Jun meets a new monster in each episode of The Devil Lady © Go Nagai / Dynamic Planning • MBS • UNIVERSAL MUSIC • TMS-K All rights reserved. Released by A.D.Vision, Inc. under license. From the comic books by Go Nagai (Administered by DYNAMIC PLANNING INC. in Japan and D/WORLD INC. outside Japan).

The Devil Lady. V.1, The Awakening. V.2, The Becoming. V.3, The Strengthening. V.4, The Gathering. V.5, The Purging. V.6, The Victorious.
TV series (26 episodes), 1998-1999. Director: Toshio Hirano. V.1 & v.6, five episodes/125 minutes. 2-5, four episodes/100 minutes. Price & format: DVD bilingual $29.98. Distributor: A.D.V. Films.

In 1972, Go Nagai's manga Devilman was adapted as a limits-pushing TV anime serial that blended superheroics with supernatural horror, similar to America's midnight-MTV animated series Spawn more than 20 years later. Devilman became a classic, inspiring numerous authorized variations and imitations. The Devil Lady (Devilman Lady in Japan, a.k.a. Go Nagai's The Devil Lady in the U.S.) is one of the former; a 26-episode TV series for older adolescents and adults (rated 17+), October 10, 1998 through December 29, 1999, animated by TMS Entertainment Ltd. This revision by Nagai himself, adapted for TV by Chiaki Konaka, reverses genders to make the dominant characters women, and changes the horror rationale from supernatural to biological sci-fi.

Jun Fudoh is a young fashion model who has recently begun experiencing flashes of unexplainable foreboding. When a domineering woman, Lan Asuka, orders Jun to follow her one night, Jun feels compelled to obey. Asuka takes her to a warehouse guarded by soldiers, where a chained man metamorphoses into a demonic-looking monster. Jun does also, and the two fight until the male is killed.

Asuka explains to the traumatized Jun that evolutionary forces have begun transforming people carrying a "Beast gene" into super-powerful but feral monsters, and that a secret international scientific and military Human Alliance (HA) has been formed to identify humans with this gene and eliminate them before they can transform and slaughter innocent humans. Jun was one of these latent monsters, but Asuka is confident that she can control Jun and use her as a "hound" against the Beast monsters.

On an episode-by-episode basis, Devil Lady is a "monster of the week" series pitting Jun against a new horrific monster each time. As the background plot evolves, Jun gradually rises above the humiliation of becoming a devilish giant who has trouble controlling her lusts, and starts asking questions. If Jun can be trusted, why does the HA order her to automatically kill all other latent Beasts without seeing if any of them can also refrain from turning feral? When a sadistically demonic child, Satoru, tries to create a Demon Beast army to replace humanity, to what extent are his followers vicious predators that deserve to be slaughtered, and to what extent are they just defending themselves against the HA's pogrom?

Asuka's own HA aide-de-camp, Maeda, suspects that Asuka is using Jun for an agenda of her own. Maeda's efforts to help Jun escape Asuka's psychological dominance and learn the truth about the "evolution" excuse for the transformations, while Jun protects him physically, take on a reverse-Beauty and the Beast romantic aspect. Among the many Beasts, the females are definitely the most powerful and deadly; and a couple of the subplots are overtly lesbian. The so-so animation quality is compensated for by clever direction that makes maximum use of ominous atmospherics; notably camera angles which imply potential victims are being spied upon from above or below, lengthy slow pans of motionless "empty" halls and rooms, and creepy mood music by Toshiyuki Watanabe whose thunderous theme for Jun is reminiscent of Orff's Carmina Burana. The Devil Lady should be popular with horror-fantasy fans of series novels about "good" vampires and werewolves who use their curse to help protect humanity.