Devilman

Add to My List

Add to Favorites

Alternative Titles

Synonyms: Devilman: The Classic Collection

Japanese: デビルマン

More titles

Information

Type: Manga

Volumes: 5

Chapters: 53

Status: Finished

Published: Jun 11, 1972 to Jun 24, 1973

Genres: Action, Adventure, Drama, Fantasy, Horror, Sci-Fi, Supernatural

Themes: Mythology, Psychological, Super Power

Demographic: Shounen

Serialization: Shounen Magazine (Weekly)

Authors: Nagai, Go (Story & Art)

Statistics

Score: 8.03¹ (scored by 24,396 users)

¹ indicates a weighted score.

Ranked: #696²

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

Popularity: #296

Members: 56,687

Favorites: 3,402

Resources

Wikipedia

8.03

Ranked #696Popularity #296Members 56,687

MangaShounen Magazine (Weekly)Nagai, Go (Story & Art)

Add to My List

Volumes: /5

Chapters: /53

Edit
Synopsis

Soft-hearted Akira Fudou has always been somewhat of a pushover. When he reunites with his childhood friend, Ryou Asuka, in a fateful encounter, Ryou reveals to him the terrifying reality of his father's research: demons exist and are planning to claim possession of the earth once again.

Eager to help his friend save humanity, Akira agrees to attend Black Sabbath, a party filled with depravity and corruption, to attempt to merge with a demon. A near-death encounter causes him to unify with Amon, a demon feared amongst even his own kind. Together they form Devilman, a combination of Amon's strength and Akira's pure heart.

After uniting with Amon, Akira begins to fight against the demons with his newfound power, desperate to stop the downfall of all human civilization.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

Edit
Background

As of March 2017, over 50 million copies of Devilman have been sold worldwide.

The series was published in English by Seven Seas Entertainment as two omnibus volumes from May 22, 2018, to November 13, 2018. The manga was also released as five Japanese-English bilingual volumes by Kodansha. It was also published in Brazilian Portuguese by NewPOP Editora as two omnibus volumes from November 23, 2019, to March 26, 2020.

Edit

Related Entries

More characters
Characters

Asuka, Ryou

Main

Fudou, Akira

Main

Devilman

Main

Satan

Supporting

Makimura, Miki

Supporting

Silene

Supporting

Amon

Supporting

Psychogenie

Supporting

Kawamoto, Mikiko

Supporting

Jinmen

Supporting

Reviews

Apr 11, 2015

Dokubachi

Recommended

Considered to be the author's most iconic work, Devilman has created certain standards for works to come after it and could be considered a pioneer in that respect. However, it is questionable how well can it cope with the tastes of today and not be cast aside as a mere superheroic work with horror elements.

One of the weakest and probably most prominent aspects is its artwork; which could repel readers immediately. However, there is more than meets the eye in this clunky and out-of-place cartoon-ish style. Emotional overtones simply ooze out of panels, while anatomical accuracy is sacrificed for the sake of distorted depictions ...

Open

Gift

Apr 29, 2016

RabbytX

Mixed Feelings

"Beware that, when cutting onions, you yourself do not get cut... for when you gaze long into the onion. The onion will make you cry like a bitch."
-Friedrich Nietzsche while cutting onions.

Through the years of reading manga you accumulate experience that will probably lead you in despising generic, plot holed and genuinely boring stories that were once to your preference. You move on to something you think is more appropriate for the mileage you got from reading such stories. You want stories that are perfectly coherent to the narrative, you want flawed human beings, you want stories that you can look back at and think ... that they were not completely shit. But once in a while there are stories that work the complete opposite. Such mangas are the ones that Go Nagai writes.
Go Nagai is a legend in the business as much as Rumiko Takahashi, Moto Hagio and many more of those who shaped the industry as we know it today. He is mostly known for inventing two genres, that being the ecchi and super robot genre respectively. And while those are big innovations at the time, I think that the stamp of Nagai is the high brutality that is involved in a lot of his works. Among them the best and most known one is Devilman. Shocking the readers at the time of its publication and somehow pulling it off to this day, it is to many regarded as a classic and it has inspired many popular works such as Parasyte, Berserk and many more. But there is more to it than just being a work of inspiration as it represents Go Nagai himself quite well.
What do I mean? While pioneering the manga world, you quickly notice that contrary to his famous colleagues, he isn’t regarded as an iconic writer. In fact he is known for doing a lot of shitty series and even those that are regarded as his masterpieces are genuinely shit. His stories are so heavily plot holed, they are not subtle at all, and his characters are bat shit insane. But there needs to be a reason to why people regard his works as classics. Not because of historical value but rather, and I was pretty shocked myself, they are a ton of fun to read. Especially Devilman which is as much a train wreck as Nagais carrier itself. Now that we cleared the context in regards to Devilman, let us tackle the actual characters and story.

The story is of epic proportions but not initially. We start of by meeting the main character Fudou Akira who lends a helping hand to his friend Ryou Asuka. But quickly complications occur. As we have seen from the first chapter, demons exist in this world, and our main character quickly becomes aware of that. Anyway, demons have reemerged from their slumber and are out to conquer the world, and now it is to our protagonist to face evil by becoming one of them as well, as he becomes Devilman. From than on we have a monster of the week story that while not per se bad, it is not as entertaining as the later parts. And now if you lasted this long you are going to get a payoff. The pay off is a crude, brutal, and probably one of the better anti-war stories I have read on shear impact alone. As it is a story about who the real monsters are. It is about humanity and the loss of humanity. The characters are quite hard to pin-point as they are not human at all and then again they are. Why? Because they really are not so well characterized nor developed to call them human. They are rather shallowly written and that certainly isn’t a good thing. But they can be looked more as symbols, as hollow containers where we can project our humanity into them, or have we lost it as well through reading this story? The demons on the other hand are not developed in a particular way either, besides a certain character who one could say is the star of this work. The manga in itself is as mentioned before really badly written. Nagai introduced elements into the story that later on don’t make any sense as either they are regarded as non existent or they are just disregarded as not important. Which creates a lot of problems as we move on and screech our heads and think what happened with that part of the story? Additionally it has pacing problems as there are a lot of times you ask yourself why particular scenes are dragged out and why some are skipped through. We have plot conveniences as characters either win or loss not through their ability but rather because Nagai pulled something out of his arss. I have to mention the ending as well, since quite a bunch don’t like it at all. I think it is perfect for what the author tried to convey with this manga. People disregard it as not well done because of the way it was paced; I think it worked very well because of that very aspect, as the ending would not be as impact full as it was if it was shown in a conventional way. Moving on to the art.

As far as I have read, and that is not really much in regards to his other works, they usually start with passable art to attract attention. But as you move on you get what the art of Nagai is about. Honestly, it is pretty bad, especially if you are not familiar to the cartoon-ish side of manga in that time. Anyway, as you move on it improves in various ways but it never does so in a big way. Although you get used to it, and I personally got attached to the style as I checked other Devilman related work that aesthetically are more pleasing than the original, but I just couldn’t get attached to the artwork as I did in this installment.

And finally we arrived to the end of this review. In all honesty, Devilman is a work I expected nothing of, and at the end I got so much. It is a manga about the loss of humanity but it actually did something different for me, as it restored faith in my own humanity, for I have been an elitist prick who couldn’t enjoy anything as Devilman without tearing it a new one. This manga is one who a lot of people will not enjoy for many reasons, but if you stick with it for a while and find yourself get into it, you will certainly have a fun time.

Open

Gift

Aug 12, 2016

DeeWatchesAnime

Not Recommended

This manga is an experience. Go Nagai experiments with genres, style and tone ultimately creating a story that is incoherent, full of nonsensical plot twists that culminate in a truly bizarre anti-climax ending. Amidst all the chaos, you may find elements you enjoy, but they are likely to be scarce as the manga has no focus whatsoever.

Devilman starts as an origin story for the eponymous character, only far more disturbing than your typical western comic book. This is typical of Go Nagai's work. There's plenty of violence, gore and rape from the beginning. This is in stark contrast to the art style, depicting the ... human characters as if they're in a newspaper comic strip like Peanuts or Archie Comics. At the beginning, Devilman even has a minor conflict against some school bullies, in the same volume where demons murder a room of people for no reason.

The first arc largely focuses on Devilman keeping his secret identity and saving his would-be love interest from the demons, making use of one time powers such as eyebrow razors that are never seen again in any media. The early part of the manga has some promise, but the tone is completely inconsistent. Most of the time it's fairly lighthearted and Devilman is a normal high school student, but there's always a sense that the plot will go off the rails.

Eventually it does, rather spectacularly. This is what brings us to the next arc of Devilman and the best one in my opinion, the one shot villains, comprising only a few chapters of the entire manga. This is where possibly the best Devilman character, Jinmen, appears and has an amazingly dark, disgusting segment and is definitely worth a look. He would go on to become one of the most featured characters in the franchise and his entire section is excellent, barring maybe the finale of the fight which inserts a moral choice in place of a logical conclusion.

The fights in this manga tend to not be satisfying as Go Nagai will pull a new power for Devilman out of nowhere for him to win. The villains, besides Jinmen and Sirene, tend to be as undeveloped. The same goes for the main characters who largely exist as plot devices or symbols to be subverted, in place of good writing. It's a shame that Jinmen did not become the basis for a slew of one shots, as this whole arc comes to an abrupt stop to make way for build up into the ultimate anti-climax. The story veers off in so many directions it leaves no room for characterization.

Up until this point, Devilman has largely not faced any conflict he can't overcome by brute force and sheer dumb luck. It is now that the writer decides that he wants to make a political story like X-Men where the demons are a symbol for downtrodden people, or something. This is the point of no return where nothing begins to make sense. The story is effectively crumpled up and thrown in the garbage to make way for a massive plot twist. Everything that happened is completely meaningless and the final chapter in particular comes out of nowhere. It gets so abstract I had to read online to understand what the last pages are showing, as it's never explained.

Overall, this manga might be worth a read to form your own opinion. I read it in a day, and I can't say it wasn't captivating, but left me feeling very disappointed. Go Nagai would go on to make other mangas that while not as experimental and acclaimed, were far more coherent and focused properly on either the violence (Violence Jack) or experimental plot (Devilman Lady). To properly enjoy them it's a requirement to at least know the Devilman story. However if you're coming in to the original Devilman expecting a deep plot, good characters and art that isn't stuck in the 70s, I doubt you'll feel satisfied.

Open

Gift

More stacks

Interest Stacks

「31 Days of Horror 」- Halloween Manga Recommendations

by Weebookey

32 Entries · 42 Restacks

best rated shounen 51-100 (part 2)

by etanmess

50 Entries · 2 Restacks

Best-Selling Manga (1-50)

by AveryRhodes2003

50 Entries · 154 Restacks

More recommendations
Recommendations

View All

More news
Recent News

North American Anime & Manga Releases for November

Here are the North American anime & manga releases for November Week 1: November 6 - 12 Anime Releases Black Clover Part 2 Blu-ray & DVD Combo Galaxy Angel Z...read more

Nov 5, 2018 2:27 PM by Sakana-san | Discuss (7 comments)

North American Anime & Manga Releases for May

Here are the North American anime & manga releases for May Week 1: May 1 - 7 Anime Releases Atom: The Beginning Complete Collection Blu-ray Ayakashi Complete Col...read more

Apr 30, 2018 3:26 AM by Sakana-san | Discuss (3 comments)

More discussions
Recent Forum Discussion

Poll: Devilman Chapter 20 Discussion gknight - Jun 26, 2013	16 replies	by Biisoo »» May 18, 3:19 PM
Poll: Devilman Chapter 1 Discussion accela - May 7, 2008	6 replies	by Biisoo »» May 17, 1:33 PM
Any SFW version of Devilman??? ltarget - Jan 30, 2018	16 replies	by 24846 »» Mar 2, 2023 4:32 AM
anime or manga h6n65b65hb65 - Aug 31, 2021	4 replies	by miblan »» Jan 29, 2023 1:21 PM
The 53 chapter situation ShadowMonkey - Jan 31, 2018	6 replies	by 1000yearofdeath_ »» May 29, 2022 12:34 PM

Devilman
Edit

What would you like to edit?

Alternative Titles

Information

Statistics

Resources

Edit
Synopsis

Edit
Background

Related Entries

Visit MALxJapan
MALxJapan -More than just anime-

More characters
Characters

Reviews

Interest Stacks

More recommendations
Recommendations

More news
Recent News

More discussions
Recent Forum Discussion

MoreTop Anime

MoreTop Airing Anime

MoreMost Popular Characters

Devilman Edit What would you like to edit? SynopsisBackgroundAlternative TitlesPictureChapters/VolumesPublishing DatesRelationsTypeExternal Links

Alternative Titles

Information

Statistics

Resources

EditSynopsis

EditBackground

Related Entries

Visit MALxJapan MALxJapan -More than just anime-

More charactersCharacters

Reviews

Interest Stacks

More recommendations Recommendations

More newsRecent News

More discussionsRecent Forum Discussion

MoreTop Anime

MoreTop Airing Anime

MoreMost Popular Characters

Devilman
Edit

What would you like to edit?

Edit
Synopsis

Edit
Background

Visit MALxJapan
MALxJapan -More than just anime-

More characters
Characters

More recommendations
Recommendations

More news
Recent News

More discussions
Recent Forum Discussion