The beautiful wings of death
Aside from being a rather perverted little bastard, there is something quite alluring about the works of Go Nagai. Though he’s infamous for creating stories as morally abhorrent as Violence Jack, I’ve always loved his Devilman. It might be vulgar, violent and edge towards illogic, but it’s fun too. Up until yesterday, I’d only seen the excellent yet all too short 1987/1990 OVA series, but now, finally, all 5 volumes of his original Devilman manga have been scanslated. 2 volumes in and I’m sitting here buzzing with excitement, it’s wonderfully weird, crazy stuff. Indeed, there is something innately fascinating about Nagai’s depiction of demons; not that they’re monsters per se, but they seem to have built up this whole culture and have their own ideas about beauty and morality. Whenever I watch (and now, read) Devilman, that aspect always catches me off guard; it’s all the more remarkable for suddenly transforming into this bitter-sweet, demonic love story.
4 comments
Devilman does look like an awesome manga. The anime OVAs leave something to be desired, but they’re enjoyable enough. I’ve heard that the Devilman Lady manga is supposed to be even more violent and “out there”. However, the anime for Devilman Lady (The Devil Lady) is one of the best pieces of anime I’ve seen. You’ll like it if you like anything done by Go Nagai. I’m an appreciator of Go Nagai, but I have a friend who is a big fan of his. After watching some of the anime adaptations, I can see why.
I still haven’t seen Devilman Lady, thanks for the reminder. I can see myself going on a bit of a Go Nagai binge over the next few weeks! Pretty amazing to think he wrote a lot of this around 1972/3. Way ahead of his time.
Have you seen all 3 OVAs? I loved them, well the first two, the last one is pretty bad, but still good for obvious reasons. I’ve got volumes 1 and 2 of the manga too, only read volume 1, I never knew Nagai was Ishinori’s assistant and Ishinori was Tezuka’s assistant, seeing such violence in a style similar to Tezuka’s is weird as hell, but still awesome. I need to finish off the manga myself though first. Hope the manga ending is better than the OVAs.
I’ve only seen the first two Devilman OVAs, which, going by your opinion and the general consensus, is probably for the best. I read there was some massive gap in between OVA 2 and 3, so that might explain the difference in quality? Anyway, be sure to read Vol. 2 of Devilman; it’s a lot better than Vol.1 and brings us up to scratch with the end of OVA 2. To be honest, I was surprised by just how faithful the anime adaptation was to the manga, it’s virtually scene-for-scene the same.
And talking of Tezuka, have you read MW? I haven’t read it yet, but it sounds a lot more twisted than anything Nagai ever wrote. Tezuka has this ‘Disney’ reputation because of Astro Boy, but a lot of his more adult-oriented work seems to completely destroy any notion that he’s all happy-happy-joy-joy. Just read a review of Vol. 1 of MW and you’ll get what I mean.
Leave a Comment