Consciousness Stream - Devilman Woman (Part 1 of 6)

Episode 1-

Here's Jun. She's a model. She sees creepy things in the background for a while. Then, Mysterious Blond Girl kidnaps her and throws her into an old abandoned warehouse, in which is chained up an old abandoned werewolf. As they are prone to do, the werewolf wolfs out and attacks her. Blood goes flying, shredded clothes go flying, it licks her face with its prehensile tongue, but it's honestly shown very conservatively, with shadows covering all the objectionable bits. After a fair bit of screaming Jun transforms into her Devilman form, which is basically the same as how she always looks, except naked, with black markings barely covering all Naughty Bits, claws, and of course, the incredibly stupid Devilman Hair That Looks Like Wings. She then proceeds to rip the old abandoned werewolf limb from limb, and generally freaking out over having done so.

Mysterious Blond Girl (whose name is Asuka) comes in and explains how she's from a secret agency of Beast Hunters, whose basic MO is evidently: Find a Devilman, twist their arm into killing Beasts for them. So, she's a good guy, but a total jerk about it basically.

Meanwhile, various Secret Agency Goons are hauling the dead werewolf off, when they notice it starts growling. So, one goes over to check it out, gets his head bitten off. His friend here's this, also checks it out, gets his head bitten off. A grunt outside the truck where this is happening sees it shaking around with blood flying out, goes in to check it out... this actually goes on for a hilariously long stretch of time. Eventually it's eaten/absorbed enough random goons to become a city destroying sized really weird looking wolf-with-a-guy-sticking-out-of-its-chest monster, and starts ransacking the old abandoned warehouse, and just kinda steps on Jun.

Other Secret Agency types say to Asuka "Well, we're going to have to go find a new Devilman I guess" but she goes nyuh-uh and points out that Jun has grown to city destroying sized slightly less stupid looking Devilman form (now with blue skin, spiky tail, and wings).

Episode 2-

Giant Monster Fight!

The next morning, Jun wakes up all freaked out about being able to turn into a monster, and is about to eat a shard of broken glass, but then the phone rings, so she goes to work instead. So we've got a lot of boring mundane stuff for a while, then eventually Asuka shows up again and just kinda nags and taunts her until she comes along to take out the current fight of the week (and mentions that Secret Agency is called the "Human Agency" or HA). Along the way there's some more exposition about how Beasts are the next stage of human evolution and as a Devilman, she's basically one of them, just stuck with a pesky ol' human conscience still. Anyway, today's monster is some sort of bug man, who killed a bunch of people in a nightclub called Dagon. So we get some more screaming and bleeding and refusing to transform, then she eventually does and kills it, and as Bug Man is dying, he basically calls her an Uncle Tom, cause she's someone who can turn into a big monster too!

Episode 3-

More of Asuka pestering and strong arming Jun, and pointing out you can tell who caries the Beast hene because they have extra shiny eyes (seriously, they say this), then she just kinda walks away on her to wander down an old train tunnel. In this train tunnel she meets some 10 year old boy who tells her how horrible she is for killing all us Beasts. He says he's going to kill "her lover" to teach her a lesson. She points out that she doesn't have one, and the kid more or less goes "Ah, but you DO have one of those 16 year old girls who stalk you and call you 'Onee-Sama!' and that's close enough!" then he turns into a butterfly (wow, he really got gipped on the transformation front) and flies away.

Cut to said girl (Kazumi)'s house, were a couple of weirdo monsters kill her parents and stuff their corpses full of bugs while she's taking a bath (and I don't wanna say "finally" here, but it's freaky to have a Go Nagai show where we don't really see any boobs, nippleless though they may be, until the third episode, even then, quick flash sorta deal). Kazumi screams like crazy for a while. Anyway, Jun finally arrives on the scene in time to kill a really amusing laughing skeleton stuck to the back of a giant rat, and harpy sorta thing, and they're really laying the Uncle Tom talk on pretty thick.

Episode 4-

HA at this point just has Jun locked up in a padded room when she's not on duty because she's being such a whiny little wimp about turning into a monster and ripping other monsters limb from limb. Eventually they let her go home because she agrees to be good, and Kazumi shows up to move in with her, seeing how her parents are now festering corpses and all. She's starting to go on about how she isn't that sad about them being dead because they were jerks, but she's still pretty darn upset. Then the phone rings though, and it seems there's no time to console the emotionally distraught girl now, it's time for another fight of the week!

So yeah, on the way we have more of Asuka being a complete jerk, along the lines of "Why do you always do what I tell you to you stupid piece of garbage? You just like killing monsters that much I bet!" "Do not!" "Well, here's the monster, now transform and roll out!" "You're not the boss of me! I'll transform when I'm good and ready! [she transforms]" then for a nice change of pace she doesn't freak out and whine after killing today's big goopy absorbed a bunch of people monster, quite anticlimactically. And I have to stress by the way the fact that the transformation sequence here is pretty much just- hair becomes INCREDIBLY SILLY LOOKING, grows just enough to burst out of clothes.

Episode 5-

Kazumi is no longer all stressed out, which is odd honestly, drops some pretty heavy handed gay innuendo, then it's once again time to make the donut- er, monsters dead. We're pretty clearly settling into a formulaic rut here, so today we're shaking things up a bit. It's not time to go kill a monster after all, it's time to go talk to your old friend from highschool who also has the Beast gene to try and find out if she's more inclined to help you kill monsters, or get killed by you upon becoming a monster. Oh, and here's a flashback to when they were in highschool and yon friend tries to kiss Jun causing her to freak out. Then they start discussing that incident, and Highschool Friend spontaneously turns into a Totally Ridiculous Shark Monster (she was on the swim team you see). So we get an Extra Angsty Giant Monster Fight. Then Jun goes home and basically says to Kazumi "I know you have a crush on me, and I'm not gay, but I'm going to give you a great big hug so you don't become a bitter old shark monster like my last gay friend."

End of Disc 1

So yeah, overall, I have to say, I'm severely disappointed with how much taste and restraint is involved in this show. I was expecting laughable amounts of gratuitous violence and nudity, but there's honestly more of that stuff to be found in a lot of actually good shows! Instead what we seem to have here is a fairly mundane fight of the week show with tons of angst and some amusingly deranged monster designs. Here's hoping it jumps the shark soon and sheds all this dignity.

Also of interest is when this was made. It mentions e-mail at one point, but still has actual detail in characters. So, I suppose it must have come out RIGHT before BGC2040 came along and established the ultra-shiny low detail look of the late 90s/oughts.

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