing a mask. Either way, the thing wants out.

Episode 8 – “Separated”

As promised in the previous episode, the hairy mask monster does indeed escape in “Separated”. Kento is able to talk her(?) down a little bit but the general callousness of the Peace Organization sends her rightly mad.

During the distraction, Kaede and Kento try to rescue Anna, but the Chairman returns. Kaede is knocked out, leaving Kento in serious danger once again. And, once again, Anna evolves and goes mental. This time she stays evolved but remembers what the chairman said about daemons being dangerous and that she’ll ruin Kento’s life, so she leaves and Kento is taken into custody to be experimented on.

Kokonoe is the guy looking after him. He fixes Kento with a collar daemon called Karara which prevents him from escaping. Kokonoe takes him home with him.

At the end of the episode, we see devolved Anna collapsing in the street, being seemingly preyed upon by another daemon.

Episode 9 – “The Little Friendship”

As it turns out Anna wasn’t being preyed upon, and throughout “The Little Friendship” she lives on the streets like a vagrant with other homeless daemons in a little community.

In the meanwhile, Kento, still living with Kokonoe, who is beginning to warm to him, makes friends with Karara. This is the Big Sad episode, which I believe is a technical media term.

Eventually, Kento is able to convince Karara to let him go, which we learn is all part of Kokonoe’s plan. He inadvertently leads the Peace Organization back to Anna and she’s taken into custody again in a van. Kento’s left with the other street daemons to try and rescue her.

Kento is able to get Anna back and reassure her that she does make him happy, which to be honest she should have known anyway given how much he goes on about it.

Episode 10 – “Strong-willed”

Kento and Anna get the train to Hakata with some help from the other vagrant daemons.

The Peace Organization isn’t far behind. Kokonoe explains what Kento is trying to do and plans to put someone he knows in Hiroshima on the train to kidnap Anna.

The woman, who is very glamorous and has a daemon that allows her to open doors through space-time, gets on the train and tries to clandestinely steal Anna. Of course, she’s discovered and there’s a cool chase sequence through portals that goes all the way up onto the speeding train’s roof.

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Eventually, the woman finds Kento’s relationship with Anna touching and lets them go, teleporting them away so they won’t be ambushed by the Peace Organization at the next stop.

At the end of the episode, we’re treated to a shot of a grey-haired boy, though his identity remains mysterious.

Episode 11 – “For All Departed Souls”

“For All Departed Souls” wastes no time in revealing that the boy with the grey hair is named Kiriko. And get used to him, because he’s going to become important. His school friend Sasaki, whom we also meet in the cold open, is going to matter too.

It’s Kiriko who takes Kento and Anna in while the chairman orders Kokonoe to go off the books in his pursuit of them. The Ministry of Defence is leaning on the Peace Organization since their repeated attempts to capture Anna are causing an untold amount of damage.

Kiriko takes Kento to a museum where one of the exhibits is the claw of Pandaemonium, the biggest and deadliest daemon ever. The weapons used to kill it are what destroyed the environment. Kiriko implies that the human death toll was nothing compared to “his kind”, and Kento’s patch lights up.

Kiriko reveals himself as a restoration daemon. His power is to use the memory of objects to restore them to their original state. He explains Kiriko was killed in a hit-and-run and he took over his body to learn about humans. The rumors about a time daemon are probably about him.

Kiriko and Kento run into Sasaki, who recognizes Kento from the posters and reports him. Kiriko tries to restore Kento’s mother from death, but the authorities arrive and they have to flee. They’re forced to leave Kento’s mother behind on the couch, which is a bit of anticlimax.

Kiriko reveals his plan is to eradicate the human species. He wants their help to restore Pandaemonium. Kokonoe examines his apartment and we see that he has been planning this for a long time, but Kento doesn’t know that. Instead, he’s just happy to see his mother, who appears rather suddenly, with her back knitting itself together to cover up the fact that Kiriko has taken control of her body.

Episode 12 – “The Judgement”

Kento is living with his “mum” in the penultimate episode, but it’s so obviously the restoration daemon that it’s a little hard to take.

Kaede is looking for Kento. Kokonoe explains to her that the daemon wants to use Anna’s power to remove the tempered glass in the museum and retrieve Pandaemonium’s claw, restoring him.

Kaede tracks them down. Kento knows what’s going on with the daemon, but his wishful thinking is compelling him to keep play-acting the doting son. “Kiriko” locks Igisu up. When Kaede confronts him, the two fight, and Kento’s mother getting half of her face blown off to reveal glowing blue daemon skin underneath kind of dispels the illusion.

When Kokonoe arrives he finds Kaede healed, meaning that Kento took a deal to save her in exchange for helping the daemon, who is currently disguised as one of the soldiers that arrived to join the fight and were subsequently killed. Kento has a collar affixed to him.

The restoration daemon attacks the museum. The particle in Kento’s head becomes more active – it’s about to hatch. The daemon keeps shocking him to incentivize Anna. Eventually, Kento’s head bursts, killing him and releasing a daemon, and Anna goes crazy. They fight a little and the daemon restores Kento, trying to recruit Anna. She sides with the humans, but he manages to restore Pandaemonium just in time for the finale.

Episode 13 – “At All Cost”

The restoration daemon has mutated into a giant kaiju and gone on a rampage. Kento has given birth to a daemon, technically, which he names Chumimin. The U.S. and Japan agree to nuke Pandaemonium and level Hakata.

The humans stop on the way to save some people on a bridge. Chumimin has the power to compel other daemons, since when he lets out a signal a ton of them – including Baron – arrive to help. Kento wants to return to Hakata to try and talk Pandaemonium down. Kaede tries to get the Chairman to postpone the nuclear strike, but it’s no good. The nukes are coming and can’t be delayed.

Pandaemonium isn’t willing to listen. Kento is happy to see everyone standing by his side and prepares to say goodbye to Anna. Chumimin helps her evolve into her final form, and she leaps into the sky and makes Pandaemonium, the nukes, and herself disappear.

Kento wakes up with his mum like it was all a dream. But it’s just his chance to say goodbye since her body has been dragged inside the storage space with everything else. Pandaemonium gets nuked inside the storage space. Kento promises to build a world where humans and daemons get along and Pandaemonium says if he isn’t successful he’ll be back. He also gives him Kiriko’s ID to bury as a goodwill gesture.

When the humans are leaving the storage space, Kaede sees Seori Island in there. Anna devolves and remains behind in the storage space.

They have a funeral for Kento’s mother – the chairman attends – and bury Kiriko’s ID. The storage daemons must all share the same storage space, which means Seori Island may not be totally lost.

Kento gives a speech promoting cooperation between humans and daemons, which seems to be happening. He sees Kiriko smiling in the crowd. After, he visits his mother’s grave and says he misses her and Anna. We hear Anna say her name, and Kento looks and smiles, but we don’t see if she’s there or not.

What did you think of My Daemon Season 1? Let us know in the comments.

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