GaryFrost

Neon Genesis Evangeli- I mean, Devil Survivor 2 the Animation, is a great example of an adaptation from a video game to television gone wrong. Having beaten the video game myself, this anime adaptation was a severe disappointment from start to finish in many off-putting ways. The writing in this anime is childish as it constantly uses well-known clichés, character archetypes who never develop past their cardboard cut-out selves, spills melodrama all over the floor, and everything feels rushed and unconvincing. It is rather, to put it simply, a monstrosity. Now, the story of the video game wasn’t exactly original nor was it interesting, soI wasn’t expecting the anime to have a storyline to be on a whole different tier. However the anime definitely could had improved on the overarching story in various ways. Unfortunately, the anime never really improves anything throughout its entirety and leaves off a trail of poor writing everywhere. The story starts out when a colossal, unnatural disaster hits Japan which pushes civilians and society into desperation, as any major disaster in real life would. Soon, invaders called Septentriones appear and humans must defeat every one of them using demons they can summon in order to survive. Wait a minute, doesn’t this premise sound a bit familiar? Devil Survivor 2 borrows a lot of the same concept from Neon Genesis Evangelion. However the video game managed to blend in its own traditional and original aspects of the Megami Tensei franchise, (Devil Survivor belongs to the Megami Tensei franchise), thereby allowing the game to hold onto its charm. The same can’t be said for the anime adaptation. Unlike the video game, the anime sheds off every inch of strategy in every battle, and replaces it with random attacks that seem to serve no purpose other than for eye-candy and to weakly move the plot forward. The result is mainly dull action and boring battle scenes. One of the first problems that appear in the anime is that it never really genuinely shows how such a monumental impact is affecting the civilians and society. In Devil Survivor 2’s case, world-building is essential in order to allow the viewer to sink in the necessary details so that important aspects such as pacing and plot and character development feel natural. World-building in this anime’s case could had provided more details on the nature of the post-apocalyptic setting, what the order of society is currently like, how various civilians are holding up, the government’s reaction, etc. Unfortunately, the viewer gets none of this in a genuine manner but gets instead various plot devices that jump out of nowhere which feel jarring, unnatural, and in certain cases, make for unconvincing writing in both story and character-wise. Enter Hibiki, the main protagonist. He encompasses everything that many other battle shounen protagonists there ever were. He is the hero who jumps straight into action without rational thought. He is the hero who has to save everyone simply because he has the power to summon stronger demons than anyone else. By the way, why Hibiki has been granted this special power while almost everyone else has been left with much weaker demons is never explained until the last remaining few episodes. Even then, the reasoning for this special power is as cliché as it can get. The unexplained unique powers he acquires acts as plenty of plot devices, as Hibiki manages to defeat foes left and right with the help of his powerful demons, and without any convincing struggles. To hurt the writing further, for the first few episodes, this power is the only reason that drives him to become the typical hero that he is and jumps into every battle he can get his hands on. When Hibiki lacks such motivation for his heroic behaviors, he comes off as a very unconvincing character and becomes hard for the viewer to sympathize or understand with. Other characters beside Hibiki also never properly develop, and this makes for much unfruitful viewing containing melodrama and rushed events. In fact, the majority of the characters are hardly even realized, it’s as if they were put into the anime simply to fill up more cast and time and amount to nothing more. On top of this, well-known clichés pretty much plague many parts of the anime. One notable cliché and theme used throughout the anime is… the power of emotions. Yes, screaming out loud while also screaming cliché lines can save the day in this anime. Devil Survivor 2 the Animation was very disappointing. There is not much of a single redeeming aspect about this anime. Cliches, bland characters, overdramatic scenes due to poor development, weak narratives and overall plot really plague this anime, ultimately coming off childish and dull. And to those who played the game and hoped for a faithful adaptation in terms of story, you will be disappointed. To make it worse for the video game fans as well as for the rest of the Megami Tensei franchise fans, a lot of the Megami Tensei aspects seen in this anime are terribly realized. The anime breaks the laws of the MegaTen universe, such as how Hibiki can somehow summon Byakko as his first demon in the first episode, a high-level demon in the video game. It was also disappointing how the Demon Fusion was actually introduced in the last episode, and it didn’t help that it was intertwined with horrifying writing. Also, did I mention that Jungo is the most awkward character I’ve ever seen in any anime? The video game is very fun and addicting. This adaptation can leave one with the impression of the exact opposite.

Keirik

I had my share of problems with Persona 4's anime adaptation. Actually, I had a truckload of problems with it. Scratch that, I was finding stuff to complain about every single episode. And yet, I look back on it and think "oh wow they actually didn't do that badly, considering they condensed a 70-hour RPG into 25 episodes". Indeed, Devil Survivor 2: The Animation served to put Persona 4 into perspective for me. In spite of all its issues, it really didn't do that much wrong. The story was well developed, the characters all got their moments to shine, and there was still time leftover for fluffy social linkage. Yeah, uh, DeSu 2 doesn't do any of that. What we have here is the boring parts of Mirai Nikki with the basic premise of Neon Genesis Evangelion tacked on, infused with Megami Tensei lore. P4 wasn't exactly a paragon of originality, but the tricks it played to stay above the typical worked well. Here, however, everything is strictly by-the-numbers. Chosen one, blah blah blah, pointless friends, sexy rival, blah blah blah, end of the world, boss battles, mysterious otherworldly ally, this has literally all been done before. Even worse, this show is as predictable as it is boring. I could see all the plot "twists" coming, -especially- the ending. Oh, wow, the ending. Don't even try to pretend you were shocked. It was so, so obvious. One of my biggest problems with this is the cast. If your name isn't Hibiki Kuze, you're shit out of luck. This show doesn't care about you, and you won't get to do anything, ever. The only other characters to get any screentime are Hibiki's two friends, his sexy rival, and the mysterious otherwordly ally. Everyone else is mere decoration, which is extremely sad, because the minor characters happen to also be the most interesting ones. I was charmed by Jungo and Airi from the first moment they appeared, but "Jungo = chef, likes cats; Airi = kind of a bitch" is the only thing we ever get to know about them here. This is a huge problem, because when the show starts killing characters off and treats it as a huge deal, I was unable to care. They weren't killing -people-, they were killing concepts. None of these characters were developed enough for their deaths to have any sort of impact. Speaking of development, though, not even Hibiki gets that. Indeed, his only privilege is the vast amounts of screentime. He starts the show as a generic, personality-free protagonist, and ends it the exact same way. The protagonist, Yu Narukami, was one of the things the P4 anime did extremely well, so seeing them utterly fail here was kind of sad. Perhaps 13 episodes just wasn't enough for such a large cast of characters. Wait, perhaps? There's no "perhaps" here. I suppose the show being short kinda starts making up for it being incredibly boring. Hey, let's be positive some more! Electropop magician kz of one-person music "group" livetune composed the opening, and he has, of course, delivered a total jam once again. It may not be a complete banger like his other op of the season, OreImo's Reunion, but more kz is good kz. I cherish kz's compositions. On a similar note, the ending song (Be by Song Riders) isn't bad, either. Both songs eventually found their way into my playlist, where they both got their heavy rotation. Oh and the animation is kinda nice I guess. Let's have a bottom line, a line at the bottom. Devil Survivor 2 is boring. Really boring. Uninteresting and bland, even, and I can't think of this as anything other than a failure. I suppose it's a bit better than Mirai Nikki, one of my least favourite anime of all time, on account of this just being dull, as opposed to face-breakingly bad. Although, technically, isn't making a bad impact better than making no impact at all? Mirai Nikki -did- have some absolutely fantastic stupidity... Er, yeah. To close this review, I can't recommend this to anyone. To fans of the game, this is a shitty adaptation. Don't bother. To fans of the genre, Evangelion is there for a reason. To fans of SMT, just rewatch Persona 4. To everyone else, this is one boring piece of work. I suppose the best way to describe it would be "mediocre", but it's -so- mediocre that it crosses into being god-awful. After all, aren't the worst shows the ones you can't even enjoy for their badness? Your anime's death clip has been uploaded. This outcome cannot be avoided. Have a nice day!