Defense Devil

We all know that we have a “Butler from Hell”- Kuroshitsuji. Now what do we have? – “Lawyer from Hell” – Defense Devil. Meet Mephisto Bart Kucabara. He was a prince from the Demon world but was banished due to some reasons ( I don’t wanna spoil here), and now he lives in Event Horizon. A place between heaven and hell. In order to get back to his home, he must collect this so called “Dark Matter” from souls who were casts to hell.. He then decided to become a defense lawyer. They let their client(the dead) sign a contract, prove their innocence and claim theDark Matter within them after the case is solved. At first glace, this manga is just about solving cases. Kucabara meets a soul, lets them sign a contract, finds out the cause of death and the offense they’ve committed before they died, prove their innocence and collect dark matter afterwards. It goes for about 4-5 chapters, but I must say the cases are all interesting – detective stories that have supernatural events. That’s for the introductory part. The story starts to pick up when he meets Sister Idamaria. As the story progresses, it reveals more mysteries, and the questions are slowly answered. The plot would make you say “What!?” or “Holy!?”. It reveals answers slowly but surely. It doesn’t give readers a full blown answer at once that would make them hard to understand or something like introducing many characters at once. As for the art, it is nicely done. Kinda reminds me of Air gear when I first read it. Overall Defense Devil is a nice action packed manga with a dash of comedy that will make you ask for more. You guys have to read it while it’s still less than 100 chapters. As for the number of pages, it spans just like your regular shounen jump manga (18-20 pages except for the first few chapters). Trust me, this manga won’t let you down. A very big thanks to YoruAngel866 for recommending me this manga or else I would have missed one of the most epic manga of this time. PS. I would still like to write more but I think I might spoil you guys so there just read and see for yourself.

Defense Devil was a huge disappointment for me. It starts out strong, but you can almost see the point where the authors just stopped caring and started blatantly trolling the readers. It doesn't even deserve to be mentioned in the same sentence as the manga duo's earlier work Shin Angyo Onshi, although from there it's hard to go anywhere but down. The art is probably the best part of the manga. The artist half of the combo, Kyung-Il Yang is pretty much a master at his craft, delivering atmospheric landscapes, great character designs, badass fight scenes and beautiful titties. The characters are not bad, but there aretoo many to flesh them out properly. Some standouts were the protagonist, his sidekick, and the baddie who fights by using physics calculations to trigger complex domino effects in the environment. The concept itself is a little weird, but there have been weirder. It could have been a good story. It could have been, but it wasn't. I had written it off as an enjoyable time-waster even before the last 20 chapters or so, where it takes a serious dive in quality. I was literally laughing at how bad some of the twists and developments towards the end were. Final verdict: skippable. Go read their previous work if you haven't and hope that they'll find where they dropped their mojo for the next manga.

The original premise of the story was set up in a way that it could be taken in little bits, basically a bunch of different cases which the protagonist could solve and then be done with. However, after a few of these cases the series takes a turn and begins an arc which spans the rest of the series. Personally I felt like at that point it started to become another generic fight manga where two people take turns slugging it out until one passes out. the story doesn't really have much to offer actually, and there's not enough tension in the end. The story, art,and characters are all pretty mediocre, and nothing really sets this apart from any other "generic shounen". Of course, the beginning chapters were different, and I enjoyed those much more. They had me thinking "how is the protagonist gonna fix this one?" and had me waiting eagerly for the next chapter. Alas, after a few cases the author switched gears. Pity. I liked the art, I liked the main, I liked the story at first. Then after twenty chapter it went downhill. Overall, I liked it when it was coming out, but in the end it's only decent. Not great, but definitely not bad. I reread the first twenty chapters every now and then.

This manga is one that sets up an interesting premise, story and tone. In order to throw it out the window when it thought it had your attention. To be honest I feel a little betrayed by the direction of this work, as I really enjoyed the opening few chapters. Story - 4 The story is windy and twisty in that terrible kind of way where you get the feeling things change because the author woke up feeling like that one day. Entire ideas are thrown out at the drop of the hat. The first chapters are the best because not only do characters have aclear goal, but there are also clear consequences for failure. You feel invested. But then it just goes off in another direction with very little connection the previous chapters. I don't think this was intentional and the whole story suffers for it. Art - 8 What saves this from being a 5 or even a 4 is it's art. While the panels can be uninspired and the direction can be a little cloudy at times. Overall it is detailed, on model, dramatic and intense. The heavy shading lends itself to scenes and the posing is top notch. I never felt like I was struggling to make out detail and your eyes moved in a very intentional way across images and pages. It's not as spectacular as say, Made in Abyss, but it is pretty great. Character - 6 What can I say? None of the characters are bad per say, but they do get weaker as the manga goes on and has less time to spend on introduced characters as it tries to explain it's convoluted plot and who knew what at which time. Bichura is probably the most fleshed out and he's my favorite. Strangely, we find out much about our main - Kucabara - through the perspective of others (inspections and inner voices), and it makes him feel disconnected from the story. Enjoyment - 4 As I said, I feel betrayed, the story the manga gets around to telling after 30 chapters does have a... conclusion? Would have been better without that final chapter wrapping everything up. I did enjoy the first couple chapters, and I enjoyed the art, but I just wish I could care about anything in the story - I didn't because nothing seemed to matter later on. Infuriating, dragged out and fickle. Overall - 6 The Art elevates this series higher than average, and I do think Some good ideas are tossed around, the means to execute on them even. It just seemed like 'Defense Devil' isn't and never was the story the author wanted to tell.