Forum - View topicPile of Shame - Megami Tensei: Digital Devil Story
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Fronzel
Posts: 1906 |
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A lot of anime has this problem in varying degrees. The industry is addicted to adaptations and is too used to having a ready-made audience in fans of the original work. |
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walw6pK4Alo
 Posts: 9322 |
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Seeing as it was an OVA, not a theatrical release, mightn't the target would have been those familiar with the games first? Maybe it was advertised in gaming catalogues, or was just one of hundreds of one-shot productions that were part of the inflated late 80s boom. It's not like random originally penned contemporaries (as far as I can tell) like Relic Armor Legaciam or Demon Frontier Legend Le Deus were inherently better because they're not adaptations. They might be even worse in that regard because the limited OVA is all you have, there's no other literature, magazines, or friends to fill you in on what confused or lost you. Even OVAs I enjoy like Good Morning Althea just dump you into the middle of a story with barely a paragraph to go on, the rest is just enjoying what you can follow.
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DRWii
 Posts: 636 |
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Well, this is a pleasant surprise; I never thought I'd see an ANN article on this.
Sorry to nitpick, but "Megami Tensei" was actually the first of the "Digital Devil Story" novels; I'm pretty sure the first game was also just a truncated version of all 3.
Definitely a fair criticism. I myself only read the prologue and maybe the first chapter so far via fan-translation, and even that feels like it helped immensely. Personally, I think this might be my favorite "MegaTen" based anime. Sure "Persona 4" and (so far) "Devil Survivor 2" are probably the "best," but I really like seeing where this franchise got started, and I like its old-school aesthetic. The only other "MegaTen" anime that was based off the older style was "Tokyo Revelations," and...yeah, I don't see myself revisiting that one. |
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jsevakis
Former ANN Editor in Chief
 Posts: 1684 Location: Los Angeles, CA |
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Not that it makes a huge difference either way, but this is definitely a movie, as evidenced by the trailer that was included on the R2 DVD. It gives a date for a theatrical release.
(shiver) |
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Myaow
 Posts: 1068 |
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Oh, this looks so pretty, if nothing else. It'd be fun to see a con panel or an article or something detailing all the Megami Tensei spinoff anime. There seems to be one every couple years from the 80s onward!
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Chrno2
 Posts: 6171 Location: USA |
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Ah this one. Hope one day it sees a release from Discotek. It's definitely vintage material. I've only seen this film through the old school tape trades. It was the talk for a time. Produced by AIC when the company was actually cranking things out during the 80's. Then there was that house style that you would see. From anything Iczer-1 to Z and ZZ Gundam to Dragon Century to Robot Carnival to Legend of the Overfiend. You know Hiroyuki Kitazume. It would be years later that I would see this film fansubbed and actually find out what the story was about. I never knew that it was part of Atlus' MegaTen franchise until years later surfing the internet and finding sites dedicated to the history behind it.
But let's not forget it has that horrifying scene that will make you cringe. If someone were to make a mash-up video of the most shocking violent crazy acid induced scenes you could throw in the scene from this film and some Fritz the Cat and anything else you can find along with some Clockwork Orange. I wouldn't mind seeing this film again. There was that whole last part that I NEVER got. Y'know the scene where the woman is at the computer. It was the same one who brought Loki in. But there was this word on the screen and I never knew what the deal it was. |
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DRWii
Posts: 636 |
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It was the name of the villain in the second novel. I don't know if the first novel also ended on that stinger, or if they put that in as sequel bait for a movie that was never made. |
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BorgmanJayce
 Posts: 298 Location: Hades via UK |
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I confess that I'm a huge fan of Shurato myself and it's one of my all-time favorite anime series, so I was a bit disappointed to see Mr Sevakis rag on it.
Sure, it's not a classic, but at the same time, it was quite popular in Europe when it was shown back in the 90's. |
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Clyde_Cash
Posts: 376 |
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I'm no Megami Tensei mark but why wasn't the Digital Devil Saga NES game released in America?
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Brand
 Posts: 1028 |
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I kind of enjoyed this one in that terrible 80s anime kind of way. The art has a good style (for the time) and there are a lot of neat ideas in it but yeah it's a big old mess. At least it doesn't stay around to long to wear out its welcome.
As said before at least it is better than Tokyo Revelations. Which is really awful. It's supposed to be based off a manga based off of the first Super Famicom Shin Megami Tensei game. I have that manga and the anime even strays from that. |
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DRWii
Posts: 636 |
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My best guess is there just wasn't much interest in bringing it over at the time. It's probably just as well, the Nintendo of that era probably would have forced them to alter a lot of the religious names and/or symbols. |
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Zhou-BR
Posts: 1422 |
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Whoa, did you just diss Tenku Senki Shurato? I challenge you to a break dance-off right now!
I love Shurato, too, and it was also a hit here in Brazil back in the '90s. Sure, most of the second arc features some of the most horrid animation I've ever seen in a TV series, but the rest of the show has some pretty good production values, and Kia Asamiya even worked as an animation director on the last episode, under his real name Michitaka Kikuchi. As far as shameless Saint Seiya rip-offs go, I'd take it over Ronin Warriors any day. |
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Chrno2
Posts: 6171 Location: USA |
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Thanks for that info. I hope that one day someone will decide to release this because I could give this another spin. It's funny after I started getting into looking at some of the MegaTen games (and this includes the Persona series, which is now moved to Persona franchise, but still part of the whole) I would hear these names and then I go back to the OVA and then it makes sense. Although the movie was a whole different deal entirely. Maybe it's because of the timing. I mean most gamers probably got exposure to the series around the later 90's. Yet, some may have never seen this film considering when it came out. Though there was a release, not here but I'm surprised it did happen. I guess if you're very much familiar it all fits, but I never thought something I watched decades ago would have ties to a series that I would delve into later only to bring me back. |
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belvadeer
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Well Justin, at least you were trying to give this a chance. I don't think the people on the site below were pleased with it or any of the anime for the games, though they haven't reviewed Trinity Soul yet (not that I have a high opinion of that one either):
http://www.hardcoregaming101.net/megaten/anime.htm |
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Snomaster1
 SubscriberPosts: 2796 |
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I have a question for everyone,including Justin. Should we be grateful that "Megami Tensei:Digital Devil Story" wasn't brought to America? I ask because I don't see it ever being brought here. I also doubt highly that even if this were brought to America,that it would be dubbed into English.
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