OneMetal.com REVIEW:
Devil #1

When Hollywood reworks a classic Japanese horror movie, the end result is rarely as good as the original, especially if the creator gets little or no input. So when word broke that Dark Horse was bringing a legitimate manga star to work on an American comic, that’s got to be a good sign … right?

Sadly not, because although writer/artist Torajiro Kishi of Madhouse Studios is a big name in the world of manga, this East meets West experiment fails—and fails badly. This is a real shame, because the comic world has had some outstanding examples of Japanese artists stamping their identity on a US comic. Sadly, this original four-issue miniseries really isn’t one of them.

Let’s get the story out of the way first. A virus that turns people into bloodsucking super-humans is raging across the planet. Labelled as “Devils” by the media and the police that hunt them, most die within a couple of days of infection. Yet when a new unstoppable strain of Devil starts stalking the streets of Tokyo, investigator Takimoto and the Devil Investigation Section of the Tokyo Police Force have to step up in defence of the people. So now that we’ve got the context, the autopsy can begin.

The first big problem is the artwork. It’s inconsistent and awkward at best and plain ugly at worst, with some truly disjointed examples of anatomy gone wrong. This doesn’t seem to be intended as a stylistic thing, either—it’s just lazy, confused art. The story is no better, with more than one stereotypical manga cliché forced in for good measure. You’ll grimace at how awkward and throwaway references to rape are, for example. Of course the female victim couldn’t just be killed. Of course she’d be raped by a demon first … The dialogue is just plain bizarre in places, too. My favourite (or should that be least favourite?) example comes when a glowing white and blue super-powered Devil punches through the car of our hero, pinning him to his seat. Reaching for his gun, Takimoto screams—and you must excuse the caps here, but if the comic shouts at me, I’ve got to shout at you—“I UNDERSTAND THE BLUE AREA IS VULNERABLE!!”. Beautiful, isn’t it? Might even get it printed on a t-shirt.

Don’t get me wrong. I genuinely love anime, being introduced to the genre with Akira when it first made it over to the UK. I love good manga too, and gore certainly doesn’t bother me—far from it. Dialogue that translates anything less than perfectly isn’t a problem either, but what I can’t deal with is a story that tries to be a hybrid of two well-established styles, adds nothing to either and actually ends up detracting from both.

Bottom Line

A comic from hell... and not in a good way.