digitalalterego

This chapter is interesting. It reminds me a lot of Shin Devilman, where Ryo and Akira travel back in time to stop demons from altering history. 

 My profile picture is Ryo Asuka from one of the Devilman side stories. It's a story where Ryo dreams about Satan breaking out of the ice.

I chose it, not just because I already had that panel saved but because everytime I post on this website it comes out of a moment like in the panel. Where I feel like I've suddenly woke up from some revelation and MUST share it or dissect it. When I've had just a little moment of clarity. And it's usually at night like that. 

I just love Ryo.
Especially the schizo Ryo from the original manga.

I actually managed, for a decent price, to get my hands on the first half of the Devilman classic collection; I know the real difficulty is gonna come now that I'm looking for the second half. It's fucking expensive everywhere, and I'm a cheapskate. My only hope is that someone has a rabid dog that mangles their copy dreadfully enough to bring the price down less than £40. Because I'm not a collector, I don't care what the fuck it looks like as long as I can read it.

I looooove making playlists for fictional characters and media and recently I've been SO obsessed with Devilman I just wanted to post about all the songs I've chosen!!!

The first song, which I just listened to for the first time and made me decide to post these, is BUCK-TICK's song Ash-ra from their COSMOS album. I love BUCK-TICK, I'm slowly making my way through their albums but this one is probably my favourite one so far. Because all their albums have at least one song I love, but this one gripped my attention the entire way through. And the lyrics are great too. There are a lot of BUCK-TICK songs that remind me of Devilman in some way, so this is probably just the first of many~

The title Ash-ra is a stylization of Ashura- a warrior demon yokai originating from Buddhism. They love combat, war and violence. Within Buddhism's reincarnation cycle, whenever you die you are reborn into one of 6 realms based on how good you were in that past life. In Japanese Buddhism, the Ashura reside in the 3rd realm, aptly called Ashurado. This realm comes after the Heavenly realm and the Human realm, which are considered "good" realms, meaning while Ashurado is not pleasant it is much better than going to, for example, the Hungry Ghost realm (my favourite realm just because its name lol).Ashura are also highly controlled by their emotions, meaning it is difficult for them to escape the cycle and achieve enlightenment.

Of course this reminds me of Devilman. The demons of Devilman are much like the Ashura in their love of violence and war. The entire reincarnation cycle of Buddhism is also very in-line with Devilman's loop theory. Take Ryo. Ryo specifically is highly controlled by his emotions, and is a very emotionally explosive character both as the human Ryo and as Satan. He is stuck in God's loop (reincarnation cycle) and God plays on his extreme emotions to force him to relive the same emotional mistakes and self-wrought destruction time and time again (much like how the emotions of the Ashura keep them out of Nirvana). If Ryo were to overcome his emotions, I'm sure he could break the loop (and I'm writing a fan-fiction about it as we speak) but that would be a betrayal to his character.

"Please, let's dance a passionate dance, to the rhythm of love that seems to curse everything"

This lyric reminds me of the way love is portrayed in Devilman. It does seem like a curse, or at least that is the way God makes it out to be. We see it time and time again. God punishes Satan for his empathy (a form of love) towards the demons, Haim kills himself out of his love for Silene, Akira experiences immeasurable pain when his loved ones are killed, and Ryo's creation of Devilman (which he does to protect Akira out of his love) is what leads to his downfall every time. My personal theory is that Devilman's God doesn't believe in love at all and sees it as a weakness, hence why he cast Satan out and used his own love against him to eternally punish him, proving to Himself that love is a useless weakness. No matter how you look at it, God is the true villain of Devilman.

"I only loved you, and now I hate you deeply."

Akira is a kind of Jesus-like character in the way that he loves those around him. Depending on the iteration he is a very selfless character. Which is his motivation for following and believing in Ryo in the first place. If a friend you hadn't seen for months contacted you, pulled a knife on your crush and asked you for a favour with no further explanation, would you go with them? Hell no! But Akira does, not just because he is naive (which he is, at least at the beginning) but because he loves humans, and tries to see the best in them, much like Jesus. But the hate of someone who loves everyone is a very powerful thing.
Notice how the lyric says "I *only* loved you" but doesn't say "Now I *only* hate you"? After all the terrible things Ryo has done, Akira hates him. But he doesn't stop loving him and believing him. Hate and love coexist.

I wish I could understand Japanese so I could analyse the lyrics better, and analyse more of them, but that will have to do for now since it's getting late~~~

Listen to the song NOW!

This one is drawn by the man himself! Some people might see that as a positive. Not me. I find Nagai's later art pretty ugly and extremely stiff, and just all-round repulsive. I really find the way he draws Ryo/Satan so ugly, and it wasn't like that in the original manga. Akira looks pretty good though. Idk if that's an unpopular opinion but it's certainly one I wouldn't be sharing if I thought anyone reading this actually cared about defending the man. Never mind that though.

This chapter focuses on the final battle of Devilman, interspliced with an alternate first meeting of Akira and Ryo where they are classmates and friends. I don't particularly care about anything going on in this chapter. Miko is in it though! For about 2 whole panels! 

I also find the panels about Akira and Ryo hiking pretty funny because it's such a jarring change of pace from the battle. Obviously it's meant to contrast, but it doesn't work because this hiking scene isn't really showing anything. Because would Ryo and Akira really have gotten along like this? Personally I dont think so. Ryo isn't actually Akira's childhood friend, he's a completely different (non-human) guy who replaced him. Hang on... is The Summer Hikaru Died just modern Devilman???

And it ends with Ryo crying and Akira legless, like we've seen one billion times before. This chapter doesn't say anything interesting. But it's nice that Nagai contributed to this anthology.

There isn't much story to talk about in this one. Mainly it's just some gory demon rape and confusing hallucination/memory stuff. But damn, the art is so cool. I looked at the title page and knew I was in for a treat. This chapter is in full colour and the artist makes full use of that. Each panel could be an album cover, seriously. And this design of Amon is brilliant, you can really see how he combined and merged with different animals and demons to create his body the way it is. He just looks cool as fuck. So does Silene, even if she only shows up for a few panels. I don’t have anything to say about this chapter other than it's cool. I wish it had some more semblance of a story or meaning but as it is I still enjoyed it.

I've been making my way through a lot of Devilman content recently! I've got to say, the quality varies extravagantly between all the spin-offs, sequels and side-stories. I've gotta review some of those, eventually too. At the moment I'm reading Neo Devilman, and anthology full of short Devilman-related stories by different authors (including Go Nagai himself at times) so I wanted to write my thoughts about each chapter. These aren't necessarily canon, but the way the Devilman universe works they can be as canon as you like. I'm gonna treat them like canon, and try and fit them into the original story.

Chapter 1 is set during the end of Devilman, actually it's somewhat of an alternate ending. It has a lot of Christian imagery and lore woven in which I like, as well as a depiction of Satan's original punishment which is probably one of my favourite parts of the Devilman story to speculate on and imagine. And a surprising final page, but I'll talk about that last.

The world has been destroyed, both the humans and demons have been defeated, and Akira walks alone through the ruins of Tokyo. There is an image of Picasso's Guernica, which has a famously anti-war message just like Devilman. I love these kinds of allusions and references to art, maybe just cause it makes me feel a little smarter when I notice them. Although I do genuinely believe referencing other inspirational or related work in a piece of media truly makes it feel more deep and intentional, to the point that the creator really understands the message they are trying to convey enough to relate it to other works.

Then Akira meets Ryo, and he is transported to some kind of imaginary space, the kind of thing Psycho Jenny likes to do. But of course Satan is even more powerful in this aspect. The way they are sitting at a table and conversing here really reminds me of S3 E6 of Hannibal. I love love love Hannibal so I think I just see it whenever I go.

Ryo then begins to yap at Akira, as he does in the original ending. But what he says is very different. Honestly, and I've really tried to think about it, I dont get what Ryo is talking about at all. He speaks about having to destroy the earth to build the "Millenium Kingdom". My first thought was what the hell is that? It's a bible reference. The Millenium Kingdom is a future 1000 year reign of Jesus Christ, during which time an angel is sent to bind Satan and prevent him from deceiving humanity. At the end of the 1000 years, Satan will rebel one last time and then be destroyed for eternity. Huh? Why does Ryo want this? Ryo brings up another topic that answers this somewhat sketchily.

(Edit: okay, I wrote the next paragraph after re-watching Devilman Crybaby. this caused me to misremember Ryo's ending monologue, and confuse his original speech with the one from Crybaby. in the original manga, Ryo doesn't even talk about love, just talks about how foolish he has been and wishes for forgiveness. i still left the paragraph though because it's still a pet-peeve i had about Crybaby and i said some stuff i think is still relevant to Ryo's character)

Of course, that topic is his favourite non-existent concept of love. I think Satan is a very naive character. He only seems powerful from the lense of a human. On the level of an angel, he seems extremely emotionally naive. Saying that is the only way I can justify his strange relationship with the concept of love. In the original Devilman ending Ryo says that love doesn't exist, or at least that that's what he thought until he fell in love with the human Akira. This is a total contradiction! And a pet-peeve I've always had about the original story. What feeling was it that drove Satan to rebel against God, when He originally attempted to erase demons from the earth? Empathy. Or, love. Ryo knows love, in fact he should know it better than God himself. His compassion for the demons is no different than his compassion for Akira, and I dont understand how an intelligent character like him doesn't realise that!

Okay. I got a little off topic. Because in this conversation, Ryo does not say that love doesn't exist. What he says is more interesting; "I'm doing this out of my love for all humanity." My brain is in tatters. What Ryo is saying, is that his love for humanity (perhaps more specifically for Akira) is what has driven him to sacrifice both the human and demon race and bring about this Millenium Kingdom which, by the way, means he will be bound for 1000 years. If we consider this, it actually begins to make a bit of sense. Akira is the "angel" sent to bind Satan for 1000 years (and possibly to ultimately defeat him?). Actually, this only occurred to me while writing the post, and it made me understand the "surprising ending" a lot better!

After Ryo finishes his speech, we get a shot of Satan and Devilman standing face-to-face, ready to fight. Devilman should win, he should trap Satan and allow 1000 years of peace to flourish. But that isn't what he does. We cut back to the psychic dinner table, and Akira is suddenly leaning across it to kiss Ryo. I couldn't believe my eyes. If Ryo's motivation in this story were blurry, Akira's were bordering on the incomprehensible. But now, i understand. And his motivations are actually pretty similar to the original ending.

In the original ending Akira fights Ryo because he cant accept that anyone at all is beyond saving. After all, he has a hero's heart. He tries to defeat Ryo to put an end to his war not because he hates him, but because he cares about him. This ending is the same. Akira stays quiet throughout Ryo's entire monologue until that final moment. He could leave the table, he could walk away, like in the alternate ending from Shin Devilman. He could give up on Ryo. But he doesn't. Earlier, Ryo mentions that humanity should love him back for what he does for them, his act of keeping God's authority at bay. Return that apple-shaped offering of freedom that he planted in the garden of Eden all the way in the beginning. Akira kissing Ryo represents this. Akira represents humanity itself, finally returning the love that Ryo wanted. It isn't happy or sad, but personally I find it a very satisfying ending (even if I don't ship Ryo and Akira. Yeah, I said it).

Aside from the storytelling, the art is gorgeous. I love the line quality, effects, texture, depth, contrast, it's totally beautiful. The only problem I have with it is that I'm not a fan of the way Akira and Ryo's hair is drawn. And a little nitpick that some panels reuse the same drawings, just zoomed in or altered slightly. Other than that this Chapter was a visual treat. I especially loved the drawings of the massacred city with Xenon lying on top of the wreckage at the beginning.

Overall this was a really enjoyable comic, clearly the author cares about the Devilman story very much. It connected with the story without repeating it, a trap that so many Devilman rewrites and spin-offs fall victim to. I'll be surprised if any amount of the chapters in the rest of Neo Devilman are this good, but hopefully I'll get through them all and find out anyways.