If you ever wanted to find alternative ways of sleeping, Sleepy Princess in the Demon Castle is an excellent how-to guide! After all, you can test out all sorts of methods with a ghost chief, take advantage of a demon’s hibernation powers (despite insisting he doesn’t hibernate) and even walk into another popular Weekly Shonen Sunday series and find a sleep method in there.
…On second thought, maybe using this as a guide is not the best idea…
Sleepy Princess in the Demon Castle volume 4’s daily sleeping adventures shakes things up a bit when Syalis is kidnapped — this time by the demon leader at the Old Demon Castle, Hades. Now that she’s in a brand new (and just as dirty) environment, you best believe this will not dissuade her from finding a brand new way to sleep. But in comes Hypnos, a demon who needs 20 hours of sleep a day to live, who puts Syalis in her place…regarding sleep. This turns out to be a match that definitely frightens the rest of the demons in the old and new castle.
Once again there are a ton of fun stories, but it was nice to finally get a mini-arc rather than one-off stories. I don’t quite think Syalis being taken by a different set of demons makes it completely different from usual; it just manages to introduce brand new demons who either are oblivious to anything (see: Hades) or those who are swept in Syalis’ tendencies (see: Cer, Ber, and Rus. Yes, Cer, Ber, and Rus.). However, the manga does bring back a few things — like the return of a castle tournament that Syalis somehow manages to ruin — while also giving us more ways she can be sleep-desperate.
For example, we end up getting a chapter where she wants chocolate to go sleep on Valentine’s Day. However, she’s thinking it’d be like how it was at her palace, but she’s now in the demon castle. Due to her not understanding social cues (and youth), her attempts at professing love in order to obtain chocolates ends up confusing and (somehow) injuring all the demons she attempts to get chocolate from. It once again establishes just where Syalis is and how these inept demons continue their ineptitude…and that continues to bring out the laughs.
Sleepy Princess in the Demon Castle continues to pump out a number of amusing sleep stories, so it actually makes sense to not only have a story where she finds enough materials in the old demon castle to sleep peacefully, but to then find a dimensional warp hole and run into Komi as a bonus story. Not the combination that you could see coming, and then you read it and A) manage to realize Syalis got her way and B) still feel sorry for Komi. Overall, keep bringing on Syalis’ restful (or restless?) adventures!