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Part of the charm of anime is the fractured storytelling, the disjointed style, which is often a result of trying to fit everything from the manga (Japanese comic book) into the movie. Devilman, for example, opens in a wooded paradise where beautiful and naked fairy women fly about and are then attacked by dinosaurs and demons, until a six-armed fairy warrior shoots down explosive balls of light at the demons. Cut to explorers in the caves of Antarctica, not quite surviving a cave-in and the appearance of a demon. Dissolve to rabbits in a hutch that have been killed. What's going on? It's hard to say, but it sure is interesting.The story settles down when Akira is introduced. Akira is your typical schoolkid until his childhood best friend Ryo shows up and pulls him into a web of demons and deceit. As Ryo explains, Dante talks about demons frozen in the ice in The Divine Comedy, and now global warming is melting that ice, freeing them. Akira and Ryo decide to team up and save the world. Devilman is chock full of bizarre explanations about demon existence and behavior, demon-on-demon violence, and a little gratuitous nudity. The best reason to watch it is for all the bizarre explanations, which are too weird not to be entertaining. --Andy Spletzer
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