Devil Devil

Also Known As: Devil & Devil
Genre: Action
Length: 15 Volumes
Allegiance: Shogakukan
Mangaka: Miyoshi Yuki
Vintage: 2004
Intelligence Agency Report by: Orax
Sword the Devil and Ios the Angel have been arch-enemies for the longest of times. Their last battle caused them to plunge into the human world and inhabit the bodies of two brothers: Souma and Kanna. As a result, Sword can’t use his supernatural powers, so in order to regain his body – and therefore, his power, Sword and Ios declare a momentary truce. Now, they must start their quest to regain Sword’s original form so that they can put on end to their age-old feud.

Research Agent Report by: Orax 
Plot
Characters
Impact
Visual
5.25
6.25
6.00
8.00
Overall 6.25
Any interest I might have had going into this manga did not last long. Consisting some of the worst plot direction I’ve witnessed in a while, Devil Devil is a collection of loosely connected events that eventually lead to one goal: to get Sword’s body back. Unfortunately the execution is so poorly done that it eventually becomes a chore to continue reading. 

When the plot suffers, everything else seems to fall as well, and the characters in Devil Devil are no exception. The cast consists of stereotypical characters seen many times in other manga. Most of the time Sword is shown yelling at either Nanami, Ios, or pretty much anyone. Nanami, who makes Love Hina’s Narusegawa Naru tolerable, has only the tiresome act of yelling at Sword in an attempt to hide her affection towards him. Most of the characters say one liners that are supposed to be cool or somewhat inspiring but the effect is severely hampered because most of the characters aren’t developed. It doesn’t matter where the characters are (Hell, Earth, or Heaven), it’s always the same thing, and after 15 volumes you start to wonder if any real character development is going to happen. 

Speaking of Hell, for a world that according to the mangaka is full of demons without a shred of “human” emotion, there sure are plenty who do, and it’s inconsistencies like these that annoy me the most. The plot is also the type where the character must consistently get more powerful, and it gets too repetitive. Each new power that is received seems to get nullified in the next fight so the cycle repeats. 

The art itself is not necessarily bad but I’m not a fan of some of the character designs. Sword’s tooth that always hangs over his lip bugged me after looking at it too many times. Regardless, the backgrounds and fight scenes are somewhat detailed so I can’t really complain. 

If Devil Devil could have slowed down and had characters that truly interacted with each other instead of Nanami and Sword arguing all the time and Ios telling them to behave, I would have liked this manga a lot more. Because it didn’t, and because of the length of the manga, it’s not even worth a casual read.