Devil Survivor 2

Devil Survivor 2, The Animation, is about three teenagers who load a new phone app onto their phones and pay the price.  The teenagers are Kuze Hibiki, Nitta Io and Shijima Daichi.  The phone app is Nicaea Dead Faces and it allows them to see the faces of friends who die – immediately before those friends die.   The app is very accurate.  However, people who have this app, when they die, get one chance to live again, as a Summoner.  They can use the app and their cell phone to summon demons to fight bad demons who are killing humans and destroying the world.

That’s where the story starts.  The three die, become Summoners and summon demons to try to protect the people around them.  In doing so they come to the attention of JPS, an organization composed of Summoners who are ostensibly working for the same purpose as Hibiki-tachi, to protect people and the world.   The head of JPS, a megalomaniac named Hotsuin Yamato, realizes that Hibiki and his summoned demons are extraordinarily powerful, and he ropes the three kids in to use for his purposes.  Along the way, an extraneous, weird character named Alcor, sticks his nose into everyone’s business.

The background, which comes out throughout the story is this:  An all-powerful being named Polaris has decided that humans are worthless and has decided to destroy all of them along with their world.  He sets up a 7-day “test” to see if any humans are worthy of surviving.  The humans must battle the demonic Septentrion that attack them for 7 days, and if any survive, they can then create their own world the way they want it.  Yamato comes from a family that’s known about this coming battle for centuries, and Yamato himself is an extremely powerful Summoner.  He plans to be the lone survivor who will rebuild his own world – without foolish, weak, unnecessary humans.  In the process of the 7-day battles, he orders many people into battle with no concern whatsoever for their deaths.  In the meantime, Hibiki discovers that Alcor is a Septentrion, and learns about the history and Yamato’s plans. 

Alcor turns out to be an interesting and pivotal character.  He is a Septentrion who has come to care about humans.  He watched Yamato grow up and harden into his plans to reset the world and then Alcor switched allegiance to Hibiki and Hibiki’s plans to save the world, even though as a Septentrion, Alcor should have no feelings or allegiances.

The story plot line comes to a head after Hibiki makes his discoveries and Yamato sacrifices Nitta to defeat the sixth-day Septentrion.  Hibiki gains even more power and saves Nitta, pushing Yamato aside to do it.

In the end the battle comes down to Yamato and his beliefs versus Hibiki and his beliefs.   Whoever is stronger will be the one to reset the world in his image of the ideal. 

The ending of this series is actually very satisfying.  I didn’t expect that after watching everyone but Hibiki and Yamato get killed by the Septentrion.  So I ended up liking the series quite a bit and being glad I watched it.  It was pretty well done, even if it was developed from a game.