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[TRIGGER WARNING]: There’s mention of non-consensual sexual acts and violence that occurs in this movie, so if it’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.
All righty dear reader; we’re going to be building this synopsis off the back of the original Novel review. If you aren’t familiar with Digital Devil Story or if you wanted to read the review before this one I recommend going back to the Table of Contents and checking it out. Otherwise, we’re jumping right in.
The Digital Devil Story OVA is an anime adaptation of the Novel by the same name. In spite of the novel not being terribly long, the OVA runs at just around 42 minutes (discounting the credits) meaning that there is a lot to cram into a small amount of time and it shows. For starters, the OVA doesn’t make a ton of sense if you haven’t read the book. Sure, you’d be able to follow the general plot and get the gist of what is going on but so many details are missing that if you didn’t know the original story your takeaway would probably be:
“School boy and dog fight scary demon-man to save girlfriend. Also there was slime.”
The movie begins several chapters in and paints a much more sympathetic version of Nakajima than is originally presented within the book. Nakajima is scared, pictured as having been manipulated and tricked by Loki and is desperately trying to find a way to stop him. The horrors that Nakajima had wrought upon the school are softened by being shown as brief flashbacks over the course of the film, a narrative that likewise does more in an attempt to garner sympathy for Nakajima from the audience. Unfortunately though, there are so many cuts to random events that have happened or are happening that even I struggled to keep up with my explanations of what was going on to my wife while we watched it.
While the events may be shown in a different order as compared to the book, for the most part the OVA hits the story beat-for-beat. Nakajima has the enthralled students murder his bullies, Ohara is impregnated and Yumiko is given as a sacrifice to Loki. Yumiko still gets her magic fire-eyes powers from Izanami, Loki still is a tentacled mess of a demon and Izuanmi still whisks them away to the mountains after Yumiko is killed by Loki. The movie is a bit more tasteful however, as Yumiko isn’t raped so much as enveloped in a cocoon of protoplasmic slime and she gets to keep her clothes on. Ohara is still a nut-case who is super obsessed with Loki, but she doesn’t kill Yumiko by twisting her head around (which honestly was confusing anyway since Yumiko dying twice felt odd). It’s only at about the last 10 minutes at the point where Nakajima tries to find the Tomb of Izanami that the OVA veers completely off-course.
For starters, Nakajma does not divine the location of the tomb using his own blood. Next, while I know I didn’t mention it before, a large plot point in the book was the elemental composition of a certain kind of paint that could keep demons (like Loki) at bay. Izanami’s tomb was coated in this paint which made it difficult for Loki (and Nakajima’s ally, Cerberus) to enter. This has been completely dropped from the movie. I think this is probably for the better since a lot of time is spent explaining it in the story for a marginal effect on the narrative. However, beyond this logical exclusion, the rest of the changes are a bit confusing and the film becomes rather abstract.
Instead of running into Yomotsu-Shikome (Izanami’s gal-pal) like the book, Nakajima kind of just falls into this weird abyss-like expanse that opens up into what I can only describe as a demon-world. The sky is red, there are massive cliffs and walkways and Loki just kind of pops up for some reason. Yumiko’s corpse attacks Nakajima, but it’s not clear in the OVA that Loki is controlling it, so it seems super-random. Cerberus sort of fights Loki, but it’s unimportant, whereas in the book Cerberus’s valiant effort to distract Loki was necessary for Nakajima to obtain the Hi-no-Kagutsuchi (flaming sword). In fact, the sword in the OVA isn’t flaming and is just sticking in the ground at the edge of a cliff for some reason. Nakajima does pulls it out to to fight Loki, but there’s no in-movie significance to it.
Regarding Loki, his physical representation when he’s not in his tentacle-ectoplasmic form is very different in the movie. The book describes Loki as having a perfect beauty that was statuesque. He had a flawless muscular body and staring into his eyes was terrifying–they encapsulated an impossibly powerful beauty and intelligence that surpassed that of any human. He had black scales on his chest, but by all other accounts was completely human in appearance. Strangely, he had the ability to enter into a “bronze” mode, where his skin would harden over with a bronze metal that would let him to become impervious to all attacks.
In the film however, Loki is a big furry-man (I wish I was kidding). He has a white mane and a blackish-bluish fur that covers his entire body. He doesn’t change into a bronze form and he isn’t particularly handsome. In the climax, he becomes 20 stories tall which I guess was probably more dramatic for a film.
The movie still ends relatively the same way with Nakajima thrusting the sword into Loki’s head, ultimately defeating the demon. Izanami plays a far less active role and doesn’t show up at the end to talk to Nakajima. Overall, she’s not really even a tangible character in the film, so there’s no conflict between Loki and her like in the novel. After Loki’s defeat, Yumiko is alive for… reasons. Again, I assume it’s the power of Izanami but the film doesn’t really say. Nakajima doesn’t swear to become humanity’s protector, but the movie does close on the cliffhanger of Ohara contacting Set.
Regardless, as a quick OVA-adaptation of a book, it actually isn’t the worst at it’s job. Aside from the ending, it’s pretty spot-on to the events of the novel and any problems with the movie’s story are honestly baked into the source material, so I can’t complain. I hate the fact though that they don’t depict Nakajima as the heartless wretch that he truly was shown to be in the novel. The cowards! Although, they probably knew the novel representation of Nakajima was so unlikable that if they didn’t make him more stereotypically heroic, they would have problems with the film’s target audience.
If you are a fan of SMT, I would actually recommend you give this a watch, if only because of how batty it is and it’s a lot faster exposure to the foundational SMT story than reading the novel. That being said, only fans of the series would find anything appreciable in it and even then I still have to admit it’s not a great movie. Still, I’m surprised that a magazine novel gained so much popularity as to have a film made of it only a year after its publication. That’s at least impressive from a production standpoint. But alas we have barely even begun on our journey. There’s still much more to cover.
Tier 3