Me and the Devilman Blues: A Personal Retrospective, pt. 2

 

It would be another couple of years before I encountered Devilman again, at the dealers' room of a smaller anime convention that was just a short drive from my house. Halloween was fast approaching, and I was really caught up in the ghoulish spirit, so I was looking around for any scary anime or manga. I was beginning to lose hope until I found six individual DVDs, all colored blood-red with pictures of grotesque demons on the side covers, bound together by a single rubber band. The first, and only visible, cover showed me that it was a TV series called, "Go Nagai's The Devil Lady". After reading that, it didn't take me long to realize the visual similarities between the feral-looking demon on the cover and the original image of Devilman that I remembered from when I was little. At that point, there was no way I could resist buying it.

I watched all twenty-six episodes of The Devil Lady over the course of a few weeks, and I came to the conclusion that while the writing wasn't exactly great, it had everything that I expected from my original image of Devilman: lots of violence, tons of gore, terrifying creatures of the night, and a demonic hero that fights for humanity. Unfortunately, the plot was so forgettable that it didn't really leave any lasting impact on me, or my overall impression of Devilman. At this point, it seemed as though nothing would.

Another couple of years pass, and I'm in my second year of college. One of my big obsessions at the time was the Getter Robo series, which was written by Ken Ishikawa, one of Go Nagai's assistants at his company, Dynamic Productions. Originally, I was reading English-translated scans of the comics off of a website, but one day, I just decided to download them so I could access them more easily on my computer. I went to the translators' website, where they had a list of other Dynamic Pro series' they had finished working on posted on the side. My eyes instantly widened when I saw that one of the comics they had finished translating was the original Devilman. Suddenly entranced, I downloaded all five books and started reading them.

I was immediately hooked upon finishing the first volume, which managed to do a very good job building its world, introducing its main characters, and delivering a surprisingly suspenseful origin story for our hero. These were all things that I wish The Devil Lady had been able to do when I was watching it. The second volume introduced its first named villains, who managed to provide the protagonist with an actual challenge, and with it, a very solid story. I really liked how everything was shaping up.

The final three volumes, though, were the ones that cemented the story's status as a masterpiece, to me. I don't want to give anything away, but the story arc contained in these last volumes not only really tugs at the heartstrings (one friend told me she couldn't stop crying while reading the last volume), but also provides some very interesting commentary on human nature, showing how on some level, we're all inherently prone to fear and violence.

If you haven't yet read this amazing work of pop art, make some time to do it. At only five volumes, I guarantee that you won't regret a single second of it. Just to give you an idea, the impact that it had when it debuted in Japan was very similar to the impact Watchmen had on the English-speaking comic world. It was violent, emotional, and rife with social commentary, which is why it has continued to garner seemingly endless amounts of reprints, remakes, and sequels over the last forty years. It's a hell of a good time!

Now it's time you all payed the devil his due...