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[TRIGGER WARNING]: There’s a lot of explicit non-consensual sexual acts and violence that occurs in this book, so if that’s not your thing you might want to sit this one out. I promise that this is the exception regarding the SMT series, so feel free to check out the other links if you’re interested.
(Note: Megami Tensei is translated as “Goddess” in English. And no, I have no idea why the book is called this, in spite of having read it).
So here we have the novel that began it all. Of course, it was written in Japanese and never saw an English release, so the best I could do was find a fan-translation and go from there. I’ve been told that even in Japan this book is somewhat of an obscure relic and that not a lot of attention is drawn to it. It was originally released as segments in a magazine, which explains some of the odd places the book decides to cut chapters off and why every few chapters the book resets the chapter count. In the intent of preserving the author some of his dignity, he has gone on record saying that while he was writing the novel he leaned much more towards the “Chaos” side of things but as he’s gotten older he trends more towards “Law.” While this may be uncharitable, I cannot help but think that a massive amount of fame and wealth would give a Chaos advocate a sudden interest in the Law that might preserve his status, but then again from what little I’ve seen of the guy he actually seems incredibly nice, so who knows.
As a brief aside, it should be noted that I haven’t willingly read a book since I graduated from High School because I absolutely despise the time it takes to read (and write for that matter, yet here we are my dear reader). It’s a bit humorous that the first book I do decide to commit to after this 14 year gap is one with demons… and to be blunt, unexpected tentacle hentai but I suppose we’ll get to that.
The story features Nakajima, a very obvious self-insert character who is in my mind, in spite of what the story is constantly trying convince us of otherwise, the villain. He is a cold, heartless, wretch of a human child attending a prestigious high school in Japan. He hates his mother for being away at work. He hates his father for being overseas, away at work. It’s not a terribly complicated backstory and does little to garner my sympathy. He has no real friends because… well, he’s a cold inhuman asshole. When he’s not at his rich school maintaining his student status of “upper 10 %” (a fact that the book tends to passively gloat about), he spends all of his time shut into his dark featureless room where he programs on his (ancient by modern accounts) computer and studying demonology.
Of course, the nature of fantasy is the suspension of disbelief but it is extremely difficult to do so when the narrative is constantly taking abrupt right-angle turns to remind us of how insanely beautiful and intelligent Nakajima is. There’s barely a chapter that can resist detailing his extremely soft skin and fair, feminine body (characteristics that would be desirable by a man in Japan). I laughed out loud when I read the first sentence that introduces him:
“…stormed across the classroom to stop at the seat of a handsome young man [Nakajima] who stood out from the rest of his class…“
“Handsome young man who stood out from the rest of his class,” is the way an elementary school student imagines themselves appearing to their peers in their homemade comics and day dreams. It was a bit telling to me, the kind of story I was about to read, when I considered that a grown man wrote this.
Anyway, one day Nakajima gets so tired of everyone around him that he moves forward with a digital ritual to summon Loki in exchange for revenge and power upon those he deems deserving of such punishment (…so literally everyone). In a matter of days, Nakajima uses this power to enthrall the entire school, brutally murder his bullies, have his way with any female student or teacher that he wants and in general, do whatever he wants during class. Loki requires sacrifices however (of the female persuasion) so one female body after another is virtually ravaged by Loki, since after all he’s stuck in a computer. In spite of Loki being confined digitally, Ohara (one of his recent faculty victims) becomes impregnated, much to the concern of Nakajima.
Loki begins further practicing ways he can manifest parts of himself into the human world (called “Assiah”) behind Nakajima’s back. Eventually, he demands that Nakajima give him Yumiko (our female protagonist) who is a new “spunky” transfer student. We have to be told she’s spunky, because the author doesn’t really have the ability to express a character’s personality through their actions. She also spends more of the novel being a literal naked corpse that Nakajima drags around than she does as a living breathing protagonist.
For infernal gods-knows-what-reason, Nakajima decides (after doing some truly brutal things prior) to suddenly grow a conscious regarding Yumiko’s sacrifice and tries to hint that Yumiko should leave the school, to no avail. Technically, the explanation given for Nakajima’s change of heart is that he is the reincarnation of Izanagi and Yumiko is the reincarnation of Izanami, but it’s such an absolute 180° turn from everything Nakajima has been doing throughout the earlier chapters that it just feels like bad writing, lazy writing, mind control, or all three.
[If you didn’t know, the Japanese story of Izanagi and Izanami are about a wedded god and goddess, which is why Nakajima is initially attracted to Yumiko. The original story is similar in some ways to that of Orpheus and Eurydice, with the twist though that Izanagi is trying to run out of Hell away from Izanami, unlike Orpheus going into to Hell to save Eurydice.]
During Loki’s consummate ritual with Yumiko, Yumiko awakens to her goddess-like powers and nukes Loki with holy flames that erupts wherever she “stares at with conviction.” (Honestly, I want this power.) Nakajima summons Cerberus (a Demon that becomes a guardian-like mainstay of the entire SMT series) and between the three of them they buy enough time to allow the power of Izanami to spirit them away to some mountain.
It’s not really a victory however. Yumiko is dead, Cerberus is badly wounded and Nakajima had his head smashed into the ground a few times. Following a vision from Izanami, Nakajima and Cerberus take Yumiko’s corpse deeper into the mountains in search of Izanami’s tomb. Eventually they find it and after a great deal of crawling about and befriending Yomotsu-Shikome (think of her as Izanami’s ugly demon gal-pal), they eventually reach the inner chamber of the tomb and find the goddess herself. Loki follows them however, kills Yomotsu-Shikome, and turns Yumiko’s corpse into a puppet which he uses to gain the upper hand.
In a last-ditch scramble between Izanami, Cerberus, Loki and puppet-Yumiko, Nakajima calls upon the power of Izanami’s son “Hi-no-Kagutsuchi” who becomes a flaming sword. Using this sword, Nakajima impales Loki’s head and cuts his wriggling demonic heart in two. With the battle won, Izanami makes good on her deal to resurrect Yumiko but warns Nakajima that the pregnant Ohara is now contacting the Egyptian god Set. And so the story ends with Nakajima swearing to become Assiah’s guardian, sworn to prevent more demons from entering his world, while Izanami says she’s going to train Yumiko to become a badass who can shoot fire out of her eyes more goodly. Nakajima and Yumiko embrace and the curtain falls.
You may have noticed that the overarching plot of Digital Devil Story really doesn’t sound that bad. However, this is because in the interest of staying on track, I have for the most part held back the torrent of my commentary about some of the more questionable moments in the book until now.
For starters, let’s focus on probably the most shocking pieces–the overt sexual nature of almost everything that happens. One of the first characters introduced in the book is Kyoko. For a book as short as it is, it laboriously details Kyoko’s beautiful body, her perfect smooth skin, cat-like features–you get the point. She is described as the most desired girl in the school and is used narratively as a stepping stone to show how self-insert-Nakajima is just “so above all that.” Essentially, Kyoko tries to force herself on him and he rebuffs her affection.
(As an aside to flesh out the story a bit, this leads to Kyoko’s boyfriend Kondo beating the crap out of Nakajima. Kyoko had lied about the incident, telling Kondo that Nakajima tried to force himself on her, which serves as the final straw for Nakajima to go ahead with the demon summoning ritual and kill the two of them.)
Later in the book when Nakajima has turned all the students into thralls, he has some of the male students briefly grope Kyoko, pick her up and hold her upside down. Of course the narrative can’t resist detailing the effect gravity has on her school girl outfit in this position nor the specifications of what Kyoko’s legs look like. The next part though… I honestly had to read it twice because I thought I had misread something. But no, Miyuki (described as the second-most beautiful girl in the school, because apparently only your physical looks qualify you to appear as a female character in this story) grabs hold of Kyoko’s legs and crams her face between them, biting down. Now, the book (I think, in an attempt to perhaps save some sort of dignity of both the reader and translator) says that Miyuki bites Kyoko’s “inner thigh.” However, given the circumstances, I think the intent is clear that she’s going straight for the vagina here; a fact that the movie does not steer away from, as in the film adaptation Miyuki goes teeth first into her vag.
Ohara, the teacher impregnated by Loki, is similarly described as the most beautiful teacher in the school. There’s quite a bit of sweaty detail regarding her digital sexual encounter with Loki, including a sofa with leather straps that Nakajima ties her down on. Later, when Loki is consummating Yumiko, Ohara is also there, thrusting her shirtless chest against Loki’s leg all the while. During the throes of ecstasy when Loki is doing both of them at the same time, Ohara (jealous of Loki’s attention to Yumiko) actually kills Yumiko by twisting her head around and snapping her neck (this is… the first of two times Yumiko dies).
And ah yes… what would a raunchy Japanese novel from the 1980s be without the inherent tentacle sex and all the tropes associated with it? Well you see, Loki has a bit of trouble manifesting himself physically in the Assiah. He doesn’t really let that slow him down however as he’s quite able to produce an endless number of slimy pink tentacles whenever he needs. I’ll spare you the details, but needless to say, Yumiko is raped by Loki. I did at least find some humor in the fact that Loki’s tentacles were so refined that they had the ability to secrete an acid that was perfectly able to melt Yumiko’s clothes off her body, but somehow left Yumiko unharmed. It shows Loki’s attention to perfecting the little details, you know?
Yumiko is resurrected by Izanami after Ohara kills her, but during the struggle that follows, Loki mortally wounds Yumiko by cutting into her back so deeply that Nakajima can see her bones. After they are whisked away to the mountains, the naked Yumiko becomes a corpse again and there is an uncomfortable amount of detail regarding Nakajima’s handling of her, including at some point the need to tear his shirt off so he can tie her body to his.
Later, during the climax of the story, Loki manages to pin Izanami’s arms behind her back. This sets him up to take advantage of her, and he delivers the threatening line, “Kunitsukami of Yamato, I will impregnate you with the child of a demon.”
(Kunitsukami is essentially a word for a collection of Japanese earth gods/goddesses of which Izanami is one.)
If it wasn’t already clear from above, there isn’t a single female character in the book that isn’t objectified in some way or another. They’re all “the most beautiful” or “the most desirable,” etc. etc. None of them have personalities–not even Yumiko. It becomes tiresome after a while.
Nakajima is a massive asshole. The only way I made it through this book was by expunging my hatred for this boy every few chapters to my wife. With shared sentiments, we simultaneously hated this character while being absolutely fascinated that the origins of one of our favorite game franchises rested on such a wretched beginning.
There are very few supporting characters in the book, but one of them is a male faculty member named Ida, who is not antagonistic to Nakajima in any way (and is arguably supportive). Nakajima has the students brutally murder him within chapters of his introduction because Loki needs more bodies.
Nakajima details how his school is one of the best and richest in the country. He also explains that only the top 10% within the school receive the best attention, resources and care from the facility. In spite of being within that top 10%, Nakajima is completely unappreciative of his position and hates student and faculty member alike with equal wrath. We can’t even give him the benefit of the doubt of feeling oppressed by being in the bottom 90%.
Initially, Nakajima aids Loki by providing him with these needed sacrifices in exchange for having control of the school. Loki then goes on to murder countless citizens during a brief stint where he is invading office buildings via the phone lines. Lastly, a large part of Nakajima’s student body is slaughtered by Loki during Yumiko’s ritual. These are all things that by and large Nakajima understood and agreed to and he shows no remorse save for Yumiko. He’s frequently described as being arrogant, cold and calculating. Again, I posit that I just can’t see this character as anything but a villain.
But that’s where we are–the fascinating origins of SMT. What began as one man’s raunchy power-fantasy novel would go on to spawn one of the world’s most successful and longest-lasting game franchises. I would lie if I said that I wasn’t at least entertained on some level by the story. Certainly the best part was sharing it with my wife and watching as her bewildered reactions mirrored my own (and of course getting to share it with you). So let’s continue down this SMT path shall we! It won’t get worse. (…right?)
Tier 3