Their relationship is completely platonic!
Devilman Lady is a 1998 anime based on the manga Devilman Lady by Go Nagai. It deviates greatly from the manga, although not as much as the old Devilman anime from its source material. Chiaki Konaka was a writer for the show.
Jun Fudo is a beautiful supermodel who is idolized by many. She also has a dark secret that not even she knows about at first, for within her lie the genes that hold the next step in the evolution of mankind, the same blood as the Devil Beasts, beast-like superhumans that terrorize the city. Unlike the rest of them, however, Jun has managed to hold a tenuous grip onto her humanity, and she is recruited by the mysterious Lan Asuka, member of a secret organization within the government, aimed at controlling and/or eliminating the berserk destroyers of humanity. Jun, as Devil Lady, must now save humanity by exterminating her own kind and stopping the machinations of Satoru, the wicked boy who leads the Devil Beasts, but it is unclear how much longer Jun can keep her sanity in a situation she never chose to begin with.
The series was distributed by ADV Films, and was directed by Toshiki Hirano.
Examples of:
- Adaptation Personality Change: Jun is less cheerful and more moody than in the manga, while Asuka is a lot colder and portrayed as a calculating chessmaster.
- Adaptational Angst Upgrade: A much larger emphasis is placed on Jun's body image issues and her fear of people finding out she's a Beast. A natural result of her being a model instead of a teacher.
- Adaptational Wimp: Asuka doesn't have her psychic powers here. Instead, Devil Beasts are tracked via a device, with some Techno Babble about how it detects a reaction in the creation of ATP when Beasts transform.
- Amazon Chaser: Both Jason and Asuka are attracted to Jun because of her badass demon side.
- Barbie Doll Anatomy: Actually somewhat odd about this. Humans and Asuka tend to be shown accurately whilst nude. But Devil Beasts like Jun, Aoi, Hitomi and Kazumi are drawn with primary and secondary sexual characteristics missing, whether transformed or not.
- Big Bad: Satoru is the mysterious boy leader of the Devil Beasts who seeks to Kill All Humans and kill the titular heroine, Jun Fudo, for betraying her kind. However, near the end, it is revealed that Lan Asuka, Jun's ally and mentor, is a Devil Beast herself who wants to eliminate Satoru so she can rule the world, and has been manipulating Jun for that purpose. She becomes the Final Boss as the Child of God after Satoru's defeat.
- Bittersweet Ending: Jun defeats the Child of God at the expense of the lives of all of her friends, including her love interest Kazumi, whose gruesome death as she was absorbed into Jun she was forced to watch; and she lost both her arms. However, the last scene is a human child playing with a Devil Beast child, suggesting that humanity is accepting their successors without any more violence.
- Break the Cutie: Life really sucks for Kazumi.
- Canon Foreigner: Kazumi Takiura and Jason Bates, although he serves as a stand-in for Devilman Liger.
- Double Standard: Rape, Female on Female: Averted; Lan Asuka's rape of Jun Fudo is played as a horrifically cruel act that sends the victim into a Heroic BSoD; and as for the perpetrator, it is one of many acts that marks her as pure evil.
- Gainax Ending: Not as much as the manga, but still involves Asuka turning into an angel with very little explanation, Jun falling into Hell through a portal opened by cultists (even though supernatural elements hadn't been mentioned before), and Jun merging with the dead to defeat Asuka, creating a world where humans and Devilmen coexist.
- Gecko Ending: Due to the manga being in an early stage when it started airing, the anime takes a different route, even though it was very different to begin with. Most notably, the story turns not to be a sequel to the original Devilman, remaining as a standalone alternate universe, and Jun and Asuka are not the two halves of Satan. The manga ends with Akira, Satan, and all the demons going to war against God and angels (and apparently winning), while in the anime Asuka (the closest analog to God) is defeated, and humans apparently accept Devilmen into society.
- Harping on About Harpies: Harpi is a dual reference, being a winged blue skinned harpy, but also having a crown of feathers like the real-life Harpia Eagle.
- Humans Are Bastards: With a few exceptions, humanity is portrayed in a very bad light. They're either Too Dumb to Live sheep, genocidal bastards, or Lan Asuka.
- In the Style of: Devilman Lady if adapted by Brian De Palma.
- Irony:
- In the anime, there a is a chameleon Devil Beast. However, a different Devil Beast lizard is the one who is a true shape-shifter. Though the chameleon can really only blend into backgrounds, like the animal.
- Another sense of Irony is Jun Fudo being more of the messiah and looking demonic in contrast to the angelic looking being claimed to be the "Child of God", but has more in common with Satan and The Antichrist. Jun was also resurrected like many depictions of Christ, and despite Jun claiming herself to be the Devil, she fits more the Messianic Archetype.
- Make My Monster Grow: Devil Beasts and Devilmen in this series have a power called Giga Effect that makes them grow gigantic.
- Monster of the Week: Jun fights the Devil Beasts in this manner, though it only lasts until Satoru makes his presence known.
- Mouthscreen
- Our Angels Are Different: Asuka turns into an angel (or God) in the finale, apparently as a result of her being a different form of mutant than Devil Beasts.
- Rape as Drama: Asuka, in her "angel" form, rapes Jun.
- Reptiles Are Abhorrent: The series has a few generic reptiles and then specifically a chameleon, a DIFFERENT snake beast (cobra to be specific), and a lizard that can shape shift.
- Sizeshifter: Most Devil Beasts will grow in size as a last resort or as a super form.
- Tamer and Chaster: The anime lacks the manga's emphasis on Beasts' hypersexuality, with its explicit rape and masturbation scenes that resulted from it. The emphasis is instead on psychological horror.
- Twisted Christmas: The eleventh episode, "Box", takes place on Christmas, and it is just dark and bitter as the rest of the series.
- When Trees Attack: Gender flipped from the manga, a woman Devil Beast is obsessed with getting pregnant and she begins absorbing people into her body in the hope of producing children.
