When I first started to read this manga, I didn’t expect much other than lots and lots of imagery of tits and naked women. Oh yeah, and apocalyptic imagery and boy, I was not disappointed.

I’ll admit that this manga was way out of my usual comfort zone – especially with how American politics being the way they are but it did give me some insight to what the general mood was like during the 1980s. You see, the Cold War didn’t just affect the United States and the Soviet Union when it was still around – everyone in the world was scared about nuclear fallout and potential for World War 3. I would imagine that countries affected by World War 2 outside of the United States felt extremely nervous about that.

There’s more of a focus on the destruction of the world than it is between the relationships between the characters. As a matter of fact, I was surprised to learn that Ryo had fallen in love with Akira or that Miki and Akira had an actual relationship beyond “oh, he’s staying with me until my parents come back”.
If you were looking for any meaningful relationship between any of the characters in the original iteration of the Devilman manga, you’re not going to find it here. Instead, what you’re going to find is someone’s fears of another war happening – only with nukes and demons. Basically, war is bad and that we’re all going to die.

Go Nagai wanted to try something different from his usual gag manga and ended up inspiring more people than he probably thought otherwise. The storyline is a bit messy to follow since, again, he doesn’t put the focus on the relationships between the characters but rather on the destruction of the world and the decline of humans’ humanity.

The biggest problem I have is how rushed the fights were. To be fair, this is only five volumes and with his focus primarily being about the apocalypse and the fight between good versus evil, there were going to be some things that are left on the cutting room floor. There was one fight that sort of came out of nowhere with how detailed the relationships between the demons were – all we knew was that they were after Akira to kill him and to allow the demons take over the world in peace, so to speak.

Would I recommend this to other fujoshi?

Probably not. The relationship between Ryo and Akira isn’t that deep other than the meme pictures that were floating around on social media. I was surprised to find out that Ryo had fallen in love with him, as I’ve mentioned, along with the fact that Ryo’s actually supposed to be dead and then the betrayal Ryo did for… some reason I wasn’t clear on.

If you’re a fujoshi looking for something spicy in between the death and apocalypse, you probably won’t find it in this iteration. However, if the hopeless apocalypse is something that interests you, with how America politics are going these days again, then this is certainly for you – I just hope you’re able to deal with the titties and vagina demons easier than I could. I get that Go Nagai is a ‘legend’ among enthusiasts, especially ecchi enthusiasts, but certainly, this manga isn’t for me.

What I would say though is that this manga managed to inspire works such as Berserk, Neon Genesis Evangelion, and many, many more. This manga certainly is more inspirational for other reasons but Boy’s Love is not one of them. This is a pass for other fujoshis but, otherwise, it’s a good read. It just isn’t for me.