What does an anime about a demon-possessed boy who cries a lot have in common with the edgiest highschool movie ever made? Apart from being some of my favourite pieces of media, they both start with temptation and end with disaster that threatens society as a whole.
The protagonists are established as so: Veronica (Heathers) and Akira (Devilman) are both good at heart in contrast to many of the people around them. Veronica is contrasted with heartless Heather Chandler, unhinged JD, and the uncaring students of Westerburg High, while Akira is contrasted with apathetic Ryo, the violent demons, and a society which has been driven mad by fear. The main difference between the two protagonists is how they cope with temptation. Akira can resist temptation, but Veronica cannot, even if it goes against her principles.
Let’s look at the character’s initial reactions to temptation. When Heathers begins, Heather Chandler encourages Veronica to write a fake love letter for a cruel prank on Martha Dunstock—Veronica gives into this temptation, although is obviously conflicted, and in the end turns away. The contrast between her and the heartless Heathers is established, but so is her lack of will.
Conversely, one of the first things established about Akira is his pure-heartedness. Interestingly, Akira isn’t tempted into a deal with the Devil, but is rather accidentally possessed by the king of demons (Amon), and once possessed, suffers from constant violent and sexual urges. The main point of his character is that his heart is so pure that he never loses himself fully to Amon: he is a Devilman, with the body of a devil but the heart of a human. That said, he does give into many of the urges; the day after he is possessed he proceeds to watch porn in public, eat more food that is humanly possible, and defeats (although without injuring) four people. The last is the worst for Akira personally and causes him to run home in shame—but it should be said that while he provoked the four, he did not initiate the violence. In the end, these are all inconsequential; Akira never betrays his own principles when it matters.
Once established, the temptations each character faces escalates. Veronica is tempted mainly by JD. Or rather his world. JD is a loner who pulls a gun out in the school cafeteria the first day he arrives. Veronica is impressed by his rebellion against the world that entraps her. She wants his freedom from social constraints. She says as much outside the Snappy Snack Shack: “[My friends] are just like people I work with, and our job is being popular and shit.” She has no genuine connection, only obligations.
JD grants her that freedom briefly; he sneaks into her house (breaking social taboo, as always) and they have an intimate evening in the garden (and on the neighbour’s swing set). Even at this point, Veronica has an idea of what she wants. She suggests to JD, “Why don’t we just grow up, be adults, and die? … Before that, I want to see Heather Chandler puke her guts out.” As far as she is concerned, she wants reprieve from society, not to exit it completely. Unfortunately JD is not just free from the social constraints of highschool, but is outside society as a whole, and the more time she spends with him, the further into his world she gets pulled.
Unlike Veronica Akira faces his temptations as a kind of background noise, until the point where they become too much. Here it might be said that Ryo tempts him to give into the urges he already feels, but this is the only point where he suffers genuine temptation from an external source. Let’s compare this moment in Akira’s story to the two main points of temptation in Veronica’s.
In Heathers, we see first just how far outside of society JD is when he and Veronica “prank” Heather Chandler. He insists on getting Heather to drink drain-killer. Veronica refuses, but JD manages to swap the cups anyway and Heather dies. JD persuades Veronica to write a suicide note to cover up his murder of Heather Chandler. Veronica spends the rest of the plot trying to escape from the mess she has gotten herself in, falling further into it as JD tempts her to kill more people. For most of the movie, Veronica is pulled along into JD's misanthropic schemes while her conscience battles with what she has done.
Although Veronica might be forgiven for writing the note, JD does tempt her into another “prank”. All the signs are available to her that this is going to be another murder: JD has guns which he claims are tranquilizers and wants her to write a suicide note even though he claims Kurt and Ram won’t die. Nevertheless, she agrees to it, rather than take a lesson from what happened last time. When the murder occurs, she misses her shot at Kurt who runs away. JD’s urgency suggests that something is very wrong. In her panic, she takes the final shot at Kurt and kills him herself.
Veronica ignores the fact she is slipping further away from society until this point. JD himself brings up the suggestion that Veronica hasn’t be fooled into doing this. After the murder of Kurt and Ram, he says “You believed it [was just a prank] because you wanted to.” Whether or not he is correct, Veronica did shoot Kurt even after she suspected the bullets were not tranquilizers. A pattern has emerged: Veronica is tempted away from dealing with her problems, things escalate, and she makes a decision to commit taboo acts like murder that push her further outside of society.
I would like to note that it might have been a less interesting story, but if JD had reigned himself in and not gone as far as murder, he and Veronica could have continued playing (perhaps extreme but not life-threatening) pranks on people, and enjoying their rebellion as a reprise from society, without having to completely leave it. Just as she wanted that night in the garden, and especially as suggested in the song “Seventeen” from the musical. Veronica is not wholly to blame for what happens to her over the course of the movie. It was not necessary that she be put in those situations, and she did try to get JD to cut back on the murdering, trusting him even when he appeared that she shouldn’t. Whether she was too trusting of JD, or too afraid to introspect and realise her folly, is ambiguous.
As for Devilman, Akira’s temptation reaches its climax midway through the anime. His urges overwhelm him almost to the point of almost acting them out on Miki, his childhood friend. Distraught, he sees Ryo who advises him to go all out in the red-light district. There he has sex with Silene, the lover of Amon. There are consequences to his giving into temptation; the sexual encounter turns into a fight as Silene tries to draw Amon out, and Akira almost dies. He is saved by pure luck. Here we might notice an important difference between the two pieces of media: Akira’s consequences are purely personal, unlike Veronica’s. Akira’s principles do not let his personal failings affect others, in stark contrast to Veronica’s whose actions affect the entire community.
One could understand these character’s actions as different ways of coping with temptation. Neither is particularly healthy, but I find Akira’s better since it morally preferable to limit the consequences of one’s own failings to oneself. Of course, neither character has support for what they’re going through—it is too messy and murder-filled in Veronica’s case, and too large and inexplicable in Akira’s.
It should also be said that Veronica does go through significant character development after the second set of murders; she cuts JD out of her life, and makes an effort to stop him from causing more damage. Akira’s character does not really develop as a result of his confrontation with his vices; he merely exorcises them from his system.
Temptations confronted, the characters move on to deal with looming disasters. In Devilman, demons have been released and are wreaking havoc on Earth—and humans, out of fear, are doing even more damage. Akira does his best to protect people. In Heathers, Veronica shifts goals from alleviating her own social suffering to stopping JD from blowing up the school.
Veronica’s victory is hard won, but it is won. During her final confrontation in the boiler room of the school, she no longer listens when he explains his motivations (“Right, so maybe I am killing everyone in this school because nobody loves me”) or tries to bring her to his point of view (“The only place different social types can genuinely get along is in Heaven”). Whereas before she trusted him far more than was safe, at the end of the movie she watches him blow himself up and accepts her fate is different from his.
The result of her confrontation is this: Veronica has synthesised her need to escape society it into something new. Rather than be trapped in society and require a release, she now has the self-confidence to ignore society’s rules for the sake of good. She reinvigorates her friendship with the social pariah Martha.
For a brief digression into some surface level Jungian psychology: one could see JD as Veronia’s shadow, the part of herself she refuses to accept. Immediately after confronting her shadow, especially after accepting it, she gains freedom from social constraints and uses this freedom for good. The movie is fundamentally about her confronting her relationship with wider society. As such it makes sense the ending is positive, since Veronica successfully confronted her character flaw.
Akira’s disaster ends less positively. Since the demons appeared and the humans were set into a panic, Akira shoulders the entire burden of saving the world, and especially what’s left of his family. There is a brief moment where he convinces a few people with a selfless act, but paranoia has taken over too many people by that point. Between the humans and the demons who both want to kill Akira, he is unable to save his family from being brutally murdered for their association with him.
With nothing left to protect, his motivations shift to revenge against Satan and the demons, and he assembles the Devilmen into an army to to combat the demons. I find this is an appropriate reaction for someone who spent most of the anime up to this point trying to protect those he loves, only to lose that motivation entirely. Despite his power and drive to take revenge, Akira loses in his final fight against Satan. It’s interesting that the moral lesson here is negative; shouldering all the burdens of the world isn’t possible for just one person.
Ultimately, Devilman: Crybaby and Heathers share a final message, which is most evident in the line, “Now there's a school that self-destructed, not because society didn't care, but because the school was society.” While Veronica avoided that self-destruction, Akira could not. Both films say this: individual fear of others leads to the destruction of society. In Heathers, Veronica’s fear of social consequence is what leads to JD’s attempt to destroy the school. In Devilman, the fear that one’s friend might be a demon leads to humans killing each other off. In both cases, the cure is genuine human connection. The only times characters are happy in Heathers are during moments of genuine understanding and attempts to relate: when Veronica plays a friendly game of croquet with her old friend Betty, when she saves Heather McNamara from suicide, and when she invites Martha to watch movies with her. In Devilman, the closest Akira comes stopping the destruction is when Akira perseveres to make himself understood, and when Miki lets the world know her feelings about the Devilman, showing that they can be understood.
Taken together, these pieces of media give a full picture of the following basic story: individual/s are tempted and this leads to disaster for an entire community. They show two routes such a story can take: Heathers looks at an individual who might have become part of the destruction, but avoids it. It shows us the way out. Devilman looks at society from the perspective of a selfless individual who ends up a victim, so provides a dire warning.
