Amidst a world of soulless bullshit, corporate owned husks dressed like human beings, blinding flashbulbs that burn away your life force and more vacant stares than a wax museum, big name fashion model Jun Fudou has felt a dark and heavy weight on herself as of late. Could it be the dredges of living in a cardboard existence have finally emptied their venom into her sense of worth? Or, is there something more to it, like the glowing red eyes she sees in mirrors, the strange young blond who seems to be following her or the masks of evil that appear to her from out of the shadows? Is Jun meant for something more, or is she just descending that spiral staircase we like to call paranoia and madness? Well, one thing's for sure... and I don't seem to know what that one thing is exactly...

Just when Jun starts to question these hallucinations out loud and it looks like the madness is already on it's way over for dinner and a night of vacation slides, the blond woman that's been tailing her for real appears at Jun's door, introduces herself as Lan Asuka, and convinces Jun to accompany her to an abandoned warehouse in the city's harbor area... wow, not exactly the hardest woman to persuade in the world, is she? And here I thought models didn't do anything without an agent or lawyer present, let alone go off into potential girl-on-girl rape/kidnapping situations... well, outside of those $4 porn movies you find in the bargain bins at the "adult bookstores".

On the drive over, Lan starts mumbling on about the next evolution of the human race and something about a special light in Jun's eyes that can only be seen through photographs, brought out by the flash of the cameras. Completely confused and ignorant to whatever it is that Lan's got planned for her (still keepin' my fingers crossed for some kind of lesbian moment here), our heroine lets herself be lead inside of the warehouse and gets locked inside for her blind naivete. While Lan watches from a monitoring room and continues to speaks what sounds like nonsense to the innocent young model, Jun notices a man chained up on the other side of the room. Without so much as a word of hello or a request for help, the man notices Jun and wastes no time showing off his "special talent"... and I don't mean the thing he can do now that he's had his lower rows of ribs surgically removed. No, this man happens to be a lycanthrope. Don't know what that means? Please don't watch horror movies and shit if you're not gonna pick up at least a little of the vocabulary on your own...

"Lycan-who?". Yes, a "lycanthrope", or werewolf. The man turns into a big, hulking beast of the lupin kind, breaks his chains and follows the call of nature in a straight line for Jun's flesh, made that much softer and tender by all the thousand dollar cosmetic treatments and physical trainers. The beast wastes no time tearing into Jun, who offers little more resistance than a look of frozen terror, complete paralysis and a steady stream of tears. Needless to say, she's no match for the fangs and claws of the brute and is on the verge of being torn in half as Lan continues to call to her and mock her from the safety of her little observational hidy-hole. Something finally snaps for Jun though, as her fight-or-flight kicks in. Unlike the soccer mom whose baby is caught inside a burning mini-van though, Jun doesn't just get an adrenaline rush from her desperation, she gets a complete makeover of the demonic kind!

Sporting a Wolverine style 'do that's all the rage in the Canadian wilderness this year, a set of nigh She-Hulkian muscles that Grace Jones could only wish for (minus the penis of course) and a collection of natural tattoos and marking that add that element of accessorizing that all ladies of the business know they need, Jun is no longer the personification of vulnerability she once was. Now, she is Devil Lady, hot bodied killer of evils and queen of the proverbial mountain! And after all the years of fearing us because we're supposed to bigger and stronger and far more violent then you, look where the next step of evolution takes the so-called "weaker sex"! If chivalry wasn't dead before, it looks like it's about to take one lethal knee to the groin now.

Just like the penised predecessors who came before her, Devil Lady lives up to her hype, shoving her arm down what had once been her attacker's throat, turning the tables completely and giving the monster's limbs a vacation from the rest of it's body. Once the carnage has cleared though, and Jun's humanity starts to kick the demon half back into it's seat in the corner, Lan's personal clean up crew comes in to dispose of the clutter (i.e. Lon Chaney's various scattered chunks) and she comes in to give Jun the skinny on her new life as a demon hunting DevilMan for, uhm, the military? The government? A private sector group with a vendetta against the demon world? More on that when I piece it together myself...

Jun doesn't get long to let the change in lifestyle sink in though, because the lupine alpha male isn't going to let a small inconvenience like dismemberment keep him down! No, he's back, bigger, stronger and more mutated than ever, his powers enhanced by bonding with some kind of host body that now grows from his torso! After wiping out Lan's personal lackeys, he avoids making any more mistakes and goes to crush Jun while she's back in her weakened human state! Lan barely manages to escape the belly of the beast (which now has a twisted human body of it's own mind you) and is brought before who I'm guessing is her superior officer of some kind. She's told that Jun's death marks her project as a failure and she'll now have to find a new "Beast hunter" (I'm sure Marc Singer's available if you can find whatever abandoned noodle factory or discarded refrigerator box it is he now lives in), much to her chagrin, as finding Jun was a hard enough task. But, Lan's project isn't lost yet, because from the warehouse, crashing out in primal rage, come two mortal kombatants filled with the killer instinct, like two giant street fighter monsters ready to, errr, unleash their brutal paws of fury? Stuffing video game references into non-video game reviews is harder than it looks kids, don't try this at home...

Yes, like a couple of Ultraman extras Jun and her enemy burst from the now devastated remains of what could've been the perfect place to store boxes or all kinds of things, like machinery, freeze-dried food products, cheap toys that break right out of the package, counterfeit extension cords, or a veritable cornucopia of various pornographic items and sexual toys and aides! Now it's all for nothing, as these two nigh-daikaiju (meaning they fall in a size category somewhere between Daimajin and Godzilla) beasts prepare to lock in potentially epic (And almost guaranteed to be graphically violent) combat. Even if Devil Lady Jun can pull out a rookie victory in only her second fight, will she be able to keep a grip on the humanity she's now so close to giving over to the demon inside her? Well fanboy, keep that Astro Boy shirt on until next time, because thus ends episode 1 and soon shall begin episode 2. What'll ya do till then Stimpson? Well, them nose goblins aren't gonna liberate themselves! Trust me, I'm not known as "Braveheart of the Nostrils" for nothin'...

Okay, it's hard to give ratings to a series like Devil Lady, so let me get that out of the way first. Any shlubb can watch an anime episode and say "I don't know what was going on here, and the Japanese are stupid anyway, so this show sucks!", then throw in any number of random expletives and/or racial slurs and you've got pretty much half of the "reader review"s and message board quarterbacks on the internet, perhaps more. This of course has nothing to do with my review of the first episode of Devil Lady though, so let's forget that part and carry on.

Remember that crap I was saying in the start of this review? You know, the part where I was talking about there being no real action until at least episodes 4 or 5? Well, standard procedure says that you begin a series with some kind of origin story, likely an introduction of important characters, hints at larger plot elements to be revealed in later installments, all the while establishing the foundations that your entire series, no matter how long or short, will be built upon. Unfortunately, Go Nagai took some pretty skimpy notes in Anime Series Writing 101 and when it came time for the big Final Test at the semester's end, he gets low marks on the "How To Start A Series" part of the exam. "Beast" felt too shallow, too bare bones to be the beginning of something great. I'm hoping that I won't have to buy the entire series on DVD (used of course), only to find out that this precursor to pale storytelling is an accurate oracle of the events to come. If that's the case, Mr. Go will, uhm, be Going all right... to... errr... some kind of bad thing.... where his name will be an ironic form of eternal suffering for the rest of... well... eternity I guess... Sorry, thought I had something with the whole "Go" thing, but obviously it's getting late and my Death God motor skills are in need of some caffeine lubrication.

Granted, "Beast" does get most of the important crap out of the way: we meet Jun, Lan, Lan's boss/associate (currently nameless as of the end of this episode) and Jun's plucky teen model friend... Erma?... Stephanie?... Clovis?... Fujiko?! Shit, I wasn't really paying a lot of attention to that fairly blatant and disposable glimpse into our story anyway. I'm sure I'll get her name next time... and there will be a next time, bet your paycheck on it. How do I know? No character is introduced with the effort of giving them a name, a history with the main character, a portfolio of personal info (job, friends, family, agent, rival, boyfriend/girlfriend, mailing address, etc.) and so on, only to have them killed. Fodder is fodder for a reason, but characters like what's-her-name are destined for bigger, more important roles. SO, as I said, I'll get you her name sometime in reviews for the next few episodes. Come to think of it, I'm pretty sure I saw a glimpse of her in the preview for episode 2, so it obviously won't be a long wait.

But, that's about all "Beast" does is make with the introductions. Had I been helming this mission (for whatever alternate reality reason that may be), I would've drawn out the introductions a little more than just, "My name is Lan, come with me now". I would've put a little more focus on Jun and her descending into her depression, confusion and delirium, at least for another episode. Maybe I would've brought Lan into the light at the end of episode 1, then begin episode 2 with Lan explaining the whole DevilMan thing to her. There wouldn't have even been a Devil Lady in my version until the last moments of episode 2, and even then it would've been one of those "You see Jun's eyes turn red and she grins sinisterly, tossing the werewolf across the room before transforming into Devil Lady" cliffhanger endings. They do shit like that all the time with "Dragonball Z", and whether you love the show or hate it (or even don't know what the fuck it is or what it has to do with cutting shoe leather, tin cans and ripe tomatoes), you gotta admit, cliffhanger endings are always the best. Sadly, though "Beast" does deliver on the cliffhanger, it's structure just isn't fleshed out enough to be as good and engaging as it should have. A good example of how I would've treated Jun's character? Check out Perfect Blue sometime... just maybe not as long...