Devilman

Devilman • Devil Lady

devilman 1972–73. TV series. (39 X 30 min.) Horror/superhero. org Go Nagai (manga). dir Masayuki Akehi, Tomoharu Katsumata. scr Masaki Tsuji, others.

devilman 1987. OAV. (2 X 60 min.) dir Tsutomu Iida.

devil lady jpn Devilman Lady. 1998–99. TV series. (26 X 30 min.) dir Toshiki Hirano. -bc

Devilman was an early anime treatment of the common theme of demonic possession of Japanese youth. Violent, sadistic, and marked by a bold and demented imagination, it was a controversial hit that was later remade in different, equally intriguing ways.

While on an expedition in the Himalayas,
Tokyo high school boy Akira Fudo and his archaeologist father encounter the revived remnants of the ancient Demon Clan led by Lord Zenon. His father is killed and Akira is possessed by a demon, Devilman, and sent back to Tokyo with orders from Lord Zenon to wreak havoc on the human world. Now orphaned, Akira lives with the family of his father’s colleague, Doctor Makimura, whose daughter, Miki, is Akira’s classmate in school. Akira’s demonic side comes out in acts of bullying toward his classmates, but when Miki gets mad at him, he backs off. His whole­hearted affection for Miki, and her concern for him, enables his human side to control Devilman.

When Lord Zenon sends demons from the Clan to check up on him, Akira finds himself defending Miki and her family and, by extension, all of Tokyo. Eventually he transforms into Devilman and combats each of the demons as they make trouble. Now eager to punish Devilman as a traitor to the Clan, the demons rally their most formidable monsters to wage war on Devilman and Japan. Random acts of slaughter and destruction begin to plague Tokyo as the demons come after Devilman. The Clan even sends Akira a rival, a dashing biker named
Himura, to compete with him and spy on him and his friends for the Clan. Akira is constantly torn by his demonic side and Devilman’s centuries-long association with the Clan, but the love of Miki redeems him and transforms him into humanity’s greatest champion. Eventually he heads back to the Himalayas to take the fight to its source, Lord Zenon and General Zannin.

In the Devilman OAV, Akira is a soft, gentle lad, tormented by bullies, who comes under the influence of a classmate, Ryo Asuka, whose archaeologist father went mad after discovering an ancient demonic skull. Ryo takes Akira to a club patronized by demon-possessed humans and provokes a fight with them to bring out Akira’s dormant Devilman side and involve him in an ongoing battle with ancient demons that have come back to life and infiltrated Tokyo.

Devil Lady follows the reluctant path of Jun Fudo, a high fashion model in Tokyo, who comes under the influence of female agent Ran Asuka, who works for the Human Alliance, a powerful top-secret organization. Ran knows of the Devilman gene that Jun carries and recruits her to confront the “Beasts” who are possessing people in Tokyo and raising havoc. Since the invading Beasts can only be vanquished when Jun is in full “Devilman” mode, Asuka makes it her job to manipulate the sensitive and reluctant Jun into taking on these battles.

The original Devilman TV episodes offered the crudest, most cartoonish design where most of the characters were concerned, but saved its true inspiration for a series of grotesque and awe-inspiring demon designs, including the voluptuous, talon-sporting bird-woman Silene, who turns up in one form or another in every Devilman adaptation. The monsters are a combination of all sorts of menacing animal features, such as gaping mouths filled with sharp teeth (often protruding from a demon’s stomach) and a mix of wings, tentacles, talons, claws, beaks, and scales. Akira himself is marked by strong, bold features, sharply drawn, with thick lines and dark eyebrows. He’s a handsome boy, but with a devilish cast that makes him stand out from the other characters.

There is a raw, manic energy to the series that manifests itself not only in the action scenes and demon battles that dominate the show, but also in the wild design choices such as hellish overcast skies, usually reddish in color, that take over the background whenever demons attack. The animation was often static when it came to character movement, but the frame count jumped up whenever there were battle scenes with demons, chases involving motorcycles, or scenes of mass death and destruction.

The OAV offered more polished character design, with Akira presented in a softer, more boyish version, and the demons a bit more intricate in their design. There is great imagination at work in the demon design, most notably a turtle-shaped entity carrying a shell bursting to the seams with the souls of his victims. Silene returns in a more tasteful design and merges with a rhino/dinosaur demon to effect a tragic figure with a surprisingly poignant quality. Interestingly, in the original series, Akira was more devilish while Devilman himself was built and suited up to behave more like a superhero. In the OAV, Akira is gentler and more humane, while Devilman is decidedly more demonic-looking.

The 1998 TV version, with a female in the role of Devilman, draws its inspiration from modern Japanese horror films, with a more dramatic nighttime Tokyo ambience and unspeakable terrors lurking just under a placid, prosperous surface. The music heightens the suspense with effective use of a high-pitched string section and low brass tones. The character design is updated and more restrained, with everyone looking modern, professional, sleek, and cool. The women characters tend to be attractive, charismatic, and in charge of their lives to a certain degree.

Mazinger Z vs. Devilman (1972, movie)

Devilman (1987–90, OAV, 2 eps.)

Devil Lady (aka Devilman Lady, 1998–99, TV, 26 eps.)

Amon Apocalypse of Devilman (2000, OAV)

Devilman (2004, live-action movie)

Devilman was pretty shocking back in 1972, with its portrayal of evil at large on the Earth and the sheer relish with which it reveled in mass death, destruction, and cruelty. Even today, one can’t help but raise eyebrows at scenes of a giant demon stomping patrons at a Tokyo baseball game and leaving scores of bodies, or a demon doll maker who models voodoo-type likenesses of people and then does horrible things to them, affecting the real people in deadly ways. For instance, a handsome volleyball player is seen chatting with a perky, gleeful Miki when a bloody fissure starts to form on his head. We see Miki scream and faint, and then we see the player’s legs unnaturally far apart before the scene cuts to the doll maker smiling with sadistic satisfaction, holding the two halves of the player’s doll that he’d just pulled apart.

What makes all this bearable (and enormously entertaining to some) is the sheer level of black humor involved. When the doll maker accidentally knocks over a doll in progress, its model, a middle-aged sportsman piloting a speedboat, immediately crashes into some rocks and burns up, prompting a sheepish grin on the doll maker and the Japanese equivalent of “Oops.” When a TV newscast shows a car crashing and burning after a little boy infected with a demon spider strangles his mother while driving, Akira, watching at home, responds with, “That’s cool!” much to the horror of Miki and her parents.

At the heart of the series is Akira’s constant battle between his demon possessor and a human side that would have been thoroughly suppressed had it not been for Miki-chan’s affection and care. Akira even states bluntly to a demon attacker that the only reason he’s fighting is because he doesn’t want Miki to be mad at him. Akira’s delinquent acts at school can only be stopped by Miki’s indignant upraised hand and threat of a slap. Akira is a creature of unpredictable impulses, and we are never sure which way he’s going to turn on us. All a bad boy really needs, according to the series, is the love of a strong Japanese woman.

The Devilman OAV drew on the original manga by Go Nagai and offers a different Devilman origin story, positing Akira as a quiet, needy boy who takes a beating from bullies rather than let them kill his last pet rabbit. He has a bishonen friend named Ryo who is openly hostile towards Miki and manages to bring out the Devilman dormant inside Akira. It has a more somber tone than the TV series with little of the black humor. Akira’s Devilman influence is more on the vulgar side, as when he blurts out to Miki, at least in the English dub, “I’d like to soap your tits.” Later, as she prepares to bathe, she proves not to be the goody-two-shoes she’d been in the TV series when she looks in the mirror and says, “I wish he would soap my chest.” In fact, in most of volume 2 of the OAV, Miki is completely nude. The OAV demons have a more haunting quality to them. The turtle-shaped demon has a shell on which are visible the living, tortured faces of his human victims, including Akira’s mother, and he taunts Akira by telling him that he’s keeping his mother alive, and if Akira attacks and kills him, he’ll also be killing his mother.

Devil Lady has an even darker feel and tone, drawing more on shows like The X-Files, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and the TV version of Vampire Princess Miyu (directed a year earlier by Devil Lady’s director). The emphasis is on urban horror, with a slow, dramatic buildup of suspense and terror, and less attention to the demon battles themselves, which are wrapped up in the final minutes of each episode. It’s more adult and less action-oriented than the previous series, more concerned with the problems of people (often women from Jun’s life) who become “beasts,” such as a swimming champ who nurtures an emotional scar from having been rejected as a lover by Jun back in high school, and a rival model who wants the jobs that Jun gets.

Mazinger Z vs. Devilman was a short movie (43 min.) released in 1972 to capitalize on the popularity of both of Go Nagai’s two hit series from that year. Dr. Hell, the mad scientist of Mazinger Z, manages to take over the Demon clan and use them to fight the giant robot piloted by Kouji Kabuto, Mazinger Z. Devilman joins in when he sees his old demon antagonists at large. The film’s focus is more on Mazinger Z and that series’ characters than on the Devilman portion.

Amon: Apocalypse of Devilman is a 2000 OAV that seems to pick up where Akira, Ryo, and Miki left off in the 1987 OAV, but goes on to end on a bleak, apocalyptic note. Although short (45 min.), it’s still a wall-to-wall gorefest that includes bloody, brutal deaths of the most sympathetic characters in the series. The style is very different from the earlier versions and not quite as polished or sleek as the 1987 and 1998 versions, making one wonder if the whole purpose wasn’t simply to end the whole thing, for all time, with extreme finality.

Go Nagai’s Devilman aggressively pushed the envelope in the area of illustrated violence and bloodshed both in its manga and animated versions. His next show, however, was a hugely popular giant robot-themed children’s show called Mazinger Z, which premiered a few months later. Other anime adaptations of his manga soon followed, including Cutey Honey, Getter Robo, Getter Robo G, UFO Robo Grendizer, and Gaiking.

The level of sexual harassment present and accepted as normal and even funny in the TV series will no doubt startle many viewers, as both the diminutive buffoonish principal and inept head teacher at the high school ogle Miki and behave toward her in ways that are astoundingly inappropriate. Interestingly, Devil Lady offers a sharp response to this behavior when reluctant heroine Jun and her handler, Ran, two attractive grown women, are walking the streets of Tokyo late at night and are accosted by a drunk offering to buy them a drink. Ran kicks the man sharply in the head, knocking him unconscious. “We’re not fighting to protect people like that,” she tells Jun.

In the OAV, there are intriguing sequences set in the dim, distant past, showing the world as it was when ruled by demons. There’s a darkly comic moment in a prologue sequence which starts out with lovely nude winged fairies flying gracefully about in a natural Fantasia-like paradise, with lilting symphonic music playing, when grotesque monsters suddenly extend from the Earth to grab the fairies in their jaws and devour them.

A live-action movie version, Devilman, was released in Japan in 2004, but was poorly received and has seen only scant release in the West. That same year, the live-action remake of another early ’70s Go Nagai anime series, Cutie Honey, from anime director Hideaki Anno (Evangelion), attracted a more enthusiastic reception.

The Devilman manga and anime started at the same time. The project began when Toei Animation commissioned a new anime series from creator Go Nagai and he decided to make a manga to go with it (although the initial stories diverged on several key points).

violence Violent battles between Devilman and demons. Scenes of mass death and destruction as the demons wreak havoc on Tokyo. Much gorier violence in the OAV. nudity Female nudity, sexual harassment of high-school-aged Miki.