Defense Devil

We all know that we have a “Butler from Hell”- Kuroshitsuji. Now what do we have? – “Lawyer from Hell” – Defense Devil.

Meet Mephisto Bart Kucabara. He was a prince from the Demon world but was banished due to some reasons ( I don’t wanna spoil here), and now he lives in Event Horizon. A place between heaven and hell. In order to get back to his home, he must collect this so called “Dark Matter” from souls who were casts to hell.. He then decided to become a defense lawyer. They let their client(the dead) sign a contract, prove their innocence and claim the Dark Matter within them after the case is solved.

At first glace, this manga is just about solving cases. Kucabara meets a soul, lets them sign a contract, finds out the cause of death and the offense they’ve committed before they died, prove their innocence and collect dark matter afterwards. It goes for about 4-5 chapters, but I must say the cases are all interesting – detective stories that have supernatural events. That’s for the introductory part. The story starts to pick up when he meets Sister Idamaria. As the story progresses, it reveals more mysteries, and the questions are slowly answered. The plot would make you say “What!?” or “Holy!?”. It reveals answers slowly but surely. It doesn’t give readers a full blown answer at once that would make them hard to understand or something like introducing many characters at once. As for the art, it is nicely done. Kinda reminds me of Air gear when I first read it.

Overall Defense Devil is a nice action packed manga with a dash of comedy that will make you ask for more. You guys have to read it while it’s still less than 100 chapters. As for the number of pages, it spans just like your regular shounen jump manga (18-20 pages except for the first few chapters). Trust me, this manga won’t let you down.

A very big thanks to YoruAngel866 for recommending me this manga or else I would have missed one of the most epic manga of this time.

PS. I would still like to write more but I think I might spoil you guys so there just read and see for yourself.

At first I thought that it was going to be like The World God Only Knows where Kucabara will be doing one contract after another. But then the story completely went off it's mark. He was no longer doing his Defense Devil but something else.

The character was typical too. The main protagonist as the "Naive" and innocent shounen, the main heroine as a Tsundere, and with both of them having experience tragedies in the pass.

Overall, a redundant manga but still a good manga.

To begin I would just like to say that reading this manga was, despite all my negative criticism, an enjoyable experience in which I would suggest to someone who reads manga purely for enjoyment. I have written a lot of negative criticism bellow but would like to say that those are only the negative parts to the story. This manga has a lot of good qualities otherwise I wouldn't have bothered to read it all (my personal opinion).

Firstly, the story was compelling and had well thought out plot which was thrilling to read, especially if you like mystery. However that is only for the first 20 chapters at most. I fell in love with the characters and their personalities in the beginning, but was sad to see the mystery solving Devil Lawyer disappear only to be replaced by an action manga hero. His perks and quirks where mixed around and he became a different character who was no longer suited to solve crimes but instead suited to fight the criminals.

There was one arc however I loved, "Kucabara's Wisdom" (basically his back story). It started off with a bang which was intense and really emotional, yet it was also the beginning in the shift from Mystery/Plot Based manga to Action/Entertaining manga. I didn't notice at the time, simply assuming the arc was just the tragic back story, because we all no we can't have a manga without one of those. But it set up the course for the rest of the manga, defining what the "final confrontation" would be, defining a reason to go adventuring along with a villain to defeat. It was amazing and I loved reading every minute of it.

It wasn't until around chapter 50 that I really started to notice the decline in the stories integrity. Not only was the mangaka trying to increase their readers base using stereotypical action plot twists, but the art took a turn from beautiful to ecchi. There was one character who had a different skimpy outfit every time you saw her to the point where I didn't know who was there until someone said her name. Each change involved not only a clothes, but her hair and even her mannerisms where changed as well.

*paragraph long emotional rant*
There was one chapter which was absolutely pointless to the entire manga. It started out that a new character was introduced, then a dangerous problem was introduced. So the new character solves this problem with some rainbow magic and disappears never to be seen again. THEN we learn that she was an ILLUSION!!! They also introduce this clock that isn't used until the very end of the manga. It's not special, it doesn't have any power. It's just used to countdown 2 minutes in the last 5 chapters... IT WAS ALL SO ANNOYINGLY POINTLESS!

The ending to this manga was hard to swallow. It was inconclusive as to what was actually happening. We had 3 new bad guys introduced in the span of 5 chapters and the main characters entire motivation for action was flipped upside down and replaced by something new. I am just going to say that the last 17 were rushed and should have lasted 50 or more chapters if the series wasn't ending. Sub plots were abruptly ended and ruined by the easiest means possible. I felt terrible seeing that all the depth and life to the story was sucked dry as it ended. (there was even someone who dies, then is spontaneously brought back to life without any reason to take a hit for the main character and die again...) This manga which started out really nice turned into a real travesty at the end, story wise. The plot was screwed over but it was still an enjoyable read. So; don't read this is you want a well written plot based manga, read this if you want and enjoyable time wasting manga. That pretty much sums it up.

This manga is one that sets up an interesting premise, story and tone. In order to throw it out the window when it thought it had your attention. To be honest I feel a little betrayed by the direction of this work, as I really enjoyed the opening few chapters.

Story - 4
The story is windy and twisty in that terrible kind of way where you get the feeling things change because the author woke up feeling like that one day. Entire ideas are thrown out at the drop of the hat. The first chapters are the best because not only do characters have a clear goal, but there are also clear consequences for failure. You feel invested. But then it just goes off in another direction with very little connection the previous chapters. I don't think this was intentional and the whole story suffers for it.

Art - 8
What saves this from being a 5 or even a 4 is it's art. While the panels can be uninspired and the direction can be a little cloudy at times. Overall it is detailed, on model, dramatic and intense. The heavy shading lends itself to scenes and the posing is top notch. I never felt like I was struggling to make out detail and your eyes moved in a very intentional way across images and pages. It's not as spectacular as say, Made in Abyss, but it is pretty great.

Character - 6
What can I say? None of the characters are bad per say, but they do get weaker as the manga goes on and has less time to spend on introduced characters as it tries to explain it's convoluted plot and who knew what at which time. Bichura is probably the most fleshed out and he's my favorite. Strangely, we find out much about our main - Kucabara - through the perspective of others (inspections and inner voices), and it makes him feel disconnected from the story.

Enjoyment - 4
As I said, I feel betrayed, the story the manga gets around to telling after 30 chapters does have a... conclusion? Would have been better without that final chapter wrapping everything up. I did enjoy the first couple chapters, and I enjoyed the art, but I just wish I could care about anything in the story - I didn't because nothing seemed to matter later on. Infuriating, dragged out and fickle.

Overall - 6
The Art elevates this series higher than average, and I do think Some good ideas are tossed around, the means to execute on them even. It just seemed like 'Defense Devil' isn't and never was the story the author wanted to tell.

The original premise of the story was set up in a way that it could be taken in little bits, basically a bunch of different cases which the protagonist could solve and then be done with. However, after a few of these cases the series takes a turn and begins an arc which spans the rest of the series. Personally I felt like at that point it started to become another generic fight manga where two people take turns slugging it out until one passes out. the story doesn't really have much to offer actually, and there's not enough tension in the end.
The story, art, and characters are all pretty mediocre, and nothing really sets this apart from any other "generic shounen". Of course, the beginning chapters were different, and I enjoyed those much more. They had me thinking "how is the protagonist gonna fix this one?" and had me waiting eagerly for the next chapter. Alas, after a few cases the author switched gears. Pity.
I liked the art, I liked the main, I liked the story at first. Then after twenty chapter it went downhill.
Overall, I liked it when it was coming out, but in the end it's only decent. Not great, but definitely not bad. I reread the first twenty chapters every now and then.

By reading the synopsis I was expecting a manga with a lot of talk, a lot of stillness and surely no fights...

I was wrong.Sure they talk a lot but they fight a lot too...

The story is a shounen story so don't expect much(that doesn't mean its bad ,it means you'l have a "dejavu"...)

The art itself is good but i don't like the main character(I mean the chara-design his personality is uber cool>

Defense Devil

If anyone should ever ask me which work I see as the greatest waste of potential, I wouldn't hesitate for a moment to name "Defense Devil".
This work has an excellent style and a very good presentation. I have to give him this at least. I also found some of the beginnings of the plot to be okay. I still have to pat myself on the back and praise myself for getting these 100 chapters over with.

Plotholes like no other title. Not even the writer himself apparently had any interest in explaining something and simply threw something down so that it somehow fits the situation but fundamentally contradicts everything else that was previously. And this on a continuous loop.

Implementation was purely amateur work. I can hardly believe that there is such an elaborate and detailed style, but the actual implementation of the scenes, dialogues and story is purely amateur work. It is definitely one of the top 10 works I've seen in 20 years that have achieved such a result.

Clichés beyond my imagination. This work used more clichés than I could spontaneously list. Half of the chapters were horribly monotonous and practically repeated in terms of content. Each character had almost only 10 sentences that he played like a recording device. Especially the female protagonist. And especially the fact that the characters constantly look so surprised with sparkling eyes. Well and good, one is just surprised by something. But whenever the protagonist says something, his counterpart looks at him with googly eyes as if their worldview has changed. No lie, in some chapters this happened up to 10x and in the whole manga probably around 200x and I would probably make the effort to list it again.

Fan service, if nothing helps and you fail everywhere, why not insert 5 nude scenes, 300x panty shots. And bathing scenes in between. This should make up for the lack of quality, right?


These 4 would be the apocalyptic horsemen of pain that I met. But no, it couldn't stay that way. The actual main story and the characters gave me one chop after the other on a loop.

Story

The story is quite promising at first. One wonders first and foremost what the background of the protagonist is and how his work as a lawyer will be shaped. Well, his work as a lawyer is completely meaningless and irrelevant to the plot. So irrelevant that you could almost skip Chapters 1-15, there wouldn't be a few characters introduced.

Around Chapter 30, the Hell Arc begins, which literally stretches to the end. In other words, only chapters 1-15 are associated with the work of unworldly. The rest is endless fights and fan service.

The background stories were at least subtle, so at least I wasn't disappointed. As for the main story itself and the twists and turns later, that's a whole different story. That the story was immensely transparent is not necessarily a bad thing. The bad thing is that the story had a bottomless number of plotholes, a bad narrative, bad twists and turns and an extremely poor conclusion.

The power system in the factory was also completely defaced, almost reminding me of the good times in Dragon Ball Z - Namek Arc.

Drawing/illustration

The drawings were visually very attractive, as was the design. Particularly with the weapons and characters, immense effort had been made. Backgrounds were also optically pleasant at the beginning, but rather poor towards the end. The detailed physique of the women was not held back either.

Characters

Where should I start? The protagonist, he is not hateful, but he is also not likeable. He is a common good guy hypocrite and has a caliber of about 30 different words in his vocabulary. And somehow it ends in one fan service scene after the other with the protagonist. He also has no depth or character development.

The protagonist is by far one of the worst female protagonists you can imagine. Has hardly any dialogues, rattles the same about demons without end and is abused at every opportunity for fan service and offers no character.
And once again this work has helped me to show a new perspective.

The remaining supporting characters are mostly irrelevant and uninteresting. There was an interesting approach and some poorly written development with at least one antagonist, but nothing else.

The opponents in this work were by far a complete waste of time. Their ambitions and their resolution have been so shallow, I wasn't even sure if that was going to be some kind of twist.


Conclusion

This title is definitely useful for newcomers who have neither claims nor experience. However, everyone who is already familiar with Manga and Anime is confronted with a huge problem here. So much could have been done better with this work. But where the talent or experience is missing, there is not much that can be done.


Annotation!

Whoever is addressed by the description of the work, no, this work has almost nothing to do with the concept of "demon world". There are only 4 different cases in the entire work, whereas one was generally only rushed because it was only supposed to introduce in Chapter 1. The second and third cases were terribly boring and the final case was only resolved by force. Say this is mostly a shounen, whose chapters are only felt with fights and with fan service.

short and simple anime/manga reviews:Defense Devil
Pros: Great start with good mystery, Nice art and many ecchi moments for us guys
Cons: That great mystery I was talking about in the pro section soon changed into a con after the start of this manga the story went down hill all that great mystery that gave me high hopes for this manga just went away and was replaced with B.S action and B.S plot turns.
Overall this manga was dissapointing I mean this could have been the next Majin Tantie Neruo (which you should check out) put really this manga isn't bad but the awesome mystery and whole plot of the begining of Defense devil turned into a B.s "Let save the whole world" thing.

Well, no one reviewed this yet for a lonnng time, so I thought I’d give my first shot of reviewing on Defense Devil, today’s date as February 21, 2011.

85 chapters in and DD has been a pretty fun ride as of yet.

The best general idea I could give for this manga is referencing an earlier work by the duo team. If anyone’s read the two mangakas’ past series, Shin Angyo Onshi, DD follows a similar story pattern and plot elements that I think many can strongly relate to. If you haven’t, no worries, DD’s great story telling ability, art, and characters will offer up a considerably enjoyable experience.

I’m not gonna spoil anything for you readers, hopefully, but instead I’ll just give a general description of the type of story you’re expecting. It’s very similar to Shin Angyo Onshi in this respect, combining both the uses of small, short arcs/chapters with large overbearing arcs. Either way, DD excels at both. You’ve got your excellent short episodic stories reeled with a large adventure story. And the authors do their job well, offering up suspenseful storytelling while leaving the reader constantly guessing and wishing for more. They succeed at appealing to the large majority of audiences using a variety of genres: comedy, fantasy, drama, mystery, romance, action, and supernatural elements all rolled up nicely in a small package--how convenient.

There is, however, one major beef I have for the story. Certainly, it does have short and long arcs, but it’s dumbly disconnected. Once you begin reading, you’ll realize relatively quickly that Defense Devil disappears, to be replaced by Adventure Devil very quickly. The lawyer devil drifts away, and in its place we have extensive fights and an epic journey. We lose the "tough-talk" man we've known, replaced by the "RAWR-FIGHTING" man. For some people, this won’t be a major problem—hell, we’re all shounen boys obsessed with fighting anyways right--but looking at it as a whole, the story fails to follow its original roots, and that may upset some people. For those specifically enjoying the lawyer aspect, I would give a small caution reading further.

Moving on, the art is nothing to scoff at. Expect to see well-done action sequences from fights, a big variety of different outfits, a plentiful mix of character designs, and a large array of weapons. And just a warning (or supplement), expect to see a lot of ecchi mixed in for you creepo boys out there. There’s nothing I can really point out as erroneous in art, and just as Shin Angyo Onshi, expect the same level or the better.

And the characters, of course. I don’t find them bad, but they’re just so… typical, if that’s the right word. Let’s start with the character art while we’re still on the topic.

There’s one common thing going on for all the women: tits. Big boobies everywhere, and being a sucker male guy I am, the hotties everywhere in the manga’s gonna make you look for some good "doujinshi” around (^_^). But aside form sex appeal, the outfits themselves aren’t amazing. When I think of a very strong character, I think of Yoko from Tengen Toppa: a hottie with a sniper rifle, original color design, trademarked clothes design, hell, let’s even include her signature skull symbol design. That’s my top of the line original character. In comparison, DD’s characters look cool, but they’re ordinary. They’ve certainly got their own type and the such, but don’t expect a revolutionary character within DD.

And personalities? Nothing special. Hopefully not spoiling too much, but your main character this time around is gonna be the super peaceful, no-violence-if-possible kind of guy. Certainly a lot to build off of, but in my terms, again, nothing special. You’ve got your tsundere female lead which is always nice, but again, nothing special. And the extra characters are, really, all extras, nothing special. I’ve used nothing special four times now in this paragraph, now five, but that’s exactly the point.

Many people may critique that originality doesn’t have a factor in character ratings. But in my opinion, I can’t give a 10/10 for what I find to be an unoriginal character. I think it’s fair to say, however, that what it all comes down to, application to the story. If a story does a good job in pulling all the characters together, it doesn’t matter if a character is unoriginal, even a supposedly boring character can get recognition.

DD accomplishes this in some respects. There is a hint of mystery shrouding every character that the authors accomplish very well. Some characters are completely unknown, while others have “hidden” pasts. Taking a step back, we can see that this use of mystery backgrounds can be a double edged weapon varying between mangas. In some cases it can be done really badly, where the mystery portion is dragged on so long you’re wondering when the hell shit is gonna get explained, if it gets explained at all. In this case however, the mystery element is no doubt a positive factor. These mangakas are great storytellers, pulling off this mystery off nicely; the suspense won’t kill you, but will keep you guessing until the right time.

But besides mystery, there’s always character development to talk about… just kidding. DD’s character development is pretty non-existing. Unless if you count their pasts, the characters we know at the present haven’t changed. Nothing major really happened to the characters 85 chapters in, but there is major potential coming from our characters. There are certainly elements to work with, and we’ll have to see later what happens. But 'till 85, I can say that all you're going to see is plot, and nothing character-wise.

So, what do I think about this series. Well, certainly, the storytelling great though disconnected; the art good though nothing special; and the characters cool though nothing special. It’s not an original masterpiece, it’s not something going to be talked in the next generations to come, but at the end of the day, it certainly is what I would consider a fun adventure. Mix all these elements together and you have your exciting journey within the interesting and intriguing life of our defense devil. My enjoyment meter’s off the chart after marathoning 85 through the night.

I’m the type of guy that drops an anime/manga quickly. Check my animelist and you’ll see that my watching list is almost as big as my completed list, haha. It’s hard to keep my attention, and I’m really not sure what attracts me to certain animes/manga, it varies. But whatever it is, my addiction just suddenly pops in. DD is no different. Looking at DD objectively, I don’t think it stands up to the likes of the masterpieces we know. It’s nothing special afterall. Subjectively though, screw these stupid categories, DD has been a blazing ride, is a blazing ride, and will be a blazing ride for quite some time.

In conclusion, there’s not much else I have to say. DD’s a fantastic ride that I encourage everyone to read. Yeah yeah sure, Defense Devil is no masterpiece, but it still has enjoyable story, art, and characters.

This manga is the perfect example of story-writers making stuff up (in this case, quite poorly) as they go, which reached outrageous levels at the (!!!painfully rushed!!!) end; unexplained plotholes, huge contradictions and I'm not at all exaggerating when I say that it also manages to take the phrase "Deus ex machina" to a whole new level.

Oh, and let's not forget about the absolutely neglected original storyline, which vanishes out of nowhere right after the first volume. I'm curious about the fate of those next-in-the-line 'unknowns' after Kucabara decided to visit home...

Still, it's not all that bad. Yes, it's cheesy and it has lots of mistakes, but it also has that special charm of the shounen genre that allows your brain to turn off and completely dive into the adventures of the exiled devil prince, despite the unoriginality of both the characters and the plot.

My final rating is 6/10.