Director: Mizuho Nishikubo
Screenplay: Mizuho Nishikubo
Based on the Novels by Aya
Nishitani
Voice Cast: Saeko Shimazu as
Shirasagi Yumiko; Yū Mizushima as Akemi Nakajima; Fumihiko Tachiki as Susumu
Takai; Houchu Ohtsuka as Loki; Mari Yokoo as Ohara; Masaharu Satō as Hiroyuki
Kondou; Masako Katsuki as Izanami; Megumi Hayashibara as Kanou Fuyuki; Takurō
Kitagawa as Teacher Iida;; Yukio Yamagata as Kaneto Muraki; Yuuri Sugimoto as
Kyoko Takamizawa
Viewed in Japanese with English Subtitles
First of all, to talk about Digital Devil Story, we need to get into the complicated history of the source material, as this originates from the novel series from Aya Nishitani. Digital Devil Story: Megami Tensei, based on the novels, exists in both this OVA one-off and a 1987 video game, the anime more of a tie-in, but connected to the novels together. After a 1990 sequel, the franchise as video games would become 1992's Shin Megami Tensei, which would become a decade spanning franchise of dark fantasy and horror. Shin Megami Tensei would have its own spin-off, Shin Megami Tensei If... (1994), and that game's premise of basing narratives around a high school setting would lead to the Persona franchise. That franchise, into its decades run, would eventually become a popular franchise in the West for video gamers, making this convoluted history worth mentioning, as from this obscure OVA most do not know of, you have an institution whose popularity reaches the West and the East. That is not even getting into how we did get the Shin Megami Tensei anime OVA, the Manga Entertainment released Tokyo Revelation (1995), in the West too, so this franchise that mostly exists in video games has had a wide and curious reach over the passage of time.
This is a curious history to ponder, in mind to the novels and games they were less an ongoing narrative but individual stories set around themes. A lot of mythologies, a lot of horror, some Christian symbolism, and many different concepts have intermingled over the years in this cross-media franchise. Hell even Adolf Hitler appears as a villain in Persona 2: Innocent Sin (1999), as the "Fuhrer" using the Spear of Destiny, which shows someone was aware of the Nazis' history of trying acquire occult objects among their other obsessions. This franchise, leading to its popularity in the West with costumed vigilante teenagers in Persona 5 (2016), entering human subconscious to deal with maleficent emotions, has had a run of trying many ideas. Digital Devil Story the OVA finds itself cribbing in the same premise ballpark as Evilspeak (1981), an American horror film caught up in the British Video Nasties wave of banning horror films on video tape, starting Clint Howard as a teenager who summons Satan with a computer. Here this is evoked for me by introducing us to Akemi, at first through the narrative not a likable male protagonist as he starts the narrative having summoned Loki, a demon who he keeps appeased here by having one of his female teachers be a sexual sacrifice in a student run occult ritual, all with the power of virtual reality headgear and polygons summoning demons. Yes, this narrative is bloody ridiculous, before anyone reading this asks.
Only forty plus minutes, this covers the first novel of the original series, in which Akemi has summoned Loki through a demon summoning programme in his school, whilst a new female transfer student Yumiko finds herself drawn towards his secret rituals as a potential sacrificial victim. Adding to the lengthy back-story to the franchise, this single OVA barely scratches the surface of how vast just the novels' get, with even the female teacher a key figure, and future antagonist, or that Loki even if a minor figure appears through the franchise of games1. The hint in the end of the anime, suggesting a sequel with the Egyptian God Set being summoned, is not surprisingly a nod to a later novel. If you are going to talk of how in depth the references are even for all the unintentionally strange ideas here, even Loki's design is based on 19th century Danish illustrator Lorenz Frølich's depictions of Loki in the 1895 poem Lokasenna2. This is going to be a short review in terms of describing the narrative in some ways, as the plot is not a lot. Loki eventually is sick of being confided in the computer, gets assistance from the sacrificed teacher Ohara, and rampages by shooting out shocking pink goo which smothers and crushes students and bank tellers alike with blood geysers coming out the gooey mass, having to eventually be stopped even by Akemi with Yumiko. But it is perplexing having to write a review only to find this tiny fragment is literally that, not merely a one-off as in some OVA titles from this era, which never got anything else baring a manga we never heard of in the West, but a forgotten piece of a huge franchise we would know of. Even joking about unintentional references to Clint Howard movies makes sense when writing this review as, to my delight, there is so much to write of in terms of a single forty minute animated work, lost in time, without feeling like padding and being important to its context and virtues.
With very eighties synth on the score, these horror OVAs are also fascinating as for their aesthetics. Even their fixation of sex and horror, clearly there to sell to an audience in the day but a concept constantly found in Japan's occult pop media at times, stands out, alongside how so many of these titles in the day, even in the nineties, had a reoccurring obsession with nocturnal primary and secondary colour palettes to depict scenes - blues, reds and purples especially alongside something obvious as black to associate with darkness and the supernatural. You can raise an eyebrow at the computers of this era, insanely obsolete technology including a line of reel-to-reel tape machines in the student computer room, or a Star of David (even by accident or misguided cultural appropriation) being the summoning area for the carnal sacrifice of a woman to Loki when Yumiko first learns of what is going on, cheese to be found here. But there a lot still there, including anime and manga being obsessed for better and for worse with appropriate non-Eastern religious symbolism, of technology and the supernatural co-existing, which is something Japanese storytelling and even folklore has little difficulty in doing or sexuality intermingling with the monstrous, that even if lurid and problematic in gender depictions it is something aesthetically heightened in their art even if at times having to find ways around censorship and intermingled with the grotesque.
There are even references to Japanese mythology and lore as Yumiko has more connection to Akemi, with his reoccurring nightmares in an ancient setting being chased by an undead female ghoul, [Spoiler Warning] including the fact Yumiko is a reincarnation of Izanami, the Japanese goddess of creation and death. [Spoilers End] This still ends as an action sequence, with an "Electric Beast Cerberus" being ridden, but the mood and context was catnip for me. It has its gruesome edges too, to match its cousins from this era of anime, even if not the most extreme of them - brainwashed students, even if programmed by a computer programme, killing classmates as a horde is a creepy touch, as is the fact that Akemi's decision to summon a demon is for a juvenile reason, having being brutally beaten up by a tougher classmate in a scene just as bloody as any other for being too close to his girlfriend. (Then there is one moment, only implied, involving one female student, brainwashed, biting another in an area that is frankly perverse as a death scene, even in mind to some of the extreme content actually shown in anime OVAs in the eighties). It is not a great OVA, but for me it fascinates as this dark forgotten little narrative tale, compacting together details and tropes from other anime from this era, which also happens to be connected to a large ongoing franchise.
Even its director/writer Mizuho Nishikubo is a figure of note as, whilst obscurer as a name, he worked over decades in an eclectic number of areas and in just his directorial work. Starting in the seventies with the likes of the Gatchaman franchise, he made OVAs like this or California Crisis (1986), a really peculiar and artistically unique work from this era of obscure straight to video anime, the television series Otogi zôshi (2004), fascinating as a samurai narrative which pulls the rug out from under the viewer with a drastic tone and setting change, and films that vary as wildly as Musashi: The Dream of the Last Samurai (2009), an animated documentary on swordsman Miyamoto Musashi, to Giovanni's Island (2014), a drama set post World War II. Even when not in the director's chair, Nishikubo was also the animation or sequence director on the likes of Patlabor 2: The Movie (1993) and Ghost in the Shell (1995), so he is someone significant. Seeing this in his career, this curious directorial production, in such a career softens me to the work more so. As a fascinating crosspollination between a variety of different areas, even this obscurity's history befits a franchise which in mythological, spiritual and even Jungian ideas are mixed together as they have over the decades.
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1) Just going through the fan-made Wikepedia, the first novel has many aspects and characters which progress onwards, as can be read of HERE.
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