This final DVD of this hideous series finally features a token good preview. I wasn't aware of a Mazinkaiser remake in recent years. It's odd to see a real properly cheesy rocket punch and not have thick grainy lines everywhere. Also in here, but less amusing looking is something which is apparently about 3 ultra slutty looking shamans using their magical girl powers to summon their ancient aztec giant robot. It looks awful. It also reminds me of one of the characters from the 4th (4th I say!) Shadow Hearts game. Not the one you want to be associated with. The drunken mob boss kung-fu old lady cat would be cool, the dubious "ninja" from Brazil would be cool, even the vampire with the metabolic dysfunction causing her to sometimes be a morbidly obese magical girl. Reminding me of Sleazy McInjun though is meh. Oh, and thank you so much other previews for reminding me that Kekko Kamen exists. Anyway though, on with the proper torture.
Our episode starts out, naturally, with Kazumi totally flipping out. Also with military dudes trying to intervene and getting killed for their troubles, and a lot of Jun screaming and getting beaten up. Then Kazumi transforms into her brand new Devilman form (looking even less different from normal than Jun, because her hair, I guess, it too short to properly rearrange itself into stupid wing shaped hair). Then we arbitrarily flashback to how these two met for no good reason, and both of them waking up the next morning in their post-monster fight reversion to normal form on the beach. So.. sappy naked girls moment real quick like. Then it's back to the military rounding people up. And here's Random 70s Dude being all chivalrous as they smack around the Magical Girls. Is he the main character from regular Devilman maybe? Asuka and Dr. Girlfriend talk about the situation a bit. Butterfly Boy has a similar conversation with his goons. Kazumi freaks out some about her catgirl friend getting gunned down, and how her shoes are the wrong size. Dream sequence of Butterfly Boy being all pro-monster at Jun. Then Asuka wanders in to treat Jun like dirt, because she really hasn't had a chance to in a while, and to say "keep your nose out of the upcoming massive fight scene." The government kinda goes "hey, you know how we've kinda ended up with Monster Island here? We should probably bomb it into oblivion. Kazumi decides she's rather pro--monster, at least for the cute not-eating-people ones. It's really kind of a horribly botched attempt at tacking on a "maybe humanity is the REAL monsters" sorta message. I mean, up until these last couple episodes, it was pretty clearly established that monstering out makes you a mindless killing machine, so it's kinda hard to play for sympathy later. Also, inconsistent as heck. She runs out to show solidarity with all the people turning into monsters, but well, see killing machine comment on the reception. Jun meanwhile goes and finds Butterfly Boy to tell him the whole Monster Island thing is most likely a trap. And... here apparently is undead Jason saving Kazumi... OK. Butterfly Boy goes Asuka isn't the big badguy, I have dibs! Now let's have us a fight scene with my goons! But uh, before that can happen, the aforementioned bombing starts. Silly Butterfly Boy. Asuka basically says "Anyone important to the plot obviously won't die here." And of course, they don't. Anyway, Jun fights some zombies for a bit, then Kazumi comes and stabs Ikagi there in the eye to eliminate those, gets killed for her trouble by Ikami, who is in turn killed by Jun. This all takes like, 3 seconds total. What is it with the fight scenes in this show being eyeblink length? It's not like there's plot eating the rest of the time. Anyway, teary death scene. With audio overlays from that flashback to how they first met, naturally. End of episode. Man. This show really likes to start potential major plot twists and then IMMEDIATELY nip'em in the bud. Kazumi has superpowers too! But she's dead now! Oh no! There's a whole island full of monsters! Oh, they blew it up, nevermind. So... 4 episodes left and there's no real plot driving things. Niiiice.
The Magical Girls are getting carted into a concentration camp, Jun's burning a bonfire (or maybe funeral pyre) on the beach. The army's getting blown up by huge elemental columns while disposing of corpses. Butterfly Boy it seems is on the attack. I have explained that he doesn't turn into some sort of butterfly monster right? He just turns into a butterfly, or grows wings? It's silly. Asuka meanwhile is at some fancy dinner party treating government officials like dirt. Jason comes by and visits Jun on the beach. Seriously, aren't you supposed to be dead? And more of a jerk than this? He suggests they join forces and "Fighto! Fighto!" the badguys. He also officially says "Devilman Lady!" which I suppose is a funny enough mix of this show's proper title and how they translated it. Anyway, stuff blows up. Butterfly Boy springs various monsters from the concentration camp. Asuka arrives to blow more stuff up. Maeda sneaks up behind her because it's time for a serious talk. The Magical Girls get out, with the help of 70s Man. More boring conversation, more general purpose carnage. One of the Magical Girls freaks out at the military dudes. More Maeda explaining to Asuka how she's the evil manipulative badguy in our series. Magical Girls seem to be getting bumped off one by one. Jun decides she probably really should go join the big fight scene already. She saves the magical girls by deflecting flamethrower fire... OK. The theory is put forth half-heartedly that Asuka is the second coming of Jesus. Butterfly Boy comes to taunt Jun more (see? It's confusing when I don't bother with meanwhile). And... I just had to rewind it to confirm what I just saw, but Butterfly Boy and his All Bird Elite Goon Squad seem to have just formed Voltron here. Yup. They did. You know what that means, right? GIANT MONSTER FIGHT! "So Asuka, why pick Japan to be the country that gets filled with horrible monsters anyway?" "The person I hate most was born here." "That's it? That's kinda lame." Maeda shoots Asuka. Buttertron impales Jun. Asuka shoots Maeda back. He's the only one to die from any of this. Buttertron is quite silly looking, but that should be a given at this point. Giant Jason comes to aid Jun... which is like 5 kinds of plot inconsistency. Angst reaches critical mass and the whole giant monster fight just kinda spontaneously explodes (I'm serious). Then we have normal naked Jun talking to normal Butterfly Boy afterwards (why does he always get to keep his clothes anyway?) He explains his motives, sorta, for extra sympathy, then melts. Jun goes "OK, I'm going home now." Some cop forgets to use non-violent means to capture fleeing refugees, gets reprimanded, then gets his head bitten off when the guy he shoots monsterfies. Oh boy! This whole incident made the Engrish News! Asuka's talking to some U.S. government guy while they're watching this, then he looks up and notices she has little cherubs over her shoulders for a second. He chalks it up as drunken hallucination... as well he should, there's such a thing as being TOO silly and stupid. Blah blah blah, political chaos. Jun goes to visit her grandfather... but passes out en route and just dreams a visit, I guess. Totally abrupt and odd place to end the episode.
OK, so, evidently, Jun's been living in some little rural town now for like half a year, having decided that the plot isn't her problem anymore. Just found some kindly old family to take care of her and babysits their adopted kid. Eventually though, a big military truck comes in to town, and Jun has a sudden flashback to various monsters guilt-tripping her about her killing them. The truck is full of military dudes, so she also flashes back to all the times military dudes have rather arbitrarily opened fire on her. Then they leave, and Kindly Old Couple says "like there'd ever be monsters up here in the mountains." So she has a flashback to all the times people called her a monster. So, is this episode officially a clip show now? Now it's everyone who was sappy at her. Now it's everyone who was actively not a jerk... "Hey, you all right?" says Gramma, "You look like you're flashing back to stuff over here." Now it's killing monsters. Oh yes, thank you for making me watch the penis explode again. Anyway, we've now pretty much run out of significant events to flash back - oh, no wait. I forgot the giant monster fights. Sorry, carry on flashbacks. We done now, or are you going to do all the times Asuka said you suck? Because that'd easily fill the next 20 minutes of episode we have here and then some. Evidently we're done flashbacking though, and Jun's wandering off to find the military truck is now full of dead military dudes... and presumably, the little girl she's been babysitting is the monster of the week. Naturally. They head down to the swimming hole (swim team leader ep flashback! Naked beach sappiness flashback! Girls confessing love in general flashbacks!) Don't worry though Jun, the 8 year old kid PROBABLY isn't hitting on you. Them dying after doing so flashbacks... Yeah, I'm going to have to call it now. This is officially a flashback episode. Anyway, then some half-dead military dude comes along and unceremoniously shoots the little girl in the head. Evidently he's sick of all the obvious setups. Doesn't much matter though, because, well, she IS the monster of the week, and she kist kinda fires the bullet back out of her skull and kills him with it. "What are you so upset about, I thought you hated these soldiers? I'm going to stop specifically listing these flashback cues now, you get the idea I'm sure. Anyway, little girl here is also psycho, and promises not to kill more people if she stays in happy farmland and doesn't go hunt down Asuka. So yeah, let's see just how long the montage of Asuka being a total jerk lasts. Ah, just a minute or so. They kinda did a greatest hits thing with it. Here's some cops. "Jun, you're under arrest on suspicion of making a bunch of soldiers explode!" Little Girl: "Hey, you said you'd stay here! Stuff goes boom now!" Jun: "Well, if you're going to be like that, I really AM leaving. Transform and roll out!" In the middle of a crowd. Later, back at the ranch. "Seriously kid, quit killing people." "But you do it all the time!" "Yeah, but I'm a Devilman, I'm allowed to. You're a cute kid, so just pretend to be normal." "No way! You're a total hypocrite!" "Please?" "OK..." Asuka, elsewhere: "OK Jun, come on, time to come kill me." Gratuitous but detail free in the form of showering in the swimming hole's waterfall to end the episode, because hey, she's already shredded the only set of clothes she brought on this trip. You really would think by this point she'd at the very list keep some changes of clothes stashed in various places for these situations. Maybe she's just hit the point of apathy by now. I mean, between having a "monster" form that doesn't really do anything but change her hair cut, and having a few giant monster fights in the middle of Tokyo, she's kinda been seen naked by a significant percentage of the population.
Taking a cue from Kazumi, Jun cuts her hair before heading off to the big showdown. Maybe that'll keep it from looking like stupid wings. Oddly enough, she melodramatically says "I'll never be human again." while doing this thing that'll make her look more human. Evidently, 70s Man is named Takeshi, him and the Magical Girls are still in a concentration camp. Jun talks about being all martyry. Asuka takes another shower that makes a good point of showing off her nipples, but an active point of stopping the slow scrolldown before showing us if she's had the full sex-change operation or it's just the boobs. Nipples of Masculinity strikes me as a really horrible but possibly existent D&D item. Then she stares out the window naked while her shoulder angles appear and be significantly more modest. Then it's back to 70s Man and the Magical Girls as they plan their big escape. Evidently security's weakest by the gas chambers. Asuka evidently hasn't given up respected secret agency leader status yet when going all "I'm god and a total badguy here" but she's way less into the meetings. Random Ambassador sees the angels for a second, but like most people, refuses to believe anything that stupid to be in this show. MORE RANDOM ENGRISH! WOO! Anyway, while the Magical Girls are getting ready for their breakout, they get picked to be executed next. Not a good sign that. Elsewhere, Jun's having a fight with Engrish speaking jet pilots. The Magical Girls decide, @#$% the plan, let's just punch out these guards, take their guns, and run. Meanwhile, 70s Man finally reveals that yes, he evidently IS in fact Devilman from the original series. As was, honestly, evident the whole time from his lack of updated character design. Man, he's way worse off with hair. His tries to look like wings too, but it's short, so it has to leave the top of his head to do so, and, basically, the end result is pretty much chrome dome with feathered hair. And sideburns. Feathered sideburns. Jun thinks about how she really should have treated Kazumi less like dirt, and then encounters Asuka's shoulder angles flying around. Suddenly, she's underwater. Anyay, all the plothole-tastic non-evil monstery refugees decide to make their escape by cutting through the gas chamber... which seems, shall we say, unwise. Anyway, Jun wakes up, swims out of being underwater, and is in a nice happy field with a ruined gazebo. I believe this is the setting of various bad dreams she's had throughout the series, but it's hard to tell when it isn't tinged red. Asuka's also there in white robes. Anyway, it turns out the gas chamber isn't the gas chamber at all. It's a portal to hell, or something. We jump back to boring Asuka and Jun talkery. Oh, and she still does have the hair wings despite the trim. Anyway, when asked why she hates humanity so much, Asuka strips. Once again, the audience is spared from having to stare at her penis while she explains how, evidently, she's a hermaphrodite, and generally ticked off about it. OK... show? If you're going where I think you are with this scene, please don't. Evidently they are though. "Hey Jun, did you ever wonder why it is you always do exactly what I say?" says Asuka while getting all huggy... mercifully, here's a meanwhile with the Magical Girls and 70s Devilman. They all get locked in the gas chamber that might be a portal to hell, and a bunch of white robed dudes advance on them. Meanwhile, Asuka's going on with this whole love at first sight bit. Jun half-faints from the level of WRONG in this scene. Asuka meanwhile starts spouting lines so wrong and horrible that if I have to read these subtitles, so do you! "Have you been so impatient to receive my body?" "This day I will violate you as the last Beast and become the Child of God." And uh... yeeaahhh...... let's check back in with the Magical Girls now? Please? Thanks. 70s Devilman shoots some robed dudes because they keep slowly advancing while refusing to say anything. They respond by slowly advancing without saying anything (well, with the exception of the ones he shoots, they fall down). Meanwhile, "Jun, arigatou." Followed by a shot of Jun's face which so PERFECTLY conveys the level of shock and that-was-just-WRONG-itude this episode invokes. I'll have to do a screengrab later. Then Jun screams and falls through the floor. 70s Man: "Everyone was killed over something this stupid!?!" I think that one line might make him my favorite character now. But, you know, Mr. Two-T-Rexes is hard to beat. Anyway, jun falls through the ceiling... so, I guess the happy ruin filled grassy field was on top of the gas chamber, and there's a big water filled tube leading up to it, or we're playing fast and loose with terrain here. She falls straight on through the giant hole in the floor though. Meanwhile, back outside, a glorious column of light comes down from heaven, making Asuka's clothes disappear, she grows wings and stupid hair, gets giant and glowy, and kinda starts serenely hovering over he city. End of episode.
I'm going to take a break before the next one so I can watch The Daily Show and get a bonus to my next sanity check.
Oh, I missed who was giving this speech, but at some Republican gathering, someone said: "... If we ever lose our goodness, we will lose our greatness." Later, after listing off all the democratic presidential candidates as "The first ____ president." we get "Now, obviously, I've left out Connecticut Senator Christopher Dodd. Moving on..." and... I think I'm going to stop trying to do the joke of summarizing the Daily Show because I'm still in summary mode, because Daily Show doesn't translate to text (at least without illustrations backing it up).
I might not have mentioned this earlier, but every episode has a one-word minimalist title that kinda spoils the monster of the week. Like, the episode with the lesbian catgirl? "Cat." The swim team episode? "Shark." Episode 25? "God." It doesn't always hold true that well, for instance, there isn't an episode called "Twodinosaursgluedtogether." but yeah, simple one word titles. This episode is called "Man." I can see where they're likely going with that in what passes for the artistic sense, but I much prefer to think of it as a general reaction to the series at this point, you know, like "... man." Possibly followed with "This is some @#$%ed up #@$% right here." Anyway, time to watch it now.
So... we pick up where we were, which is pretty darn messed up. Jun fell down a big red rune encircled toilet bowl or something, and Asuka became god (as a result of sleeping with her). Here's a bunch of different shots of Asuka simultaneously floating over every city in the world. And here's the President of the United States delivering a speech (in surprisingly well pronounced and southern accented Engrish) about it being the second coming of Jesus. And here's me laughing my head off. Meanwhile, yeah, I guess there really was a portal to hell in the fake gas chamber. Because that seems to be where Jun finally landed. She says sorry to the big pillar made of corpses of everyone she's killed. Butterfly Boy's face sticking out of it says not to beat herself up over it, she did what she was supposed to do... and then starts being a jerk about it, so she punchers his face into goo, and thus winds up stuck on the pillar herself. The news back on earth is all really positive. Everyone's just kinda staring out the window a their new living god and saying there's no wars and stuff. Meanwhile, the Magical Girls and associates are wondering why they haven't been killed off yet. The de facto leader of the Magical Girls gives this nice touching speech to 70s Devilman about how she still wants the reason she was born to be valid and won't just quietly resign herself to her fate. Which is, I suppose, all very touching and moving and all, but unless I missed something, the reason in question would be uh... wiping out all of humanity and having a world filled with murderous monsters. Granted, I'm for that too at this point. The monsters are all way less angsty and they look just plain hilarious 9 times out of 10. Meanwhile, Jun's all "I suppose I do kinda deserve to be crucified on this gory column for all eternity, and Kazumi's hunk of it is trying to cheer her up. She says to close her eyes and imagine her how she used to be, so the rest of this conversation takes place in vague imaginary modeling photo shoot land. Anyway, she stays stuck in martyr land for a while, and then has the epiphany that if she really had some sort of ambiguous pseudo-crush on anyone, it was Kazumi, not Asuka, so she gets all determined. Some of what she actually says: "If Asuka has become God, then so be it, but then I will become the Devil and destroy Asuka!" The overall tone of this little speech though is, in all seriousness, more along the lines of "In the name of the Hell! I will punish you!" Oh Japan, your general attitude towards Christianity is just plain hilarious sometimes. So yeah, in a moment that reminds me way too much of Sailor Moon, she absorbs all the love and friendship (OK, they say hatred and power, but it's all too sappy and philanthropic for me to buy that), along with, you know, all the corpses, to become great big super-giant Satan-form Jun (which, really, looks just like her regular giant form). Meanwhile, the white robed guys, in their infinite Christian mercy, start feeding the remaining semi-monstery refugees here. 70s Devilman goes "Hey, what's your angle?" more or less, and they explain how it's the will of God's Child that they take pity on them and be nice to'em and stuff. So, apparently, when we get to the big final showdown between the main character and the evil manipulative badguy, the latter really is coming into it representing the pure altruistic embodiment of serene love and happiness that genuinely is making the world a better place. That's almost funny enough to have been worth sitting through this whole show. Around now though, everyone but the kinda-crazy Magical Girl leader runs for their lives, because Jun's exploding out of the ground in a huge pillar of flame. Asuka's nice enough to have all the versions of her floating over non-Tokyo cities disappear to make it a fair fight. "What could the Devil possibly have left to do in this world, Jun?" "To take you to hell with me, Asuka!" (Our hero, ladies and gentlemen.) So they get all ready to fighty, and Asuka kicks things off by having her 4 little cherubs floating around here (I can't possibly convey how weirdly not weird looking these are) shoot big ropes of light to tie her up. Which doesn't really do anything, she breaks out immediately. So then Asuka's transforms, her hair becomes a second set of wings, her hands become bird claws, basically she just goes full-on silly looking. "Eww, you absorbed a bunch of dead monsters, that's so grody." (Not a direct quote, not that most of these are). Anyway, at this point I'm pretty much sitting here watching the last boss from a 16-bit RPG fighting the last boss from a 32-bit RPG. That is to say, a big naked blue girl and some silly angelish thing with too many wings and multiple forms. Oh, and it's so great to see the shots of the Magical Girl in the background all happy about her hero Satan fighting on despite getting beaten up so much. Seriously. Laser laser laser, bleed bleed bleed. They do the whole thing where they both run at each other and you can't tell who wins. Then Jun coughs up blood and falls over, and Asuka sneers... but then gets an uh-oh look and bloodily splits in half along the waist. And then explodes. But don't worry little magical girl! Jun's not dead! Her arms got ripped off, but she's otherwise fine! We see the back of the president's head as he's watching this on TV. Then we see an exterior shot of the White House and hear a gunshot... this series isn't recent enough for the president in question to actually represent George Bush is it? Because it sure does seem like it right now. So then Jun's standing there in regular human form, while it's raining dead-god fallout-feathers going "Asuka, I may have cared for you after all. Even though we were complete opposites, we were very alike. That's why I couldn't love you. Because you can never fall in love with yourself." That really was pretty much word for word mind you. So anyway, the magical girls are all "So, what do we do now? Just try and go back to how everything used to be?" "Why don't you pray for that to happen?" "Pray to what, exactly?" "Who knows?" Again, all the real quotes here. Oh, and it seems Magical Girl leader is pregnant with 70s Devilman's baby or something, but he's all 70sy flabbergasted and sillyly runs off. Vaguely reminds me of Ataru or something here. And then we see Jun wandering down the street while a couple schoolgirls with tails laugh and play. "The End" ED song goes back to what it was for all but the last however many episodes.
So uh... yeah. I have to ask here. Exactly how badly did Christian missionaries treat the general populace of Japan how recently to provoke reactions like this? I mean, it's one thing when you use a thinly veiled metaphor to imply that, say, the Catholic Church is some horrible conspiratorial group with evil plans for the world, or even that Jesus was actually Satan in disguise come to trick humanity to their doom, but this show here? OK, this is saying, with no metaphor wrapped around it at all, that even if we totally accept Christianity at face value, and Jesus really is going to come back, and end all war, and make life happy and wonderful and conflict free for everyone... @#$% that! Let's kill it and go back to normal! And we aren't even showing some sort of example here of how this is going to work out for the best, it's just kinda presented as a given here. Call me crazy, but I think that may be taking your hatred for a religion just a LITTLE too far.
In any event, I am now done watching this. It has left me mildly curious just how regular Devilman's plot unfolds, but really, I'm not nearly curious enough to go find out. I do still have to get screen grabs of some of the funnier monsters and that one face that really sums up episode 25. I'll let you know when I've gotten around to doing that. [Note: This is in reference to the original pure text incarnation. The images you've seen thus far are all you're getting. I'm not going back for screengrabs of the wangaconda any time soon.]