Joseph Luster
February 6, 2016 
The Shin Megami Tensei modern-day occult RPG franchise is one of the most versatile RPG lines when it comes to serving up fodder for adaptations. Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Survivor, originally released on Nintendo DS in 2009, is another example of how easily these stories make the leap to anime and manga.
Satoru Matsuba takes Suzuhito Yasuda’s characters and does a decent job of keeping the spirit of the source material intact in the Devil Survivor manga, which is about as game-like as you can get short of plugging in a controller.
© 2013 Index Corporation/ATLUS/Satoru Matsuba/Yasuda Suzuhito/Kodansha, Ltd.Teenagers Kazuya Minegishi, Atsuro Kihara, and Yuzu Tanikawa meet up for what’s supposed to be a normal day out on the town, but they should have known that meeting up with their weird friend Naoya is never an ordinary experience. Rather than showing up to hang out with his friends, Naoya leaves them each with a Comp, a handheld device that looks almost identical to a Nintendo 3DS.
It turns out they got these just in time, because the email system contained within is full of ominous news from the future, and before they know it the city is swarming with demons and Kazuya and friends have to depend on the Comps to make pacts with these creatures and fight to survive.
The first volume of Matsuba’s adaptation takes us through what is essentially the “tutorial” of Devil Survivor. Kazuya, Atsuro, and Yuzu quickly learn that they can use the emails to stop certain catastrophic events from happening, and they begin gathering their own handy stable of demons to summon.
As far as video game adaptations go it’s a pretty enjoyable, fast-paced read, and the art is mostly up to the task. Oddly enough, the demon designs themselves are the most lacking, but they’re straight from the game. Hopefully we’ll see some more interesting enemies in the next volume.
publisher:
Kodansha Comics
story and art: Satoru Matsuba
rating:
13+
