Is Make the Exorcist Fall in Love Worth Reading? Review & Where to Read

Quick facts
Format	Manga (shōnen)
Run	2021–present · ongoing
Community score	AniList 7.9
Content	Violence, references to abuse
Where to read	MANGA Plus — official

Overview

Since birth, a young priest has been raised and trained by the Church for one purpose: to become the world's strongest exorcist and destroy the demons threatening humanity. All he actually wants to do is bake sweets in peace. When the Church tasks him with protecting Imuri Atsuki, a gifted artist whose work seems to summon demonic attention, he doesn't know she's secretly a succubus sent by Satan himself to make him fall in love with her, and that the mission is a lot harder than either of them expected.

What it does well

The central irony carries the whole premise: a boy raised his entire life to kill demons is slowly, awkwardly falling for one, and neither the comedy nor the romance ignores how messed up that setup actually is. It gives the will-they-won't-they real dramatic weight instead of just being a cute misunderstanding plot.

Imuri is the best part of that equation. She's not just a romantic prize waiting to be won; she's actively working an angle against the priest for most of the story, which makes her a genuinely complicated character instead of a passive love interest. The action holds up too: the exorcism mechanics are treated like an actual, consistent magic system rather than an excuse for the priest to look cool, and fights carry real stakes.

The comedy lands better than you'd expect from such a dark premise, mostly because the story commits fully to both halves. His baking obsession and general awkwardness get played for real laughs, while the darker material around his upbringing and the demon threat is never treated as a joke.

Where it falls short

The 'she's secretly working against him' setup means a chunk of the romance is built on a deception the reader is in on before the priest is, and that can sit uncomfortably depending on how you feel about that kind of dramatic irony in a romance.

The tonal mix is also a genuine balancing act, and it doesn't always land evenly — broad gag-comedy sitting right next to his genuinely dark backstory of abuse at the Church's hands can whiplash harder than the story seems to intend in a few places.

Verdict

Watching a demon-slaying priest slowly fall for the succubus sent to seduce him shouldn't work as well as it does, but the real stakes underneath the joke premise make it land. The tonal balance is imperfect, but as action-romance with an actual emotional hook, Make the Exorcist Fall in Love delivers more than its goofy title suggests.