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[De:Vadasy box art]
AKA: 創世聖紀 デヴァダシー (Sousei Seiki Devadasy)
Genre: Sci-fi adventure
Length: OAV series, 3 episodes, 90 minutes each
Distributor: R1 DVD from Anime Works / Media Blasters
Content Rating: 16+ (nudity, adult themes and situations, language, violence, misogyny)
Related Series: N/A
Also Recommended: Evangelion, Lagrange: The Flower of Rin-ne, RahXephon
Notes:
Rating:

De:Vadasy

Synopsis

First, ignore what the box cover says. Trust me. You'll thank yourself later.

A young boy decides to join a secret paramilitary organization, Spirits, in order to avoid school and follow some cute recruiter chick. His adopted sister gets mad and joins Spirits out of pure spite and jealousy. Once they arrive, they realize it's a training center for pilots in order to pilot the mecha Devadasy, which is humanity's last hope. However... this is no ordinary mecha. It requires a pilot (a male) and a battery (which is female). This is where it all goes wrong. The male pilot is then sexually aroused by the fighting, who transfers his sexual vibes to the female battery, whose orgasms power the mecha. That's right, folks, Devadasy lives up to its name - for a devadasy is a Hindu cultic prostitute. We guess whatever it takes to save the world...


Review

Somewhere in Japan, a bored AIC scenarist watched Evangelion and wondered what would happen if you replaced the Judeo-Christian imagery with the Kama Sutra.

Two years later, somewhere in Arizona, a scream of sheer horror came from the very pit of despair as THEM purchased, and watched the final product.

Right. We wasted thirty dollars and ninety minutes of our lives for THIS?!?

Media Blasters has a habit of releasing little-known series here in the States. Unfortunately, this is one of the titles that should've been better off left little known. But De:Vadasy could've been so much better (read: actually worth watching) if it had done either of the following - played up the obvious Evangelion-goes-Tantric parody, or decided to go all-out hentai. Instead, it does neither, trying to take itself seriously and to have "meaning". The series, therefore, comes off as being half-hearted on all accounts. Maybe even less than half - this series has no heart at all!

For starters, the prime requirement of being a Devadasy "battery" is nymphomania. Hey, wait; doesn't that sound just like Big Wars? Actually, this really is Big Wars all over again, except that they don't even bother to go to Mars, and they've replaced the wonky land-battleships with giant robots.

The animation itself relies heavily on the same tinted-light scenes as any other Eva clone, especially in the final installment. A lot of the "action" is melty-people horror, which is a common enough malady in bad anime (see Baoh, Genocyber, et cetera). At least they have the common courtesy to explain away as "being absorbed by nano-machines", which is a step above trying to pawn off people as being bags of blood. Of course, the action could've benefited from a semblance of exposition or plot, neither of which was ever present in the three episodes we viewed. They never fully explain what's up with the nano-machines, or why Devadasy has been hiding in Tibet for millennia, or why Amala still looks like a high-school girl when she's obviously a bit older than that. All that sexual energy I guess.

But the real problem with this anime is Kei Anno (yes, you heard that right), the completely unlikable lead of this show. He doesn't even have half the personality of Shinji. He doesn't know whether he wants to be a slacker or a pervert, and comes off as more of a puppet than anything else (unless he's in the mecha, where's he's just a raving psycho). What drugs are they feeding this boy?!? Not to mention that he treats all the, err, harem around him like complete crap, especially his "adopted sister" Naoki. All except for Amala, who is apparently only in this anime to have lots and lots of off screen sex with Kei. Which is really, REALLY bad when you figure out their true relationship, which is also insanely squicky (and taken straight from Evangelion to boot).

Otherwise, well, the music was unremarkable (there was music?), and the animation quality itself, while obviously glossy and high budget, seems utterly wasted on this show. Usually AIC is better than this, with a track record including Bubblegum Crisis and El Hazard, but unfortunately, this title is a lot closer in quality to its misfires, like Cybernetics Guardian ... if not even a bit worse. And even the promotional art is misleading and inaccurate. It features a whole bunch of female characters, but the show really only focuses on Amala and Naoki as being Kei's prospective incestuous prostitutes, err, "batteries". (The rest of the girls, it is assumed, are only present in order to facilitate the incredibly ludicrous classroom masturbation scenes halfway through the show.) The sad thing is that instead of being shocking and thought-provoking, or even funny or titillating, De:Vadasy is like dragging a long-dead horse through the swamps of mediocrity, through the valley of the shadow of death, and beyond. It isn't really worth it unless it was free (and the viewer was carefully sedated). And even then we're not quite sure.

Why should we give it the time of day? It's already stolen an hour and a half of our lives!Carlos/Giancarla Ross

Recommended Audience: Occasionally falling into softcore pornography, this title features non-explicit sex scenes, sexual innuendo, misogyny and maltreatment of women, animated violence, and coarse language.

Also, incest.



Version(s) Viewed: R1 DVD, bilingual
Review Status: Full (3/3)
De:Vadasy © 2000 AIC
 
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