After Seiji Kishi's wildly successful anime adaptation of Persona 4, it was only natural we would see him tackle another popular Atlus video game franchise, right? That's what we got with Devil Survivor 2, a 13 episode series produced by a relative unknown in the anime industry, Studio Bridge. Considering the success Kishi had with Persona 4, we could expect the same great things with Devil Survivor 2...ah expectations...how you never cease to fail me.
This series is the very definition of the phrase "all style and no substance." Devil Survivor 2 is a GORGEOUSLY animated series with production values through the roof. However, Kishi faces the same problem he had with Angel Beats...he tried to cram way too much into too little of space. Devil Survivor 2 is supposed to be a character driven series with well fleshed out characters to drive a dark, horrifically bleak plot. However, since Kishi only had 13 episodes to work with, this series felt rushed in its character development (or lack there of) and it resulted in the series not having the "impact" it should've had. I will warn you right now (as if you couldn't tell from the title), there is a lot of death in this series. However, like I stated, due to the characters not being fleshed out, their deaths have very little impact, at least not as much impact as they should've had.
As far as the story is concerned, it revolves around a graduating high school student named Hibiki Kuze, who is hanging out with his best friend Daichi Shijima after college entrance exams. While hanging out, Daichi shows Hibiki a phone app that shows people their faces when they die. While waiting for their ride in the subway, they encounter a girl from another class named Io Nitta, someone Daichi has a crush on. While waiting for their ride, they all get messages of their dead face clip of the train derailing and killing all of them, and all given the choice by the app if they want to live or die. By choosing to live, they avoid a near death experience when the train does derail, but their worlds will never be the same after this event as they discover that the end of the world is at hand and they'll have to fight to survive. Overall, I did find it to be an interesting plot that at least kept me interested in how this world was coming to an end. However, in my opinion, a story is only as good as the characters that drive it...and that's where this series took a turn for the worst.
The characters were so underdeveloped that it was sad. While I don't think the cast nor the characters themselves were necessarily terrible or unlikable, the problem was ALL of them were underdeveloped. After the first few episodes, Kishi gives us the impression that we need to be invested in Hibiki, Nitta, and Daich and their growing friendshipi. However, other than learning about all three of them trying to get into college, we learn next to nothing about them. We don't learn anything about what shaped their personalities or their motivations, and other than a short flashback later on in the series, there is absolutely nothing displayed about Hibiki's back story. That's where the problem with this series lies. The nature of Shin Megami Tensei games for the most part, is the choices you make to develop your character. However, when you have a contained anime series, the choices need to be made by the production staff...but in this instance, Kishi didn't make any choices and left the characters open for the viewer to make their own interpretation about them. That sort of practice works fine for a video game, but not when you're telling a story, especially in an anime series format. It was an odd choice because in Kishi's prior work (Persona 4), Yu Narukami, the series lead was fleshed out and the production staff did choose how to develop him. I'd say this is one instance where Kishi should've followed his own prior example. While I mentioned it earlier, this series had way too many notable characters to completely cover in a 13 episode format. There were 14 notable characters that were either main characters or incredibly important supporting characters. However, when you only have 13 episodes to work with, it's impossible to flesh out every single one and when you have a story as active as this one, there just wasn't enough time to cover both bases. I'll give this series a little bit of credit though. Alcor was one hell of a memorable character due to his bizarre appearance and unorthodox behavior...but even that feels like a drag considering how forgettable all the rest of the characters are.
The MAJOR saving grace for this series should come as no surprise. It's the animation and music. The production value of this series was incredible. The animation was crisp and provided a dreary setting and the high-quality music provided a bleak mood (even if the characters didn't). While this series only had 13 episodes to work with, I'll at least admit Studio Bridge went all out with it. I found the demon designs and the fight scenes to be incredibly fascinating and certainly does justice to the wonderful universe Shin Megami Tensei has to offer. My one complaint (albeit minor) is I found the character designs, primarily the costume designs, to be rather silly for a series of this magnitude. While I know it's probably derived from the series directly, I found some of the character costumes to be downright hilarious, from Kuze's rabbit eared hoodie, to Hinako's breast flop top, to Fumi's swimsuit with a full-length cape. It's pretty sad when a series this ominous can make you chuckle from just mere costume designs.
All-in-all, I can't help but feel disappointed by this series. This was one series I was looking forward to the most when this season started and it left me feeling discontent. When a character driven series has really shallow character development, you have problems. It's just hard to get invested in a series where there is such little development between the characters throughout. I will say this series did have a pretty strong finish with its last two episodes, however, by then, the damage was done. While I thought the final episode was a strong finish to a weak series, some people might get a little turned off by its Mai-Hime-esque conclusion. I'm not sure how this series works as an adaptation since I've never played the video game, but as an anime series, it failed to deliver in a lot of ways. Now, the question is, who would I recommend this to? Well, I'd say if you liked other video game adapted or inspired anime like Persona 4 or Persona: Trinity Soul, you might enjoy this. However, a viewer that loves being invested in character over plot is more than likely going to find this to be a difficult watch. I hate to say it, but I have a feeling that I'm going to say by the end of the year that Devil Survivor 2 was unfortunately one of the more disappointing anime of 2013.
