i first got exposed to devilman when devilman crybaby came out a few years ago, i didn't have much context for it at all besides for hearing it was an adaptation of a much older manga series, and other than the hyper-violence and highly sexualised content typical of anime and manga from decades past i didn't feel at the time that its age showed at all. so when i finally got round to reading the manga that anime was based on, almost four years later now having mostly forgotten a lot of the story, i was still expecting a great experience with a timeless quality to it. so did this manga deliver? mostly yes, it's a bit rough around the edges but it delivers a thoroughly engaging story from start to end with god-tier art and reasonably likable characters. i tried to make this spoiler free but if you want to go into the story completely blank and somehow haven't heard anything about devilman before then maybe skip out on this review for now.
characters btw
now, speaking of characters i do have to get some negatives out of the way on that front and that's to do with our main character, the devilman himself, akira. we learn about demons at pretty much the same time as akira, who's informed by ryo at the start of the story about their existence and possible history. we also learn of ryo's intention to rid the world of all devils by using the power of the devils against them, for which he believes a pure hearted person is necessary so as not to be easily corrupted by said power. according to ryo, akira fits the bill perfectly, and it's maybe debatable about whether ryo was being entirely honest in that assessment, and of course morality and purity can be very subjective things, but akira's kinda impossible to sympathise with at this point in the story. he's pretty wimpy and just lets himself get dragged along by whatever the situation is, even when ryo's gone completely unhinged and rationalises mass murder to him for the sake of the ultimate plan to get the power of devils. rather than pure of heart, he just seems dumb of ass. after his transformation though he takes on a completely different persona in a way that's honestly a bit jarring at first but makes him into a much more interesting character because it also introduces an internal conflict and reflections on the nature and value of human life - though these are limited. in fact the story as a whole starts to change pretty drastically in tone too almost like a mirror of the changes in akira's character past a certain point, becoming more complex and exploring deeper ideas than just the monster of the week "demons bad" type stuff it started with.
ryo was a part-time exposition machine which made some of his dialogue a bit clunky, but without spoiling anything i'll say he does become a more interesting character and i loved the way the mangaka used visual details like panels of the moon and clouds to indicate ryo's own descent into darkness and the conflict within him for a good chunk of the story. there were things about his motivations or aspects of what he said and did that might not make the most sense, and if you feel that way the only thing i can say is to trust the author and keep reading. the same pattern pretty much unfolds with other aspects of the story as well, later on when everything really started to go out of control especially, but going into that would be spoiler content and also not be relevant to this section so uh let's just move on i guess. the other characters in the main cast like miki and the makimura's and those delinquents as well aren't bad, miki in particular injected some humour into the story that made her presence and personality really enjoyable, but neither her or any of the other supporting characters ever really get that fleshed out which i guess might present a problem for some readers who prefer larger and more developed casts of characters but idk. what i will say is by the end i feel they were used really well in advancing the themes of the story. even sachiko, whose introduction and inclusion otherwise felt completely random and honestly took me out of the story for a little bit.
theme stuff btw
this is where the story really shined, at least in my opinion, but it's not really clear from the onset. the emergence of the devils ultimately reveals the dark heart of humanity, which stood out to me because we can just look at the current pandemic and what's happened with regard to that to see how quickly people turn on each other and shift blame instead of coming together when faced with a crisis. it's the ideas the story presents about human nature that make it a timeless classic. there's also some really great panels late in the manga that have human faces in shadow and morphed to the point of being indistinguishable from the demons they hold in such contempt, not exactly subtle, but almost none of this story really is. we get commentary on the nature and futility of war, we see within this story the outbreak of terrible violence that simply repeats the same cycles of hatred that have played out in our own world and the prejudice at the root of it. we also see a grand cycle play out on a cosmic scale between the forces of god and satan himself.
if you felt that this story was fundamentally pessimistic with the way it presents all of existence being doomed to repeat the same process of hatred, death and rebirth, i don't think i'd be inclined to argue with you. but i think the ending is just open enough that it lets everything come together in a more hopeful way. for all the brutality we see and all the loss experienced by akira and perpetrated by demons and humans alike, there are other characters shown to have just as incorruptible and positive a character as akira is alleged to, and they anchor him to his humanity and drive him forward. the same for akira's impact on our antagonist in this series. it's the idea that while evil absolutely exists in the human heart, we also have the capacity for good - and if we channel that good outwards then the effects of our lives will echo out and create change in other people and the world around us long after we're gone. with the change created by akira, i believe the end of the story represents a break in the cycle, and funny enough considering how gory and bleak devilman can get, it's also a demonstration of the power of love. the main character embodies through his split between human and devil the potential of the human heart to gravitate towards light or dark, it's pretty much the "duality of man" meme.
the art plays into the themes beautifully, with the examples i already mentioned and other moments like the manga using falling cherry blossom petals as a visual metaphor for the fragile and fleeting nature of life at a couple of points as they're carried away by the wind in a rather direct parallel with the death of a character. i wasn't exactly Looking Out for these moments though so i'm sure if you went over the story more deliberately there'd be a lot more instances like this, which makes the more expository dialogue i mentioned earlier even more frustrating and jarring when it happens.
general stuff and final score btw
when i called it rough around the edges that was mostly about the exposition, but there were also problems with the pacing, some things unfold a bit too fast to be believable, and the latter part of the manga is also prone to jumping through things a bit quickly. the consequence is some moments don't really land or just pull you out of the story because it's like "when the heck did that happen." beyond that it also means as i mentioned previously a lot of the characters don't really get all that developed and i honestly didn't know the names of half the supporting cast right to the end. to be fair though having a character that's one-note isn't categorically a bad thing and i think this story manages that fairly well, not everybody needs to have a grand arc of self-discovery or anything the way that ryo and asuka do throughout this story. it would've been better overall if the story did try to humanise some of the demons in parallel to showing the depravity of some humans, would've also strengthened the message about cycles of hate and domination in my opinion. i guess you might say that devilman is an embodiment of that, that just as much as humans are able to harbour demons and commit evil acts the demons and their powers can also be forces of good, but that feels like a bit of a stretch and still doesn't give us any sympathetic demons other than arguably silene. speaking of silene the buildup to her encounter with akira was dragged out and didn't make the most sense as to what her exact motives were at that point in time.
the art is breathtaking at points i found myself just stuck staring at the same page for a while taking in all the details over and over, the demons generally look cool and there's amazing spreads and shots of the environment too that match the best of what i've seen in the manga i've read. the way the panels are framed makes it flow in a way that even some modern manga honestly seem to struggle with too. but even with all that i guess some people might have a problem with the art because the character designs do show their age, and look really cartoonish and low on detail the vast majority of the time. ryo's design in particular reminded me of that one zhao leader in kingdom whose design is part of a running gag about how plain he looks, that's the tier we're at here. but honestly i don't think it's too bad or distracting at all, and the meh character designs are more than made up for by the great monster designs and other aspects of the art. as a side note i didn't mention the fights at all really because the fights weren't especially interesting, and also weren't an important aspect of the story overall. i think the fact it skips the final battle entirely to is proof of that, the primary conflict is more philosophical than it is physical.
overall and in summary, devilman deserves to be remembered as a classic, though it hasn't aged with the most grace, so i'll give it a kinda arbitrary 84 out of 100 points. after all, if stories needed to be completely flawless to be classics there wouldn't be any classics at all. devilman was also far more influential than i previously knew as it helped influence berserk by kentarou miura and doubtless many other stories that went on to be greatly influential in their own right. i should add though that it's a different enough experience from devilman crybaby that i think you would be able to enjoy both without having it feel really repetitive, and if you are gonna go for both probably go for crybaby first, it makes the whole thing more streamlined and refreshed for modern audiences and actually increases the role of the supporting characters in spite of only being 10 episodes long. content warning for both though, there's lots of booba, uncensored violence, and more booba
