Ore to Akuma no Blues

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Synonyms: Me & the Devil Blues

Japanese: 俺と悪魔のブルーズ

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Information

Type: Manga

Volumes: Unknown

Chapters: Unknown

Status: Publishing

Published: Nov 25, 2003 to ?

Genres: Drama, Horror

Themes: Historical, Psychological

Demographic: Seinen

Serialization: Young Magazine the 3rd

Authors: Hiramoto, Akira (Story & Art)

Statistics

Score: 8.05¹ (scored by 3,858 users)

¹ indicates a weighted score.

Ranked: #700²

² based on the top manga page. Please note that 'R18+' titles are excluded.

Popularity: #838

Members: 24,862

Favorites: 289

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8.05

Ranked #700Popularity #838Members 24,862

MangaYoung Magazine the 3rdHiramoto, Akira (Story & Art)

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Synopsis

Legend has it that if you take your guitar and stand at a crossroads at the witching hour, the devil will appear. He'll grab your instrument, play a song, and hand it back to you. You'll walk away an expert bluesman, but you'll have to pay the price: your immortal soul.

The year is 1929. Deep in the Mississippi Delta, a young man named R J dreams of becoming a bluesman. R J is a simple farmer who can barely play guitar, but when he takes a midnight stroll, his life is forever changed.

A phantasmagoric reimagining of the life of legendary blues great Robert Johnson, Ore to Akuma no Blues follows the journey of a man who really did sell his soul to the devil. Why not come along for the ride?

(Source: Del Rey, edited)

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Background

Ore to Akuma no Blues was previously serialized in Afternoon until it went on hiatus in 2008. It resumed in Young Magazine the 3rd on September 5, 2014.

Del Rey published the series in English as Me and the Devil Blues: The Unreal Life of Robert Johnson in two 2-in-1 omnibus from July 29, 2008 to December 30, 2008.

A combination horror story and re-telling of the mythologies of the American South, Ore to Akuma no Blues (Me and the Devil Blues) features RJ, a man who sells his soul to the devil in exchange for the devil teaching him to play the blues. The story features many elements familiar to American readers but not much featured in Japanese comics, including the practice of lynching and the sharp racial divisions in the south around the time of the story.

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Characters

Johnson, Robert

Main

Barrow, Clyde

Main

Parker, Bonnie

Supporting

Ike

Supporting

McDonald, Stanley

Supporting

Reviews

Jul 23, 2025

midas123

Recommended

Preliminary (38/? eps)

Ore to Akuma no Blues is some real good shit. I went in not knowing what to expect, and my first reaction was just confusion. It’s a slow burn, especially after reading something fast-paced, but it pulls you into its world. It’s a story that is so immersive it becomes uncomfortable, and that’s what makes it brilliant. It’s a raw, unfiltered dive into 1920s America, showing how dark and messy it was, with racism around every corner.

The art is a huge part of this. It’s messy, but in a way that perfectly captures the feeling of the world. You can feel the suffocating energy of ...

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Oct 16, 2009

benincasa

Recommended

Preliminary (Unknown/? eps)

The mangaka/author is definitely knowledgeable when it comes to Robert Johnson and the myths surrounding him. But this is by no means a manga biography of Johnson. Given that there is very little verifiable information on the bluesman, the book takes a lot of liberties and, in my opinion, gets a bit far-fetched at times.
The book' depictions of 30's blues clubs and the like seem relatively authentic, and compared to a lot of other manga, the book has a very 'western' feel.
The artwork is one of the book's strong points, with a lot of attention of detail. Most is gritty-looking and fleshed out ...

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Mar 11, 2025

1stDecame4Danime

Not Recommended

Funny

Preliminary (33/? eps)

To give a broad, spoiler free overview: This manga is about RJ, a famous African Blues musician from Depression Era America, wanting to pursue blues (for no reason), selling his soul to the devil for the skills to play the blues (again, for no reason. The fantastical elements are deliberately depicted as potentially merely mundane misunderstandings, though not really since everyone can see his bedeviled hand (I've looked up RJ's music, it's quite slow paced so I've no idea why there are historical claims he played fast enough for 2 people)), struggling with racism and being unable to safely refuse the orders of the white ... gangster thief Clyde (of the famous Bonnie & Clyde), spent on the run from racists trying to catch them. Occasional extremely repetitive images of man holding guitar to show blues is being played. That's all.

A visual medium is the worst possible choice for depicting a story about music. The mangaka should've known better. Instead that music mostly falls into incidental background for the actual plot which is mostly a horror-lite display of racism/immorality in an action/drama of very little action or substance and a whole lot of closeups of faces and filler dialogue for masturbatory edging anything actually happening as mostly nothing happens until a bunch of nobodies die and/or the plot armor pair run off in story-long chase sequences interspersed with breaks.

Very slow paced, RJ's introductory premise stretches what should be the 1st ch into 4 chs with vapid, self-indulgent, artistically boring/pointless/repetitive panels to waste everyone's time. Then continues onto ch 5 with a main character introduction through pointless flashforward to the death of a main character betrayed by RJ removing any suspense about where the entire story so far will go for the only 2 main characters (hello plot armor, and the flashforward does nothing to demonstrate artistic skill since it's just the most predictable ending based on what everyone who knows anything of Bonnie & Clyde already knows), who aside from the occasional cartoonishly evil villain are the only actual characters of any consequence/stay-time in the entire story so far.

The mood is also bizarrely all over the place from extremely pretentiously artsy, to childishly tropey slapstick (humorless) comedy (the author is very good at comedy/ecchi however there's none of that here). It is nonetheless surprisingly an accurate enough representation of the unsightly ignorant consequences of systematic racism of America at the time, especially for a modern Japanese individual's depiction, and of course the mangaka is quite skilled at drawing art.

I really don't recommend this boring manga, 3/10 (where 5/10 is average).

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Poll: Ore to Akuma no Blues Chapter 38 Discussion noahsd - Jul 23	5 replies	by Vegetto95 »» Jul 23, 7:18 PM
Poll: Ore to Akuma no Blues Chapter 3 Discussion Stark700 - Oct 23, 2014	3 replies	by DarkVoyagerx »» Feb 28, 2024 3:42 PM
Poll: Ore to Akuma no Blues Chapter 1 Discussion Stark700 - Oct 23, 2014	9 replies	by TarikKabir »» Nov 9, 2023 12:15 PM
hiramoto has such range psyche-K - Apr 28, 2023	2 replies	by psyche-K »» Jul 28, 2023 8:53 PM
ch 34-38 RAW DTSAMW - Sep 30, 2019	2 replies	by Arcturu »» Feb 25, 2023 9:59 PM

Ore to Akuma no Blues
Me and the Devil Blues: The Unreal Life of Robert Johnson
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