The story starts out when a colossal, unnatural disaster hits Japan which pushes civilians and society into desperation, as any major disaster in real life would. Soon, invaders called Septentriones appear and humans must defeat every one of them using demons they can summon in order to survive. Wait a minute, doesn’t this premise sound a bit familiar? Devil Survivor 2 borrows a lot of the same concept from Neon Genesis Evangelion. However the video game managed to blend in its own traditional and original aspects of the Megami Tensei franchise, (Devil Survivor belongs to the Megami Tensei franchise), thereby allowing the game to hold onto its charm. The same can’t be said for the anime adaptation. Unlike the video game, the anime sheds off every inch of strategy in every battle, and replaces it with random attacks that seem to serve no purpose other than for eye-candy and to weakly move the plot forward. The result is mainly dull action and boring battle scenes.
One of the first problems that appear in the anime is that it never really genuinely shows how such a monumental impact is affecting the civilians and society. In Devil Survivor 2’s case, world-building is essential in order to allow the viewer to sink in the necessary details so that important aspects such as pacing and plot and character development feel natural. World-building in this anime’s case could had provided more details on the nature of the post-apocalyptic setting, what the order of society is currently like, how various civilians are holding up, the government’s reaction, etc. Unfortunately, the viewer gets none of this in a genuine manner but gets instead various plot devices that jump out of nowhere which feel jarring, unnatural, and in certain cases, make for unconvincing writing in both story and character-wise.
Enter Hibiki, the main protagonist. He encompasses everything that many other battle shounen protagonists there ever were. He is the hero who jumps straight into action without rational thought. He is the hero who has to save everyone simply because he has the power to summon stronger demons than anyone else. By the way, why Hibiki has been granted this special power while almost everyone else has been left with much weaker demons is never explained until the last remaining few episodes. Even then, the reasoning for this special power is as cliché as it can get. The unexplained unique powers he acquires acts as plenty of plot devices, as Hibiki manages to defeat foes left and right with the help of his powerful demons, and without any convincing struggles. To hurt the writing further, for the first few episodes, this power is the only reason that drives him to become the typical hero that he is and jumps into every battle he can get his hands on. When Hibiki lacks such motivation for his heroic behaviors, he comes off as a very unconvincing character and becomes hard for the viewer to sympathize or understand with. Other characters beside Hibiki also never properly develop, and this makes for much unfruitful viewing containing melodrama and rushed events. In fact, the majority of the characters are hardly even realized, it’s as if they were put into the anime simply to fill up more cast and time and amount to nothing more.
On top of this, well-known clichés pretty much plague many parts of the anime. One notable cliché and theme used throughout the anime is… the power of emotions. Yes, screaming out loud while also screaming cliché lines can save the day in this anime.
Devil Survivor 2 the Animation was very disappointing. There is not much of a single redeeming aspect about this anime. Cliches, bland characters, overdramatic scenes due to poor development, weak narratives and overall plot really plague this anime, ultimately coming off childish and dull. And to those who played the game and hoped for a faithful adaptation in terms of story, you will be disappointed. To make it worse for the video game fans as well as for the rest of the Megami Tensei franchise fans, a lot of the Megami Tensei aspects seen in this anime are terribly realized. The anime breaks the laws of the MegaTen universe, such as how Hibiki can somehow summon Byakko as his first demon in the first episode, a high-level demon in the video game. It was also disappointing how the Demon Fusion was actually introduced in the last episode, and it didn’t help that it was intertwined with horrifying writing. Also, did I mention that Jungo is the most awkward character I’ve ever seen in any anime?
The video game is very fun and addicting. This adaptation can leave one with the impression of the exact opposite.
