"Devil Survivor 2 - The Animation" is an animated supernatural action series based on the video game of nearly the same name, "Shin Megami Tensai's: Devil Survivor 2 (2011)".  This show opens up with two friends named Hibiki Kuze and Daichi Shijima who are sitting down, having some nice warm drinks, and talking to each other about a creepy new web-site/phone-app (they say "Web-site" but it's totally a phone-app).  The site/app is called "Dead Face" (reminds me of "Deadmau5" every time) and all this site/app does is predicts the moment that you are going to die and it shows a video of the supposed moment in graphic and brutal detail.  Daichi Shijima takes a photo of Hibiki Kuze's face and sends it to Dead Face only to get back a clip of seeing them both die in a tragic train accident.  Hibiki Kuze and Daichi Shijima head out to a train station to catch a ride home (you can see where this is going already) and while waiting we see Daichi Shijima checking out a girl named Lo Nitta and goes on about how he wouldn't mind dating her.  Shortly after we see a train coming in and then suddenly comes off the tracks killing Hibiki Kuze and Daichi Shijima just as the video predicted.  We then see a weird moment of Hibiki Kuze getting a text-message asking if he wants to "live" or "die".  Hibiki Kuze chooses to live and awakens in the wreckage with Daichi Shijima and Lo Nitta only to see that the train station is full of demons feasting on the dead.  Sadly I am out of space for the main page preview but do not worry as the rest of the description of the show is right after the jump.  (Click "Read More" to read the review).


The demons take notice of them and begin to attack and our main characters try to run and hide from the demons.  All is not lost as they soon find out that they can summon demons out of their phones and they use their demons to fight the other demons.  There is a downside to this as they can only use the demons for a certain amount of time, not just that as they can't re-summon them right after they return as they need to recover.  Hibiki Kuze, Daichi Shijima, and Lo Nitta get out of the station and meet up with survivors on the surface.  Sadly they aren't safe as another huge demon that looks like a giant ice cream cone comes along and starts blowing up everything.  Our main characters begin to run away and all seems lost but Hibiki Kuze gets lucky as he can summon a really powerful demon that looks like a white tiger and completely wrecks up the killer ice cream cone. 

Not too long after that battle we see our main characters getting recruited by a private army that are made up of soldiers that can summon demons.  Hibiki Kuze, Daichi Shijima, and Lo Nitta are given a quick briefing about the demon attacks.  Our main characters also learn that on each day of the week there'll be an attack by a boss demon until the week is over and that giant ice cream cone exploder demon was just the first of seven.  If they don't defeat them then the whole world will be devoured by a dark void and so it's up to them to save the world.  But are they saving the world for a greater good or are they merely just pawns in a much bigger game?


The story in this show isn't terrible but it is very problematic with the first and most major one being that you only care about what's going on in the show up until they show the "Dead Face" service.  The reason why you'll lose interest is due to how predictable the show becomes as you'll be able to nail 95% of what's going to happen, that ruins the show for me and so early on as well.  Another problem I have is that the story is just plain cookie cutter generic to where you'll want to just throw on something else but that's not to say that this show didn't have some good moments as it did have some very touching scenes.  One thing that bothered me about this show is that they brought in an interesting element about the demon summoning but then they completely ignore it right after that scene (I don't want to spoil what that element was).  The demon summing through phones element was something I was mixed on as there were some parts where it felt cool and other times it felt very forced and pretentious to point of annoyance.

Drama in this show wasn't bad nor was it all that great but it did have it's moments that made me care for the show slightly.  Believe it or not there's some (but not many) comedic moments put into this show and they weren't very good as not only were the jokes predictable but they repeat the same gags and they were just as painful and predictable every time they did it.  Action scenes weren't bad as they could get pretty entertaining to watch but this show also has one of the worst finishes to a battle that I have ever seen due to how rushed and corny it was.  It got so bad that I cringed and yelled "FOR F**CKS SAKE" at the television and that's not an attempt of me trying to be snarky as that's what really happened.  If you are wondering which episode this scene happened, "Episode 10: Friday of Farewells".  This kind of ending has been done many times before in many other anime and it wasn't the concept I found to be bad but just the way it was handled.


I wasn't a fan of most of the characters (mainly the main cast) in this show as they weren't executed very well and just come off being very typical and cookie cutter generic and were missing depth to them.  When you have a show where you do not care about the story is one thing but when you also don't care for the characters, that is just plain disastrous.  The only characters I did really enjoy were some of the minor character as they had much more depth and backstory to them and it helped make them interesting.  Well me not finding all the main characters uninteresting isn't completely true (gasp) as there was one main character I liked and he did have a backstory and a personality I liked but even so, the character wasn't great either.

Artwork in this show is really good and has that signature "Shin Megami Tensei" art-style and looked very clean and well drawn.  The designs of the characters themselves didn't look very original and are very generic.  Backgrounds in this show looked very good as they had some nice designs and good detailing.  Japanese dub in this show was passable as the voices did work well with the characters and the acting was decent but nothing all that special.  This release does have an English dub included if you don't like reading subtitles.  Soundtrack in this show was good as I did like the soft rock tunes found in this show as they relaxed me.

This character design is enough to make you summon demons of your very own ;).

There's a very basic special features section as all that's included are the text-less versions of the opening and closing credit sequences.  One thing that was neat was that it included every single variant of the opening and closing credit sequences and it'll take some time to get through them as you'll get around twenty-five minutes of them.  The opening credits were decent as they had some nice flashy visuals and some very nice music.  Don't expect for each opening to be majorly different as the only thing you'll notice is one that that shows a quick "previously on.." that's barely noticeable and it'll feel like that you're watching the same intro over and over if you don't know what to look for. 

The closing credits selection is much more varied and you will notice differences in both a visual and audio manor and they were all just as good.  One real neat thing found in the text-less credits section is that you'll get full scenes that don't have the credits plastered on them as there were some episodes that opened up cold and just had credits running over the scenes.  This feature makes me want to see certain episodes re-edited to where it has the scenes without credits.


Overall this is a show that was very disappointing to where I don't care for it at all.  I do not recommend you go checking out this show but if you wanna watch this despite what I've said then this show is a streamer for those that are curious.  Do yourself a favor and just spend the money on getting the game instead, you'll save some money by doing so too.  Generic viewing.

Title: Devil Survivor 2 - The Animation