Miki Makimura Talks Like a Samurai

Pronouns in Japanese, both first and second person, are a lot more complicated than in English. If you're reading a post about Devilman, you probably have at least some cursory knowledge of the subject, but for a quick redux: in Japanese, there are a variety of ways to say both "I/me" and "you," each carrying …

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Devilminutia: Name Meanings

(I'm going to be using the heading Devilminutia for short posts discussing the minutia of Devilman - things that don't quite have enough substance for a proper piece, but are still worth pointing out and discussing.) Because of the nuances of kanji, there are both a lot of ways to write Japanese names and a …

On Satan, Gender, and Representation

Part I - Angelic Identity Politics In Devilman, Satan is physically intersex. They're shown to have both breasts and a penis, and in the manga, they explicitly refer to themself as "both male and female." This is a clear, objective statement of fact. What one chooses to make of that fact, however, is a little …

A Close Reading of Ichikawa Haruko’s “A 25-Hour Vacation”

Ichikawa Haruko is best known as the creator of Land of the Lustrous, but before that manga began publication, she published a number of one-shots which were collected in a two-volume edition simply titled Ichikawa Haruko Collection. These one-shots wound up being used as fodder for a rather infamous tumblr callout post accusing her of …

“You know I’m a…”: On the Value of Liberal Translation

This post contains major spoilers for every iteration of Devilman. Devilman completed serialization in 1973, and didn't receive an official English translation until 2018, meaning that for approximately 50 years, the only version available to people who didn't speak Japanese (and even those who did, but couldn't get their hands on copies of the original) …