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skrunksthatwunk · 14 days ago

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just read shin devilman and i'm about to be so annoying what the FUCK WAS THAT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (both /pos and /neg but frankly /baffled. what the fuck. anyway thoughts below)

ok so i knew sd (i'm just gonna call it sd) was gonna be weird right. it has TOS style gratuitous funny time travel plots and TOS style homoeroticism it's like. it's mostly there to see ryo and akira hang out in a variety of Historical Events/Settings/Clothes and that's fine. in theory.

chapter one fucking. i. okay i had this foreboding sense right like oh... they're in vienna in 1913 and my first thought was "do i google when hitler was born + is this a "do we kill baby hitler" time travel theoretical??" and i was like no no he would've been older. anyway it's gotta be a coincidence right hitler's not going to be in this. and then we meet this painter. his name is adolf. oh god. he hates jewish people. oh no. but everybody was antisemetic back then it like,, it might be a hitler symptom but this could still be another unaffiliated adolf. oh but his hair's greasy. but he doesn't have the mustache so maybe it cancels out? and as it goes on im like seeing okay his jewish.. art dealer(?) is selling this portrait of his unrequited love to another jewish man and i'm like oh god Please don't do what i think you're going to do with this but also debating whether or not i want this to be hitler because on one hand it would be an awful narrative choice. like politics aside (we'll get there) it's just so goddamn tacky. but on the other hand my fear and increasing belief that go nagai is about to reveal this guy to be THE adolf hitler is building up pressure for a fit of hysterical laughter that i Know is likely coming. god it would be so baffling and so so funny and

i howled. is my point.

like i cannot express to you how fucking mind melting this was to me. for the next couple hours of reading i would just stop and (unprompted) whisper adolf..! adolf hitler...!! to myself like. god what a fucking. just look at it god i don't have to explain LOOK AT THIS SHIT. LOOK AT IT. he animorphs into evil older hitler. it's in Such poor taste and it has Such fucking. dumb implications. we'll get there.

what else. oh i love how nagai doesn't even bother with explaining them adjusting to places most of the time. next chapter BOOM they're in armor on a boat ready for battle. did they just pop out of the dimensional rift like that? in historically appropriate roles/clothing? that doesn't always happen though bc ryo has to get them clothes for versailles next chapter. but we meet them with the cheyenne and it looks like they've been there a while so. idk it's goofy to me. he really said i am not putting all that effort into a drabble.

pivot but i like how dumb yaoi-coded a lot of sd is. i read it for The Scene (the "akira im not into women i um. i. uh" scene) but it still kind of surprised me sometimes. i would be chastising myself for looking at akira diving overboard to save ryo (in full armor) bc it's not Really gay to save his best friend's life right and then that's Immediately followed by this

im fucking losing my mind. kyaa don't take off my armor (baka). what am i doing. what was HE doing writing this. etc.

^^i didn't even gather everything gay i saw because eventually it started feeling about as enlightening as pointing out the gay bits in a ryokira doujin. but those are some highlights i guess. you think they encountered homosexuality in the ancient grecian military? surely not...... unless..............? (also they're bound by fate..... look i know they're almost The most literal iteration of that dynamic but. i know what you are)

i love this bit. zero stakes. "yeah greece kinda ate shit" "lol exactly like--" "SHUT THE FUCK UP AND WALK!!!!!!!!!"

what else what else. oh this panel was funny. only her left arm is being severed here so that right shoulder is supposed to connect to her back. somehow. spot the difference!

THEY GOT FLAT STANLEYED

another panel i liked. the h in dhevilman stands for head empty

this one too. the scan was actual shit so i kept not seeing the guns so this was Extra jarring to me

also look at these little blurbs at the end. iirc they only did those for the joan of arc and little bighorn stories and LOOK HOW DIFFERENT THEY ARE TONALLY

like the joan chapter is largely sweet? i guess? it's supposed to be a happy ending and it's like aww (though. i don't think joan would be like "an angel in the form of a demon... :)" but whatever) and then it's like Yeah Well She WAS Tried For Being A Witch. By Humans. And Was Burned Alive. it's super jarring and then the little bighorn one is like "sometimes they put this in movies!" as if we didn't just see people get massacred???

actually that brings me back to the hitler thing. i'm kinda new to devilman so take this with a grain of salt but part of what i appreciated about How devilman's apocalypse happens is that like.. demons weren't Really in control of humanity's governments or anything. they inspired paranoia that exacerbated preexisting prejudice and selfishness and led people to view the marginalized as the most dangerous For their past oppression, and humanity tore itself apart. and when there was a little compilation of the groups targeted in this, jewish people (specifically in the context of the holocaust) and native americans were both brought up, and i respected that as well. devilman takes place in our world, so discussing these atrocities and ongoing bigotries is like,, relevant and important for what it's trying to do, i feel. it wasn't focused on much, but it stuck out to me, and i think it shows a degree of care about those genocides on the part of nagai.

but i think mentioning them in passing and from a contemporary perspective was a bit safer. you have to be a lot more careful doing historical fiction/time travel misadventures about Very Real atrocities for your Very Unreal Fantasy Romp. and i think that because nagai feels moved by these atrocities and because they're kind of important to devilman and what it's saying about humanity, he felt it would fit to have them in a devilman story that includes time travel (or perhaps he was just inclined due to artistic preferences. either way). i think it also makes sense to explore, in theory. yet any time you insert your fantasy bullshit as a cause for/major factor in An Actual Irl Genocide/Etc you kind of trivialize it. not quite the same, but the closest other example i could think of was how motherfucker supreme jk row.ling took the witch burnings and was like haha that was witches playing pranks on stupid idiot muggles. they were laughing btw. real actual irl people were murdered!! i'm not saying you can never joke about it or mess with it but when you're treating them as serious events And Also going "well actually it was my Dumb Fantasy Thing that caused that" you like.. make it about your dumb fantasy thing instead. the dead are reduced to props.

ch 1's depiction of hitler was of one who already hated jewish people before watching his beloved be burned alive by a jewish(?) demon (a demon masquerading as a jewish person? yeah), but who decided to dedicate his life to jewish extermination Because of that event. and i think the decisions to have him hate jewish people before this AND to not make him a demon are good. this could've been worse. but it still kind of makes the holocaust about demons, y'know? hitler was a person, one influenced by the world in which he lived. countless surrounding factors led to his hatred of jewish people, his attraction to fascism, and his genocidal project. the same is true for everyone involved in perpetuating or tolerating the holocaust. there is no inciting incident, really, for that hatred existing. not for most people. devilman is fundamentally concerned with the nature of group hatred, fear, bigotry, and violence. i would argue they're within its central bundle of inextricable themes (no matter how many adaptations try to, y'know. extricate it). exploring historical instances of that makes sense. but disregarding all of that nuance in favor of "demons tricked him" is in bafflingly poor taste. it's one thing to place demons in a contemporary/future-set story manipulating governments and encouraging violence, but it's another to make the murders of millions of Actual Real Not-Props-For-Your-Spinoff people retroactively caused by demonic influences. because it kind of decreases the agency of the Actual Real murderers. in sd they were tormented, deceived, manipulated by higher forces. in reality they were manipulated, maybe, but by humans. the same is true for the little bighorn chapter. admittedly, i'm less familiar with this event, but it seems... vaguely accurate? to my memory? regardless, taking a massacre that was part of a genocidal effort spanning centuries and going "custer had demons in his heart >:(" is like. revolting to me! and i don't think it's even a like,, metaphorical demon in the hearts of him and his men because we see a very literal demon in marie antoinette's heart the chapter prior. i think it's supposed to be the same thing. symbolic, maybe, but in-story there is in fact a literal demonic possession causing this. as opposed to the propaganda, violence, willful ignorance, greed, callousness, etc which actually caused it. it's like.. anti-relevance. anti-poignance. even if the demons are symbolic of like. humanity's base instincts or whatever i still don't like it. it's stupid and it sucks. and you've got like. tiana getting raped. and because of the context she's a sort of stand-in for everyone who experienced sexual violence as part of this genocide. and it's got the go nagai depictions of sexual violence funk on it (i need to finish devilman lady but Oh Boy) so it's like yucky and that makes the depiction of the genocide broadly yucky because it's again a snapshot of an actual THING that HAPPENED to REAL PEOPLE and it still has the horny funk and. god am i making sense?? whatever it's like. bad to me. i'm not saying you can't like shin devilman or whatever but this part was gross and as hard as the hitler twist made me laugh it was simply not worth it. the toybox approach to historical fiction is Not Good when you start putting in real atrocities and real people, imo. you can't blame hitler's antisemitism on demons bc that primes people to dismiss others as Just Evil it encourages an ignorance that perpetuates genocide and also it's just kind of bad for your story's like.. social commentary. devilman feels like an indictment of humanity but sd almost feels like it's excusing humanity for the same actions bc of the retroactive thing. it's like devilman's demons weren't manipulating humans who independently had a pattern of mass violence for xyz reasons but instead were the secret cause of every cycle of mass violence humans did. it blows!! genuinely open to differing views on the fucking political commentary in shin devilman but idk i just uh. don't think it was good. as someone who's fresh off a first read.

idk. um. i thought shy ryo was interesting.

tbh it doesn't seem like,, in line with my image of ryo from the original series? but i kind of like it when characters are unexpectedly shy, so it's cute to me. i have to wonder when in the process of writing devilman nagai decided ryo was 1) in love with akira and 2) intersex (something ryo if not nagai himself explicitly ties into his interest in men), because the whole thing feels... different than devilman irt that dynamic. i mean, i've been talking about how gay sd is, but i genuinely think a lot of that comes from a desire to depict their relationship with those things in mind, both for the audience and (again, potentially) the author. making ryo more shy in like.. a kind of effeminate way? (idk man idk) feels like the sort of not-quite-retcon that'd stem from that.

actually i kind of liked his relationship with tiana, brief as it was, and what it highlighted about ryo. he blushes when he realizes she's into him, and while he sort of rebuffs her flirting, it's clear that he still cares about her. he's flustered by the situation because it puts him in an awkward spot, not being able to say why he's not interested (and who he's actually interested in). it's a less-discussed and honestly very relatable part of being gay and closeted that was like,, pleasantly surprising to see. hell yeah. and that bit about ryo being unable to kill animals where she says he has a gentle heart is so cute to me

they're friends!! :> and that rules. i think there's a tendency to depict queer characters who don't (and are unable to) reciprocate the feelings of a straight character as being cold to them. and i think it would be really easy to take this gay sort-of-villain in ryo and make him disregard tiana (or women broadly)'s feelings (the gay misogynist trope). but ryo is tiana's friend. her crush isn't going to change that, because the friendship is genuine and comes first, and i like that. and i think in the context of sd we're supposed to read ryo's feelings for akira as ultimately unrequited. he loves akira, and akira loves miki. but that's not why they're not friends in the end. i see ryo/tiana and ryo/akira as parallel relationships. that in a world where ryo confesses and akira doesn't reciprocate, they would still be friends (something especially powerful with a gay character, who're treated as if they perverted a perfectly normal friendship). it's kind of sweet and hopeful, even if you know their relationship's going to end for other reasons soon enough. and he cries when he sees her dead!! i know that feels like a no-brainer to have characters cry when they see people massacred (people who took care of them for weeks) but it's not a given!! and again it shows that he cared for her rather than being like pshuh. women. which again a lot of people inject into their gay guy characters. like i'm glad that one of the adjustments made to ryo's character Was Not That (phew) but instead something that kind of made him more similar to tiana, made him relate to her even though her crush made him feel a bit awkward. like. there's room for exploration there, with him projecting his own awkwardness onto akira and stuff. anyway. yeah i wish she was a more developed character bc she is very much a brown girl there to fall in love with a foreign stranger, highlight elements of his character, and then die horribly but that doesn't mean i don't like what was there, i guess, so much as what wasn't.

#oh also i know there's at least one spinoff thing where ryo and miki kiss but here ryo says he's not into women so...? irt the gay vs bi ryo #debate i am going with gay for the purposes of writing this but like. bi ryo enjoyers i see you i salute you #bonus round i like ryo's striped jim-jams. his pjs. he didn't even button it up the whole time he was with hitler which is wild to me.#this means that hitler saw satan's cleavage. god i'm still not over it. ADOLF.... ADOLF HITLER!!!! like come ON #like did we need both the image of him With the mustache AND his full name to recognize that this was in fact THAT adolf?#on the subject of injecting fantasy bs into real historical stuff i will say that i don't.. particularly have a problem with the joan of #arc and m antoinette chapters? which is probably weird right #like that's a person who existed who died etc but i guess it just doesn't feel. Quite As Weird To Me? for some reason?#when it's one person's relatively unimpactful internal experiences rather than the catalyst for mass murder. i guess #it's like saying mozart had a dream about something. like yeah it's kind of weird using a real person as an action figure like that but #it's not like.. THAT big of a deal (depending greatly on what you do with them)#shin devilman #oh lmao it's letting me post it. like 5 hours later. alright

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