Anime Meta-Review
Devilman Lady
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Title Info
- seen: 1-10 of 26
- type: TV
- grade: worthy
- Series state: Can't find any more to watch.
- made: 1998
- Review created: Recently, but I didn't record the date.
- mod: none
You sort of have to be impressed, an anime where even the title has problems. Although stick with it, because this title is both more interesting and watchable than you might expect...perhaps Go Nagai had nothing to do with it? The story starts with the model Jun Fudo having a bad day. The career's going well, but she is filled with strange feelings and seeing strange visions. This must be why, when a strange blonde comes to her door and starts talking about mankind's evolution, beasts and blood she decides to go with her. It turns out that this woman can see the beast in Jun's eyes, and thus decides to feed her to a werewolf. When all seems lost it turns out, not unexpectedly, that Jean is not entirely human. Like the other devilman series it seems that members of humanity are changing into beasts, and Jeans ability to control her nature (to some extent) makes her very valuable to the men in black. On the other hand, you wouldn't know it, because the story, the humans and the beasts all start messing with Jun's mind...and she's not really very happy about it all herself.
The central story is pretty corny, basically her devil form is powerful and evil so there's a good capacity for mega-monster biffo. But the interesting thing is how the focus changes from the other devilman material. It may well be because the writing is a bit more complex, but it also is interesting considering the impacts of the change in sex (other than the devilman form having breasts...which is actually remarkably un-sexual). Unlike Akira Fudo, whom she is heavily derived from, being a female she is portrayed as much more of a victim. She doesn't get to choose to seek the devil power, and she is generally working under orders and with less than full knowledge. At the same time she's much more introspective about herself, and the horror of being a beast, having beast impulses and being a danger to others. This is worlds different from the teenage male kick-ass attitude of much of the other devilman material, and it works a lot better. It means that a human element, horror and mystery are retained. Of course, the tighter writing could also explain a lot of it. It's still pretty stock stuff, but this is much better than most of it's brethren. At it's best it actually does manage to be suprisingly spooky and twisted. The developing efforts of the human defenders, plus Jun, to understand the nature of the seemingly inevitable catastrophe also gives a nice backbone to the episodic stories.
This is not without a cost however. Those who got off on the long action sequences and young male gaining immense secret power are going to like this less. The scenes of Jun dealing with her problems, or interacting with people, cannot help but take up a lot of screen time. This leads to some of the action sequences being very short. Although one advantage is that this devil-lady looks a lot better, has better moves, and some of the fights are decent. One where she is punching a beast pinned to the ceiling, while we watch the second floor collapse from the impact, sticks in the mind. The design for the beasts is also much better. The animation is somewhat dated, with dark blocky colors and a fairly `static' feel for movement, but still sufficient. Indeed the series is quite clever in using darkness and suggestion to cover up the limitations in the animation. The voices seemed fine and the music didn't call itself to my attention.
Words by Andrew Shelton, Web by Ticti, Last Compile: Wed Aug 5 12:39:17 WST 2009