Digital Devil Story: Megami Tensei

Basically, I enjoyed this anime because it fleshed out the background of the megaten series a bit. It is more directly based on the DDM book than the Famicom game that followed it, leading eventually to the "two men in black" splitting off from NAMCO to form Atlus.

However, in general, it is fairly pathetic, even by old-fashioned standards.

Taken as a compliment to the light novel, though, it works fairly well, so overall, I rated it as "good", or 7/10... however, for most people, I would recommend watching something else... leave this for diehard megatenist, or fans of the DDM light novel (which is still ... not officially in English, but there is a fan-translation).

Hope this helps.

Story: A girl named Yumiko transfers to Juusei Academy and finds very accepting people except for one guy, Nakajima, who treats here like dirt and seems to have a large amount of power, given the students and even teachers scrape and bow to him. Later that night, Yumiko spies on Nakajima and finds, to her horror, Nakajima is trying to summon a demon by the name of Loki through his computer. Eventually Loki is able to be fully summoned out of the computer and turns on Nakajima, almost killing him and Yumiko. Through a brief series of events, Yumiko and Nakajima break free and eventually ... end up killing Loki.

The story seems very easy to follow, but the anime makes it difficult to understand what is happening and why. Throughout the story, Nakajima constantly shifts between dreams and real life and when Yumiko is almost killed, a woman speaks inside her head and she gains the ability to shoot lasers from her eyes. This is just a sample of the crazy things that happen through to the end and it is very hard to understand how any of this has a connection to the main story. The only reason the story did not receive a lower score was because there was a basic story that moves from point A to point B and the usage of computers for demon summoning is a really neat idea, but even then, it was hard not to give this a worse score.

Animation: This OVA is from 1987, so the animation is not expected to be on the level of the animations of today, but this was one of the better aspects of this anime. There is a bit of gore in this and it was done pretty well, but that is about the only part. For the majority of this anime, the color scheme uses just about three colors almost the whole way through, green and black with a bit of red. There are a few times when other colors are used, but by the end, it is easy to forget about them. At one point, Nakajima is looking out across some mountainous land and the art for it was actually really good, but is quickly gone. Overall, the animation was about mediocre, and barely.

Sound: The voice actors did their job, but it is nothing to brag about. They conveyed the appropriate emotions at the right times, but that is about it. The music was just horrible 80's synthetic music, if that is what you could call it. It did not fit the anime at all, when there was music, considering there was just a lot of silence throughout the majority of it. Some of the sound effects were not bad, though, so it saved the OVA a little.

Characters: There were characters in this? On a serious note, the characters in this were just horribly done. There was no background to them, except Yumiko is a transfer student and Nakajima is a computer whiz who is trying to summon demons. There are incidents that happen to the characters throughout, but there is no knowledge of why or what they have to do with anything pertaining to the rest of the story. These characters really are nothing but just lumps of flesh running around doing something that is supposed to be important.

Overall: Being a huge Shin Megami Tensei fan, this OVA looked like it would have been pretty good, but the shock of how horrible this turned out to be was just incredible. Even for major fans of this series, this will be a major disappointment to most, if not all viewers. The bad animations, bad music, and horrible characters are just a few of the turn-offs of this anime. Unless you have nothing better to do, you would have a more enjoyable time playing with the neighbor's rabid dog.

This anime is...decent. I am trying hard to see how this book was able to produce not only more sequels, but was able to spawn a whole franchise that created such games like Persona 3 and Cathrine. Maybe there was more to the book, but everything here just felt dull and average.

The art was ok, sound ok, the end song was typical 80s cheese, and there was a lot of blood. But after the beginning where we see Loki summoned? That was when it just felt dull and lifeless, like the anime wanted to get to certain points as fast as it can ... with little care for the characters and stories.

I like old school anime a lot. Since I hadn't seen this one I decided to watch it.

The RPG was great fun, so I wanted to check out the OVA. I shouldn't have done that >_<

It's one VERY cheesy OVA even if you consider how old it is.
Still it's entertaining in a quaint and WTF kinda way. Has loads of action and hack and slash, BUT the story is filled with so many inconsistencies that it's both confusing and annoying.

The plot is pretty bad, and the horror effects are medicore.

Sad sad adaptation. If you want to get some cheap laughs, or your really bored, go ... watch it. If not, stay far away from this one.

I had to finally leave a comment on MAL to counter some disinformation. You don't need to be a fan of SMT to enjoy this, and it is actually a very unique and fun OVA. It's full of atmosphere and many of the visuals are powerful and carry a lot of weight to them. The confusing elements of the plot just leads to it feeling more abstract, which allows it to get away with any 'inconsistencies' that other viewers might locate.
Highly recommended for fans of 80s horror OVA. This certainly has an interesting feeling to it, and while I understand that fans of SMT might ... find this to be an unsuitable adaptation of a universe that they are already familiar with, I believe that a casual viewer will still find a lot to enjoy.

I found it very difficult to get attached to Akemi and you don’t find out his motivation until about half-way through so he just seems like an ass throughout the beginning. Yumiko is not too bad, but isn't too great either because she becomes useless later on . The animation is not great even for standards back then, but I’ve always enjoyed older anime aesthetics so I enjoy the look of it. Overall I don’t think it is atrocious. Overall the story and the characters are not very strong so I couldn't get too much enjoyment out of it. I feel like if you’re ... a fan of SMT it’s an interesting piece of history to watch, but is not really worth the time of anyone else.

Far from being a good entertainment, this OVA is for MegaTen die-hard fans, mostly because it was where everything begun, not only for the SMT series, but for the whole JRPG niche. It is said that Dragon Quest V started with the whole catching monsters, befriending them, but in reality in 1987, 5 years before DQ5, the very first megaten game was released based on a trilogy of japanese books. The plot? Summoning demons through OG computers.
Can't really say its bad adapted since the first book which is the whole ground for this OVA has more than 450 pages, so if there isn't any prior ... knowledge of MegaTen it might get confusing.
What's best about is the darkness of it, megaten always had this feeling, this vibe of something obscure, but it kinda lost that throughout the years, don't get me wrong, it still is, hell yeah. but when you watch this you kinda realize how heavy the stuff in it is, i read that since it was made in the late 80s, it was aimed for the adult audience so they didn't easy any of the stuff from the books.
Will recommend DDS to someone who played the games and fell in love like I did 1 year ago, most likely through Persona, which is way lighter than this one. Won't recommend to anyone who found this randomly, is isn't a masterpiece, it isn't good, is a well-written MegaTen OVA poorly done made for fans.

Digital Devil Saga : Megami Tensei OVA is a pretty good animation for me to keep me interested in the lore of the whole franchise. The first half of the OVA consists of 3 parts, namely the main character's present point of view, his backstory (on how he became involved with demons), and his flashbacks (memories from his past life), which interchange at a moment's notice and can be a bit disorienting if you're not focused on watching the OVA. The last half of the OVA is focused on the main character's redemption arc (the beginnings of his redemption arc, at least).

As a young adult ... who did not grew up in the 80s, there are points in the OVA that was pretty shocking and amusing to watch (pretty graphic depiction of sexual and violent imagery). The story is pretty standard for an anime, and it focuses mainly on the main characters and the villain. The soundtrack fits the tone of the OVA, which sounds very like the 80s (predominantly synth-based music). The art style is pretty reminiscent of Yu Yu Hakusho, Saint Seiya, etc. which works for the time it was released.

This OVA works best as a visual aid for newcomers to the franchise in terms of fleshing out the characters involved. Fans of the Megami Tensei series looking for a more in-depth explanation on what happens in the first book of the novel trilogy by Aya Nishitani can refer to this OVA if they find something in the book hard to interpret.

All in all, this OVA is a great experience for fans of the franchise. Do not be put off with the constant interchange between the point of views, give it a chance, and really savor the pain the main character went through. It's worth your time.

I knew it! Fortran is the programming language of the Devil!

To cut to the chase: This one-shot story is just one huge pile of horse manure, with a confusing and convoluted story featuring characters you don't care about.

The 'novelty' of this OVA is that it involves summoning a demon through the use of the high school's computer, complete with cheesy bleeps and bloops and reel-to-reel tapes and all that. The way that computers are shown here may seem way quaint and silly, but keep in mind when this was made -- in an era ... when only a tiny fraction of the public had access to any sort of computer at all. Anything involving computers was, for many people, a Big Unknown. And when you have a Big Unknown, it can be kind of scary -- or, at least turned into something big and scary for the purposes of a movie. Hence, devil worship via the computer.

But don't worry, before this story is even a third of the way finished, almost all of the digital computer stuff is stripped away from the story, and it turns into just a regular human vs. demon story instead.

And stripping away the novelty, and you're left with, well, nothing worth watching. The main character is a complete douchebag for the first part of the story, then makes a sudden switch and we are supposed to be rooting for him, but by then it's already too late and the characterization of a douchebag is already set in stone. The girl in the story is a confusing element, starting out as the scared new girl in class, then for a brief moment has shining laser eyes that kill everything, then she's basically useless for most of the rest of the show. As Mr. Douchebag is left to fight the Giant Pink Slime Monster over and over.

Before long, I was tuning out from the story, as too many loose ends were left flapping around, too many unexplained events, and no clear path to follow along.

Artwork and animation were perfectly fine, I guess, if you like how well they draw and animate pulsating pink stuff. The background music was laughably bad, even by the standards of the time.