Defense Devil

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We all know that we have a “Butler from Hell”- Kuroshitsuji. Now what do we have? – “Lawyer from Hell” – Defense Devil.

Meet Mephisto Bart Kucabara. He was a prince from the Demon world but was banished due to some reasons ( I don’t wanna spoil here), and now he lives in Event Horizon. A place between heaven and hell. In order to get back to his home, he must collect this so called “Dark Matter” from souls who were casts to hell.. He then decided to become a defense lawyer. They let their client(the dead) sign a contract, prove their innocence and claim the ... Dark Matter within them after the case is solved.

At first glace, this manga is just about solving cases. Kucabara meets a soul, lets them sign a contract, finds out the cause of death and the offense they’ve committed before they died, prove their innocence and collect dark matter afterwards. It goes for about 4-5 chapters, but I must say the cases are all interesting – detective stories that have supernatural events. That’s for the introductory part. The story starts to pick up when he meets Sister Idamaria. As the story progresses, it reveals more mysteries, and the questions are slowly answered. The plot would make you say “What!?” or “Holy!?”. It reveals answers slowly but surely. It doesn’t give readers a full blown answer at once that would make them hard to understand or something like introducing many characters at once. As for the art, it is nicely done. Kinda reminds me of Air gear when I first read it.

Overall Defense Devil is a nice action packed manga with a dash of comedy that will make you ask for more. You guys have to read it while it’s still less than 100 chapters. As for the number of pages, it spans just like your regular shounen jump manga (18-20 pages except for the first few chapters). Trust me, this manga won’t let you down.

A very big thanks to YoruAngel866 for recommending me this manga or else I would have missed one of the most epic manga of this time.

PS. I would still like to write more but I think I might spoil you guys so there just read and see for yourself.

To begin I would just like to say that reading this manga was, despite all my negative criticism, an enjoyable experience in which I would suggest to someone who reads manga purely for enjoyment. I have written a lot of negative criticism bellow but would like to say that those are only the negative parts to the story. This manga has a lot of good qualities otherwise I wouldn't have bothered to read it all (my personal opinion).

Firstly, the story was compelling and had well thought out plot which was thrilling to read, especially if you like mystery. However that is only ... for the first 20 chapters at most. I fell in love with the characters and their personalities in the beginning, but was sad to see the mystery solving Devil Lawyer disappear only to be replaced by an action manga hero. His perks and quirks where mixed around and he became a different character who was no longer suited to solve crimes but instead suited to fight the criminals.

There was one arc however I loved, "Kucabara's Wisdom" (basically his back story). It started off with a bang which was intense and really emotional, yet it was also the beginning in the shift from Mystery/Plot Based manga to Action/Entertaining manga. I didn't notice at the time, simply assuming the arc was just the tragic back story, because we all no we can't have a manga without one of those. But it set up the course for the rest of the manga, defining what the "final confrontation" would be, defining a reason to go adventuring along with a villain to defeat. It was amazing and I loved reading every minute of it.

It wasn't until around chapter 50 that I really started to notice the decline in the stories integrity. Not only was the mangaka trying to increase their readers base using stereotypical action plot twists, but the art took a turn from beautiful to ecchi. There was one character who had a different skimpy outfit every time you saw her to the point where I didn't know who was there until someone said her name. Each change involved not only a clothes, but her hair and even her mannerisms where changed as well.

*paragraph long emotional rant*
There was one chapter which was absolutely pointless to the entire manga. It started out that a new character was introduced, then a dangerous problem was introduced. So the new character solves this problem with some rainbow magic and disappears never to be seen again. THEN we learn that she was an ILLUSION!!! They also introduce this clock that isn't used until the very end of the manga. It's not special, it doesn't have any power. It's just used to countdown 2 minutes in the last 5 chapters... IT WAS ALL SO ANNOYINGLY POINTLESS!

The ending to this manga was hard to swallow. It was inconclusive as to what was actually happening. We had 3 new bad guys introduced in the span of 5 chapters and the main characters entire motivation for action was flipped upside down and replaced by something new. I am just going to say that the last 17 were rushed and should have lasted 50 or more chapters if the series wasn't ending. Sub plots were abruptly ended and ruined by the easiest means possible. I felt terrible seeing that all the depth and life to the story was sucked dry as it ended. (there was even someone who dies, then is spontaneously brought back to life without any reason to take a hit for the main character and die again...) This manga which started out really nice turned into a real travesty at the end, story wise. The plot was screwed over but it was still an enjoyable read. So; don't read this is you want a well written plot based manga, read this if you want and enjoyable time wasting manga. That pretty much sums it up.

Defense Devil was a huge disappointment for me. It starts out strong, but you can almost see the point where the authors just stopped caring and started blatantly trolling the readers. It doesn't even deserve to be mentioned in the same sentence as the manga duo's earlier work Shin Angyo Onshi, although from there it's hard to go anywhere but down.

The art is probably the best part of the manga. The artist half of the combo, Kyung-Il Yang is pretty much a master at his craft, delivering atmospheric landscapes, great character designs, badass fight scenes and beautiful titties.

The characters are not bad, but there are ... too many to flesh them out properly. Some standouts were the protagonist, his sidekick, and the baddie who fights by using physics calculations to trigger complex domino effects in the environment.

The concept itself is a little weird, but there have been weirder. It could have been a good story. It could have been, but it wasn't. I had written it off as an enjoyable time-waster even before the last 20 chapters or so, where it takes a serious dive in quality. I was literally laughing at how bad some of the twists and developments towards the end were. Final verdict: skippable. Go read their previous work if you haven't and hope that they'll find where they dropped their mojo for the next manga.