Ranked #2435

Amon: The Apocalypse of Devilman

My very first anime experience, (aside from mass market dubbed kids cartoons in the 80's) was the Devilman OVAs; The Birth & Demon Bird. I have never fallen out of love with these & as of this writing, they remain at the top of my favourites list.

When I found out about Amon I knew I had to watch it. As a pre-existing fan of the series I knew the characters & backgrounds but if you haven't seen the OVA's there's very little chance you're going to fully understand what's happening.

The plot is quite simple, however its almost completely buried beneath the extreme violence & questions. i.e Who the hell is that? What's exactly is happening here? & What the hell? - Where all questions I repeatedly asked myself throughout the watching.

I'm quite desensitised to animated violence but there are several scenes which made me think; ok, that's going way too far.

The art & sound I can't really fault as there's nothing wrong with them and as long as you've have seen the OVA's you know who the characters are (well most of them) but there has been an obvious passage of time between installments and there is little explanation given to who new characters are & what they're doing there.

I was disappointed that I couldn't enjoy this as much as I wanted to. It feels as though it was only half way done when it finished & that there was supposed to be another installment.

I would not recommend this OVA if you haven't seen the originals. If you are already a Devilman fan then you might enjoy this as a small side piece to the overall saga but you also might find yourself annoyed at the almost lack of respect shown to the characters.
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I want to write this review in order to provide a more balanced view of this OAV. It's not as good as the previous Devilman OAVs. It is the weakest anime adaptation of Devilman and isn't really as good as Violence Jack either, despite being equally as violent.

However, I feel that like Violence Jack, it gets too much of a bad rap. In itself, this OAV effectively managed to translate some of the more harrowing scenes of the original Devilman story to motion, and it does those scenes justice. Miki's death in the original manga was an utterly horrifying and disturbing set of events in the manga which to me is the single most memorable scene in manga history, and the sequence in this OAV manages to retain much of that memorability.

Besides that, the end sequence goes back to the whole message and point of Devilman quite well, about a man coming to terms with the bestial nature of the human race through the symbolic interaction of his soul with a demon's. Where it suffers is in the middle. It's pretty much a set of extremely violent confrontations, and not much else. However, even these do present to shock much like Go Nagai treats violence in general. In recent violent animes, the violence isn't strong enough to shock. But Go Nagai's works, they always are, are meant to be, and I think some people forget that, and are too quick to rubbish them, and thus don't take them in the right way. I don't think anyone who realises that needs "professional help" but rather know how to react to a work that actually shocks them in this day of strong desensitisation.

So, to summarise, whilst the Amon OAV is not great, it is a solid addition to the Devilman lore and if nothing else, allows it to keep it's crown as the most infamous, and meaningful, violent story in anime and manga culture. read more