Devil Survivor 2 The Animation Episode 1: Melancholy Sunday [First Impression]

‘Daichi, wanna leave the station?’

Summary: An 18 years old high school student, Hibiki Kuze, is waiting for his friend, Daichi Shijima, after finishing their mock exams. While discussing their future, Daichi introduced a website that recently popular called “Nicaea”, a “dead face” delivery site that allows people to see videos of their friend’s death, and registered into the website. At the station, they received the videos from Nicaea that shows them dies by being struck down by incoming train in the station they are currently located. Shortly after, before the train comes, an earthquake occurs, causing the incoming train to shake and struck towards them like in the videos they have received. Nicaea offers a second chance to live, and when Hibiki chose to live, a Demon Summoning App was forcefully downloaded into his phone. He and Daichi awakes to find the station crumbled and all people dead. They were attacked by demons came out from other cell phone, but able to escape the station with the help of a demon that their schoolmate, Io Nitta, and Daichi unknowingly summoned. They found the whole town in the same condition and unable to reach their families. With nowhere to go, Hibiki, Daichi, and Io, decides to stick together until they able to find a way. At night while waiting in Roppongi, they are attacked by Dubhe and received another video from Nicaea that shows Daichi’s death. In effort to save his friends, Daichi rides a truck and rush towards Dubhe and explodes, but Dubhe is unharmed. As Hibiki looks horrified, his demon avatar was successfully downloaded, summoning Byakko that defeat Dubhe with ease. Daichi turns out to be saved by another demon that Io summoned, much to their relief. However, they are interrupted by an organization called JP’s as they are placed under arrest. Elsewhere, a mysterious man watches the entire event as he refers Hibiki as “The Shining One.”

(Source: Wikipedia)

Chris’ First Impression:

 Where do I begin…

 Before I say anything else in this impression I’d just like to say… this is probably going to be awesome. After hearing that a Shin Megami Tensei game was receiving an anime adaptation, I immediately opened up Amazon, typed in Devil Survivor 2 and purchased a brand new copy of the game. Now in retrospect that may have been the most idiotic move ever (considering the game may actually have sucked…), BUT, luckily the game was great and as I sat there waiting for Crunchyroll to simulcast the anime I hoped that it would be great to. And you know what? I didn’t disappoint me. The adaption stays very true to the game (which isn’t a bad thing) and doesn’t deviate profoundly from the established plot BUT, this is an anime impression and I’m focusing solely on the anime so that’s the last you’ll hear about the game (probably…)! The animation is good, the voice acting is in Japanese great and best of all the story seems like it’s going to be an awesome adventure.

 The main character seemingly has a personality, unlike many other game to anime adapted protagonists that we’ve seen in the past, which is definitely nice to see and the cast of characters is nice and expansive, I mean, you can never have too many characters in a show about survival now can you? Even though we haven’t seen much of Hibiki’s (I’ll admit, I really don’t like his name) best friend, Daichi, he seems to be an ‘alright’ character… whatever that means. Allow me to display just how ‘alright’ he is, his Good Points: possess a healthy interest in girls, has an ‘alright’ hairstyle, isn’t as annoying as other main characters’ best friends, looks as though he’ll add some humor to the slowly forming group (a.k.a, he’s going to be the butt of every joke) and he has an orange phone… what can I say? I love the color orange… now for some Bad Points: is a wimp, has a high pitched voice that hurts my ears when he gets scared, is seemingly responsible for this whole ordeal (or should I say Hibiki and his’ involvement in it), stole a lorry (like an imbecile) and drove it at the demon (like an imbecile) and finally I can see him becoming a burden on Hibiki’s attempts to survive. That is all. Now for Io, I like/dislike her. Wow, apparently every character in this show so far is ‘alright’. I mean, let’s look at what we’ve seen so far – in true first female side kick style, she’s scared out of her mind and doesn’t know her left from her right, I mean, sure she’s pretty much the only reason Hibiki and Daichi have gotten this far (it feels weird saying that in a first episode review…) because her demon is the only one that appears quick enough to stop incoming threats BUT whenever her demon does appear she get’s all scared and ‘help me Hibiki’- ish. Plus, if she hadn’t squealed when that demon was walking by in one of her first scenes it wouldn’t have seen her… Although I guess I would have been pretty freaked out too if a werewolf just wandered nonchalantly by… And finally Hibiki himself. Yeah, he’s alright. He has that stereotypical ‘I must save/go out of my way to help everyone’ hero mentality that we’ve come to love and I really have no complaints about him. I guess what I’m trying to say is, so far, none of the characters stand out… and that’s all right… it is only the first episode after all.

 Now let’s talk about the plot. So far, from what I’ve gathered, the plot seems to be… world I mean JAPAN (because Japan is always so important in these anime haha) gets invaded by aliens, some people die, they make pacts with some ‘phone fairy’ to save their lives, in turn the gain the ability to use demons as weapons, other demons happen to be walking around eating/attacking people and the world IM SORRY I MEAN JAPAN(!) has gone to hell. It’s an interesting plot that will (I feel) present many an opportunity for a good plot twist here and there. If Gen Urobochi was behind this then I’m certain that all of these survivors would die, but alas he is not and even though I’m sure one of two may possibly die (actually I doubt it, I mean, it is a Shin Megami Tensei game adaption we’re talking about here), the plot twists will have to come from somewhere else. Episode 1 managed to keep me enthralled throughout all 25 minutes of it’s show time and that in and of itself is worthy of an applause, not that I get easily distracted during an anime BUT when an anime is boring/bad, I know that I usually multitask whilst watching. Thankfully I didn’t have to do that here. Moving on… I like the concept of Nicaea. I’m not sure how much more they can do with it but it will be interesting to see the cast delve deeper in A. why it exists and B. who (if anybody) is responsible for it. Moving on again – when the demon came down from the sky, I couldn’t help but think that some weird alien tentacle hentai scenes were about to ensue… what? Just me? MOVING swiftly ON! BASICALLY… I like the plot. Survival plots are ones that you can’t really mess up, I mean, they present you with an already tense and interesting situation everytime that you want to know more about and the people in these survival situations usually have interesting/deep back stories that never cease to intrigue me, although… I can’t really see Daichi having a ‘deep’ (sad) back story… Io on the other hand might have just that!

 On a final note, the episode was set up perfectly to keep me (and everyone else) interested in what’s to come. The groups’ been arrested by the mysterious blue haired women and her organization (who are annoyingly called the JP… hopefully I won’t have to hear Hibiki say it to often… he says it so horribly) and some odd white haired boy with eye make up, standing dramatically on a building (I wonder how he got up there…), with a determined look on his face and hope interest in his hear for the ‘sparkling one’. I’m not sure if the ‘sparkling one’ is Hibiki but whoever he is, I’m sure that he’s absolutely FABULOUS!

Possibility of Blogging: Definitely!