Digital Devil Story: Megami Tensei Anime OVA
Even amongst MegaTen fans, the animated Digital Devil Story: Megami Tensei, based most directly on the novels from Aya Nishitani, is something of an anomaly. Many people don't seem to know of its existance to begin with and those that have seen it have probably chosen to completely forget about it. Why? Well, to be blunt: it's bad. Really, really bad. I guess there is some solace in the fact that the screenplay and direction are the problem of Mizuhi Nishikubo and not Nishitani. Here's the official "explanation" of why someone should buy this:
"Digital Devil is the name given to a menacing force created with computers, born from the mind of a teenage genius; a force so evil that it demands human sacrifice. Yet this story is more than a science-fiction horror tale. For it also carries the timeless messages of forgiveness and reconciliation, along with the charm of a love story.
Handsome high school student Akemi is a computer genius. One day a new girl, Yumiko, transfers to his class from another school. She quickly falls in love with Akemi but, absorbed in his computers, he pays her no attention at all.
The reason for his absorbtion is the monster he has created with those same computers. Digital Devil has become his own evil genie, and Akemi summons this devil after school and sets it to work wreaking revenge on his enemies. First to be sacrificed to the hunger of the devil ROKI is Akemi's homeroom teacher; soon to follow are other teachers and leaders of the high school gangs. But first, Akemi intends to unleash ROKI on poor Yumiko.
The tables quickly turn as ROKI runs wild, slipping from the teenager's control to begin attacking all the students, including even Akemi himself..."
This OVA was originally released in Japan in 1987. The sound, music and animation qualities are firmly planted in that decade. For whatever reason, it was picked up much later during 1996 by Kiseki Films and given a limited VHS release. This is likely the version most people are familiar with. The title was cut short to Digital Devil and subtitles were added; at least they saved us the suffering of what would have obviously been a completely awful dub job. The subtitles don't make it through unscathed, however, with inconsistencies and poor localization of basic names. For example, the main demon throughout the animation, Loki, is referred to as "ROKI", pretty much destroying its frame of reference, among other things.
The animation quality, given the assumed date of creation, really is not that terrible. It's not great either. Generally it takes a more minimalist approach, constantly surrounding the characters in almost pure darkness. I suppose this fits the "horror" theme, so it's not necessarily negative. Regardless, it's very generic and cliché in pretty much every sense. There are a few scenes that remain impressive due to their artistic quality or camera angle, but not enough to save this aspect of the video. The art style itself is very obviously based off the artwork that went along with the original video game release of Megami Tensei.
The voices are pretty much standard anime fare and are entirely in Japanese. As such, there's not much to say. The music, on the other hand, definitely suffers thanks to its date of origin. Tons of weird synthesizer tones and random guitar pieces that feel almost completely out of place. It also contains a lot of those weird "twing!!" noises you hear so often in older anime titles, particularly when any sort of blade is being used. "Gawunk!" is another one, heard mostly in the more violent scenes. It's not winning any awards here, that much is obvious.
The main downfall, really, is that the video makes next to no sense. You're plunged into this story headfirst with very little backing material with little coming up that explains or resolves it. The motives of the characters feel extremely shallow at almost every turn. The only point of interest here is that the demons live in a digital world of sorts, something anyone that was remotely familiar with Megami Tensei would have already known to begin with. It does nothing but feel like a cash-in on a franchise that was popular at the time.
If you still really want to see it, you can look into picking up the DVD rerelease from 2001 from Kiseki and Revelations. It's one of those flip over DVDs that features another title (in this case, The Cockpit; I cannot speak of its quality, personally) on the other side. It's still available from SendIt for £14.99. I have absolutely no idea whether or not the subbing on this DVD version was cleaned up, but all signs I've gathered point directly to "no". Either way, Digital Devil cannot be recommended to even the biggest of MegaTen fans. It is a complete and utter waste of nearly fifty minutes of your life.
It is worth noting that there is also a version of this title from a fansub group called Shinsen Subs (it is not listed on their site, however, so it's possible I've been given the wrong information). Their version seems to be a recording of the original Japanese animated video. However, this one is easily the best of the versions due to a far superior traslation. No more "ROKI", thankfully. The screenshots included here are from that version,
Several months ago I stumbled upon an eBay auction for Megami Tensei animation cels from this film. For a low price, I was sent a handful of original, painted cels and some pencil drawings. They have been scanned in and included below.
Screenshots
Animation Cel Scans
