Devilman
I've been on a bit of a manga kick lately, a genre I feel I've woefully neglected over the years aside from the standards, and I'v been discovering some fucking phenomenal works, both new and old. One such, kinda rediscovery, is the original Devilman manga by Go Nagai.
Back in the mid 1990's a young, rebellious, burgeoning punk rocker stumbled onto what he would later come to learn was "anime" on some late night cable public access channel. He couldn't believe what he saw. It was a "cartoon" but it was full of monsters, extreme violence, naked ladies, and foul language. This was exactly the kind of thing an "edgy" 13 year old needed in his eyes.
Not knowing what the fuck I was looking at I had no real way of tracking any of this shit down. That was until two things happened: One, the store MediaPlay opened and sold VHS anime for about a million dollars per copy of a 30 minute cartoon, and two, Hollywood Video, the better version of Blockbuster Video opened, with their completely uncensored and well-stocked cult and anime section.
I. Rented. So. Much. Anime. From. Hollywood Video. Probably everything on the shelf.
One such video was the 80's (I think) Devilman series, which was that perfect blend of wild violent monsters and angst a teenage punk rocker needs.
Flash forward to now and I can't believe how crazy that manga is and that it was released in 1972. Japanese comic artists must function from a different reality.
I also watched the newer-ish Devilman Crybaby on Netflix, and I hope this hits some teenage kid somewhere as hard as the original one hit me in the 90s. I think it has more to say than the older one modernizing the story and characters was a good call.