Fans of Go Nagai’s work are probably pretty familiar with his Devilman franchise, which has spawned a number of anime and manga series over the decades. More recently fans may have encountered his work in Devilman Crybaby, which streams on Netflix. I personally found that iteration to be one of the best anime I’d ever seen.  Yuasa Masaaki’s directorial touch meshed perfectly with Go Nagai’s conceptual framework for a truly epic series.

Devilman Lady has always been a less-known sideshow of the Devilman franchise, but it has also always been one of my absolute favorite anime, for many reasons – among them, top voice actors, Go Nagai’s vision, the soundtrack and that the story is profoundly and overtly Yuri. Now, almost 20 years after the anime was first released in the US by ADV, here we are thanks to Diskotek who has reissued the complete series in a 2-disk Blu-Ray set. Honestly…I still think it’s fantastic.

The story follow Fudou Jun, a professional model. It’s almost hard to understand what people see in her, as Jun is painfully awkward and nervous but, when she gets in front of the camera, something seems to come over her. One day she is kidnapped and forced into a warehouse with a beast-monster, and learns that she is, in actual fact, a Devil Beast. Unlike many of the transformations happening around town, she retains her humanity when she transforms, making it that much more awful when she has to kill beasts she knows were once- and maybe could still be – human.

The Yuri in this series is so constant that it’s almost diminishing to lay it out. Jun encounters an old classmate who was in love with her, and a new rival model who desires her on this disk, in two fantastically gay episodes. Asuka openly desires Jun when she is a Devil Beast. It is not subtext to say that the entire story is constantly reminding us that Jun is closeted about several things, not just being a Devil Beast.

Diskotek has done a stellar job with this anime. The animation screams 1990s, but the visuals look fresh and crisp and the sound is excellent. Diskotek used ADV’s English track which was good for its time, but very much has that feel of early voice acting when anime was just taking off here.

The soundtrack deserves a mention, too. The theme for this anime is fantastically gothic. I actually bought the soundtrack album for it, and it’s basically the same one theme remixed a couple of times. ^_^ The fight scenes though, have music that sound like the opening theme of a night-time crime-solving couple series from ’90’s American TV. Cracks me up every episode. Giant horrific Devil Beast monsters fighting over Tokyo and the BGM is like Hart & Hart. ^_^

I know horror is not for everyone. Go Nagai is not for everyone. This series is definitely Nagai’s specific brand of sexualized demonic monsters, with both physical and psychological horror elements and dustings of dread and misery and pathos as needed. It will occasionally make you very sad and possibly quite angry. It’s a shockingly good Yuri anime that has an ending that is good and bad, hopeful and miserable all at once.

Ratings:

Art – 9 for 1990s
Story –  9 Depressing, scary and creepy, sometimes emotionally crushing. But fascinating, even compelling.
Characters – 8 No one is what they initially seem, especially not Jun.
Service – 8 Yes, very. The is Go Nagai we are talking about.
Yuri – 8, but wait, there’s more!

Overall – 9

If you don’t want to commit to buying this set, you can watch DevilMan Lady as the dubbed version The Devil Lady free and legally on RetrocrushTV.

In my opinion DevilMan Lady is an absolute classic of Yuri and should not be ignored. I’m thrilled we can experience it once again.

Many, many thanks to Okazu Superhero Eric P for his sponsorship of today’s review!