Devil Lady

Devil Lady (デビルマンレディー) is a Japanese action horror manga series written and illustrated by Go Nagai. It was originally serialized between January 1997 and July 2000 in the manga magazine Weekly Morning. Seventeen bound volumes were published by Kodansha for release in Japan. The story focuses on Jun Fudo a teacher who when with a group of students on a school trip is attacked by a demons. In the midst of the assault Jun transforms into the Devil Lady and is able to protect the girls who have survived the demon attacks and kills the demons with her newfound strength. Jun now becoming the Devilman Lady, fight for the sake for humanity to protect them from the devil beasts and their creations.

The manga series was adapted into a twenty six episode anime television series, the anime aired in Japan on Mainichi Broadcasting System between October 1998 and May 1999. ADV Films licensed the anime series, and released six DVD volumes between January and August 2003, as well as a complete box set in 2004.

Manga
Jun Fudo was a teacher who raised her younger brother, Hikaru, while their father was away in the United States. One day, as she and a group of students go on an outdoor trip Jun begins to experience unusual nightmares. Far worse things were about to happen to them, however, when a group of demons, martial artists in human form, in a nearby chalet attempt to rape Jun and the female students in their demon forms. As she was being violated, Jun felt her soul being ripped apart and because of this, a terrifying transformation occurs turning her into the Devil Lady. She protects the girls who have survived the demon attacks and kills the demons with her newfound strength. Suddenly, a woman named Lan Asuka appears and says that she was the one who had awakened the sleeping beast within Jun.

Totally confused by all this and also by her father's sudden appearance and experience, things became too complicated for Jun to understand. Through Professor Fudo's knowledge, he tells a tale of a strange phenomenon that occurred in shantytowns years ago. It was known as the "Devil Beast Syndrome" in which its inhabitants would transform into demons and rape women before eating them with no memories or intelligence of their previous lives and giving them enhanced strength with other abilities to boot.

Professor Fudo doesn't believe that their "Devil Beast Syndrome" transformation was supernatural but was actually the next stage of human evolution, calling it "Nature's way of dealing with mankind's overpopulation". He also said that few people were genetically engineered to retain their conscience should the "Devil Beast Syndrome" occur in them, Jun being one of them. With Jun now becoming the Devilman Lady, she will fight for the sake for humanity to protect them from the devil beasts and their creations.

Anime
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 veins run the genes that hold the next step in the evolution of mankind. The same blood as the beastlike superhumans that terrorize the city. Unlike the rest of them, though, 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, if not eliminating, these berserk destroyers of mankind. Jun, as Devilman Lady, must now exterminate her own kind, but how much longer can she keep her sanity in a situation she never chose in the first place?

Characters

 * Jun Fudo (不動ジュン)
 * Jun is a successful and very well-endowed supermodel in Tokyo when the story begins. She is found by a woman, Lan Asuka who forces her to confront a werewolf-like monster called a Devil-beast. As it tears into Jun, her own powers awaken within her and she becomes a Devil-beast herself. She defeats the beast with her new powers and reverts back to her human form. Asuka then tells her that she is a member of a military unit known as the Human Alliance whose purpose is to hunt down and kill all those who are affected with Devil Beast Syndrome. Asuka gives Jun an ultimatum; if Jun doesn't hunt for them, she will be hunted by them. Jun has no choice but to obey Asuka from that point on. Jun is a very quiet and timid person who seems to avoid most social interactions, with two exceptions. She is generally open with her manager and very friendly with an aspiring teen model named Kazumi. As the series progresses she becomes much more independent. She also has the same last named as Akira Fudo, the protaganist from the original Devilman series.


 * Devil Lady/Devilman Lady
 * Jun's alter ego, Devil Lady is the exact opposite of Jun. She is loud, violent, and temperamental. Her unforgiving and aggressive nature tends to make all of her battles very graphic. As Devil Lady all of her senses are greatly increased and she has night vision. Her ability to heal is also highly amplified, bordering on regeneration. Her strength allows her to bend and twist steel girders, without struggle. She is able to fly via large wings that unfold from her back. She can generate high voltage electric currents to destroy her enemies instantly and form blades of energy around her arms or elbows to neatly slice through almost anything. Her most powerful ability is the giga-effect, which allows her to become a giant and fight other devil-beasts that has grown immensely. Aside from the way she can retain her human conscious, her giga-effect ability is what many people and devil-beasts alike are after.


 * Lan Asuka (アスカ蘭)
 * Asuka is the woman who scouted Jun for the Human Alliance, and is a high-ranking government official. She is a cold, aggressive, and manipulative woman, who cares nothing for the people who work under her. When she forced Jun to confront the Devil-beast Wolver, she had no concern for Jun's survival, her theory that Jun was a Devil-beast was based only on a hunch. As the series progresses, even though she is cruel to Jun, she cares about Jun's safety. She seems to have different intentions from her organization and does a great deal of work without their knowledge. We later find out that Asuka's a hermaphrodite and what her true intentions are. We later find about her/his past, she/he first posed as male as teenager. She/He killed her father (who was a beast) cause he killed her/his mother. She/He thinks humans are at end and there time is up, so she put man on trial to see if they would sink low to becoming beasts or if they could go to a higher standard. She/he wants to be reborn into something new thats why she started the beast hunts and war. She hates her/his body and blames her/his parents for giving it to her/him. She/He later revels to Jun that she/he has loved since the moment she/he laid eyes on her. She/He then raped Jun after reveling her true intentions. She/he has the same last name as Ryo Asuka, Akira Fudo's friend from the original Devilman series.


 * Kazumi Takiura (滝浦和美)
 * Kazumi is a young and aspiring teen model and fan of Jun's, who she laters meets during an audition when she entered the wrong building. They become close friends, with Jun acting as a big sister or mentor. Kazumi's parents are brutally killed by Devil-beasts who also try to kill Kazumi as they consider Jun a traitor and seek to punish her by targeting people close to Jun. Kazumi is later taken in by Jun, and is unaware of Jun's night life, although she strongly suspects something is wrong. As the series progresses, the relationship between Kazumi and Jun gradually progresses into a romantic one.


 * Dr. Jason Bates
 * Bates is a scientist working at the Samuelson Labs in New Jersey, and is the current head of all Devil-beast research. He visits Japan to witness Jun's battles for this research, he expresses his views that the Devil-beasts are not evil and how he sympathizes with them. Later during Jun's battle with a Devil-beast in a television studio, she is saved by Bates, a Devil-man like Jun. Bates is the first devil-beast before Jun to retain human faculties, and to be used for the side of humans. However unlike Jun, he sometimes acts as though he would prefer to give in to his beast side and run amok like all of the others.


 * Kiyoshi Maeda (前田清)
 * He is Asuka's personal secretary and also Jun's driver. Although he works for Asuka, he is more morally concerned with Jun's status not only as a human but also her demon side and he tries to help her as much as he can. As the storyline progresses, he ends up getting caught in a conspiracy that may end up getting him killed and a shocking truth is revealed as he learns more of Lan Asuka's past and the future that she will unleash.


 * Tatsuya Yuasa (湯浅辰也)
 * Yuasa is Jun's long time modeling agent who has been there for her when she goes for auditions. He has a wife and daughter who loves him. After Jun's first Devilman experience, Yuasa started to get worried about Jun. As the story progresses, Yuasa feelings for Jun grew and is falling for her.


 * Satoru (サトル)
 * A child who acts as the leader and organizer of the more militant Devil-Beasts, who's intention is the genocide of all humans. Satoru is a clever and dangerous foe who Jun has underestimated several times. He considers Jun a traitor to his kind and he will use all of his resources to make her life a living nightmare.


 * Aoi Kurosaki (黒崎あおい)
 * A former love interest of Jun who succumbed to the DB syndrome. A gifted swimmer, she met Jun when she was still at highschool, where she attempted to gain a first kiss from her future-slayer, which caused Jun to push back, and the incident ruined Aoi's swimming career.

TV series
When creating the Devil Lady TV series many concepts and characters were changed from the original manga which was much more violent and sexually oriented. Jun, as a character is much tougher and braver in the original manga, she is also a teacher. The character Kazumi also never appeared in the original manga, her looks are based upon the character Miki Makimura, Akira Fudo's female friend in the Devilman series.

Jun's two forms are also a tribute to both versions of Devilman. While her regular sized form is similar to Devilman (including satyr-like hairy legs) as he appears in the original manga, her Giga Effect form is a tribute to the 1972 TV anime version. In Giga mode, she is a giant as tall as classic giant robots or monsters of the 70s, sports turquoise skin and yellow eyes, and does not have any body hair, all elements taken from the TV version of Devilman.

Devil-Beast Syndrome
This "disease" is a strange affliction that plagues the Devil Lady universe. While it may stay dormant within a user for years without a symptom, once they begin to become apparent there is no cure. An individual with D.B.S. will usually transform into a monstrous creature with awesome powers and little to no control over themselves. The transformations always seem to have something to do with the users inner feelings or strengths (cat lovers may become cat-like, swimmers may become fish-like etc), those that retain their greater human faculties have the ability to control when and how they transform. It takes a great deal of damage to kill someone with D.B.S. Lastly is the Giga effect. Presumably any Devil-Beast with enough control is able to "Go Giga" or to mutate into its most powerful form, which always seems to include a dramatic size increase (sometimes the size of a skyscraper).

Later as the syndrome becomes more wide spread, it is learned that the syndrome is not passed as a virus but as sensory data. Simply being around a Devil-Beast and experiencing it with any of the five senses is enough to become one. On top of that, being around a particular Devil-Beast for a long amount of time will make a person become a Devil-Beast of similar design (Kazumi grew wings almost exactly like Jun's). Also it becomes apparent that simply becoming a Devil-Beast is not enough to make one act monstrous, and that the ones Jun was forced to dispatch were merely more volatile individuals incapable of accepting their change.

By the end of the series it is revealed that the Devil-Beasts are merely the next stage in human evolution and completely inevitable. The idea that this change would be negative and disastrous is proven false and ends on an optimistic note with Jun walking past two little girls at play who both have tails.

Manga
The Devilman Lady manga was written and illustrated by Go Nagai, it was serialized between January 1997 and July 2000 in the manga magazine Weekly Morning. Seventeen bound volumes were published by Kodansha for released in Japan. The manga has been licensed for release in Italy by d/visual. The manga storyline is a much more violent and sexually oriented than the anime. The manga shows a depiction of many of the characters being tortured and raped, as well as scenes of graphic dismemberment and heavy use of blood and gore.

The manga starts with Fudou Jun, a highschool teacher, taking a trip with a group of students. While there, a group of martial artists staying nearby take a strange interest in the girls. These men are actually demons and after changing into their true form break into the cabin to rape the girls. One gets Jun and violates her. She feels her soul being torn apart and transforms into Devilman Lady. With newfound powers and strength she kills all the demons and protects the girls from any further harm.

Anime
A twenty six episode anime TV series adaptation was produced by the animation studio TMS Entertainment and directed by Toshiki Hirano. The anime aired in Japan from October 10, 1998 to September 29, 1999. ADV Films announced it had licensed the series in July 2002, with the first volume being released on January 7, 2003. The Devil Lady TV show's storyline is almost completely different from the manga, featuring only two characters from the original manga, Jun Fudo and Lan Asuka.