The second volume of Go Nagai’s manga is a mix of genres and moods. Total apocalypse, still full of bombastic duels, and at the same time terribly sad. A true classic!
Big devil man!
Well, that’s an anime song based on Nagai’s idea already ringing in your ears. At your service. To the rhythm of this melody, we can now travel together through Japan in a killing frenzy. They mainly kill demons, but people also try their best. Even if only a few Devilmen have any chance against their opponents. As hybrids, of course, they are not easily distinguishable from enemies, which does not make them socially trustworthy.
In terms of rushing from head to toe, Devilman resembles (or perhaps it is better to say precedes and announces) such smashes as Gołkowski’s Komornik or From Dusk Till Dawn. The latter comparison may be more accurate, because Tarantino always offers the viewer more sincere sadness and completely unfunny violence … Although that’s not it yet, we need a von Trier, and maybe even Szulkin, action here. O-bi, o-ba, and everything disappears in the flash of the last tear of the last creature capable of love. No, it’s not a spoiler. Not even the only moment when a steely despair breaks through the joyful bloody clashes and (yes!) bare tits.
Who Will Inherit the Earth?
The demons want to return to the world that they only temporarily gave “into the possession” of a band of vulnerable mammals. Which, let’s add, can’t live to the max and imagine that peace or security are some key values. Only they, these hairless monkeys, can consider themselves the crown of creation. They convinced themselves that the ancient conflict had ended, not just died down. Meanwhile, for immortals, a few eons is a short break.
And here Go Nagai returns to the Bible interpreted with truly manga-like nonchalance. And accuracy, because it states that only two powers matter in it – the same ones that led to the original conflict. No, people have only so much to do with it that they overflowed the cup of bitterness. And the conflict between good and evil is really a war of one faction of angels against another.
So we see successive disasters of people, families falling apart, neighbors losing mutual trust. Akira, the title Devilman, double and triple to save his loved ones. In the final analysis, none of these efforts will prove to be valid. And it’s damn sad, even if punctuated by interludes in the form of duels.
The first volume of Devilman promised uninhibited gory entertainment and occasional pathetic speeches about friendship. Rather, he suggested joyful creativity on the level of early high school and the last pages of a math notebook. Well, maybe religion – after all, demons. The second is not so obvious. Gnosticism and some form of existentialism burst into it, the pessimistic ones in which Sisyphus’ rebellion is pathetic. The Netflix anime caught on to this tone and gave up the jokes very quickly. Nagai drags them to the tragic end.
Go Nagai’s manga doesn’t mature from issue to issue. The mix of moods sometimes grates, the ending seems a bit abrupt, and the dialogues are as pathetic as at the very beginning. And at the same time, there is a power in it that made it overgrown with interpretations and film adaptations. Many of us will simply read it as a festival of apocalypse and destruction, which is perfectly legal. But if you feel like a bit of reflection, Devilman will also do.
