(1987)
Dir - Umanosuke Iida
Overall: MEH
Visually fun with some bonkers creature designs and loads of hilarious profanity and gore, the first in the OVA adaptations of Yasutaka Nagai's novelization of his brother Go Nagai's Devilman manga, Devilman Vol. 1: The Birth is pretty asinine. The entire concept of having to merge yourself with a demon in order to defeat one is pointless since two humans were rather easily able to stop one with a mere shotgun. In addition, their grand scheme to turn a whole nightclub full of innocent people into demons, (after murdering several beforehand of course), so they can put themselves in a highly unnecessary predicament where they have to then destroy them once they have all turned is laughably stupid. Even though it all ends up working out which is actually even more stupid. Both the plotting and dialog are so appalling that it borders on parody, yet the series has long been beloved either in spite of or because of its silliness.
(1990)
Dir - Umanosuke Iida
Overall: MEH
Following up the rather stupid Devilman Vol. 1: The Birth is the even more stupid Devilman Vol. 2: The Demon Bird. Animator/filmmaker Umanosuke Iida returns once again, adapting the initial manga and novel material by Go Nagai and his brother Yasutaka. While it is a plus that the rather ridiculous origin story is done and out of the way, all that is left is for a three long, boring fight scenes to go by without advancing hardly any type of story whatsoever. The dialog is even more embarrassingly terrible this time, especially when profanity is used, ("If you ever say that again I'll rip off your fucking head and shit down your neck!", per example). Likewise, at least the English version has comical line-readings throughout the entire thing so even if the script was not as moronic as it is, it still would come off that way. Yet for those who find these qualities to be enduring, over the top anime hallmarks, it is jammed pack with enough of them to make for a mind-numbingly goofy experience.
(2000)
Dir - Kenichi Takeshita
Overall: MEH
Breaking away from being a straight adaptation of the Nagai brother's written source material, Amon: The Apocalypse of Devilman more specifically follows the previous OVAs made by Umanosuke Iida. Arriving thirteen years after the original anime film and changing up the creative team, it is tonally far less absurd, bringing the barely scripted and hyper, ultra-violent nonsense of the first two installments much more down to earth. The plus side of the trade-off is an actual story with at least some sort of emotional pay-off and still plenty of outrageous, gory battle scenes and inventive demon design elements. Also, the dialog is sparse, (which is a good move in and of itself), and nowhere near as mortifying. At a mere forty-four minutes and finally breaking the mold of a weak set-up followed by one uninteresting battle scene after the other, it feels like there is more that could have been explored here. That said, it still does not necessary feel rushed either as the pacing is too lumbering. It is a noticeable improvement for sure, but the franchise is still struggling all the same.
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