Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Survivor 2 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
I am back from the screening of Devil Survivor 2: The Animation, specifically the first four episodes of the English dub of this anime adaptation of a popular videogame. This screening was a special "sneak preview" hosted by Sentai Filmworks, who sent along the ADR Director and ADR script writer for a brief Q&A afterwards. This was a reasonably entertaining show, the animation was very good and on par with other current anime standards. It was nice to hear Jessica Boone's voice as one of the main female heroines. Greg Ayres voices one of the supporting characters. The main character, 久世 響希 Kuze Hibiki, is voiced by Patrick Poole, who could not attend tonight's screening but did record a video message that played before the screening, thanking all the fans for attending the special advanced screening of this anime. One lucky fan got to go home with an advanced copy of this series; alas it was not me.
For the fourth episode versus the "Big Bad" that shows up, I joked with my neighbor (whom I knew personally in real life) "...scramble Eva Unit 01!", since it looked uncannily like it flew off the set of Neon Genesis Evangelion as one of the attacking Angels. This seems like a pretty brutal show that is not going to pull any punches. I am predicting a high body count.
While I probably won't rush out and buy this series, it is something I'd definitely watch later on maybe on rental DVD or streaming on Netflix. I'd consider buying it, but it's not a high priority right now. I didn't feel at a loss not having played the videogame before; if anything, listening to the questions coming from fans who have played this game and the Persona series of games, I think I probably got more out of this show walking in "blank slate", with no prior experience, so I was not struggling with preconceived notions or prior gaming experience. You could certainly do worse with a spontaneous purchase than Devil Survivor 2: The Animation.
Apropos of nothing, I'd like to offer a brief apology to the Daily Anime Podcast, who I gave a little sh*t to in my last post. It looks like they've been back up and cranking out new episodes since May of this year after a long hiatus! Welcome back guys, I'll go download the current episode and backlog of stuff I missed since ya'll's return. It's always cool to find new epsiodes of old shows you thought were done pod-faded away.
