It’s the middle of may which means the anime spring season is in its half. Many shows are entering their second half and Devil Survivor 2 The Animation is one of them. Sadly, not all of those shows developed well in their first six episodes. And again Devil Survivor 2 The Animation is one of them.
I remember when I praised that show for being like a “more mature” version of Pokémon and Digimon. I was so wrong… it’s more like a smartphone app that came to life with all the negative sides of a smartphone app. And that probably did not make any sense at all.
After watching six episodes of that 13 episode anime I came to the conclusion that I will not continue to watch Devil Survivor 2 simply because it bores me. Why? Well, there are many reasons.
First off: The story. It seems they wanted to pack all the cliches they could find into that one show, be it the oncoming end of the world, battles against giant aliens, children protagonists in a battle that should be fought by adults and so on. Even the antagonists which are aliens look like modified versions of the Angels from Neon Genesis Evangelion and just like them, they appear out of nowhere and start destryoing things. There is pretty much nothing original or smart in this show, it’s very easy to predict what is going to happen next and then exactly that happens. This got to a point at which I even stopped caring about what is going to happen because there was no excitement.
Then there are the characters. Again that cliche thing. You have your main protagonist, Hibiki Kuze who gains a power greater than everything he’s seen so far and stronger than those of his friends and he decides to use this power to protect anybody. He also tries to get away so they aren’t endangered even more and this has happened so many times… There aren’t even real motivations for Hibiki, he just runs away from his friends thinking he can protect them this way. Daichi Shijima makes use of the cliche of the guy who gets a super power but it’s pretty weak and he wants to become stronger. Stronger so he can be useful and help the others. Sadly he’s very obnoxious. And to complete the circle of average protagonists we have Sakura, I mean, Io Nitta. She’s useless. I don’t know why she’s even there. Anything she did so far could easily be done by other characters and she in herself isn’t significant in any way.
Despite the major flaws there is one upside to this show and that is the animation. It looks really good and the studio did a great job on the demons and fighting scenes but that alone doesn’t help the anime overall. Another issue I had was with the voice over for Hibiki (or all the characters, I don’t really remember). His lips move for over half a second in silence before his voice actor, Hiroshi Kamiya, starts speaking. If you don’t pay attention you might not realise it but as soon as you do, you can’t get rid of that fact. I don’t know what happened there because Kamiya is usually a good seyuu for example as Otonashi in Angel Beats, Koyomi Araragi in the Monogatari series or Izaya Orihara in Durarara!!.
After about the 4th episode the anime felt more like work than enjoyment. “I have to get through this now otherwise it will stack up and I’ll never going to watch it…” is never a good sign when you start thinking like that.
While the videogame might be very good and enjoyable the anime is not and it’s probably not getting better in the second half of its run. It’s not worth your time and there are many shows way better than that which use the same concept. You could go watch Neon Genesis Evangelion or if you not into sci-fi there is always Shadow Star Narutaru. Even Pokémon and Digimon did better jobs with their anime adaptions. That being said, there are many alternatives to Devil Survivor 2 The Animation and you would be far better off to choose one of them instead of this. Thank you for your time.
Volt Rebellion 