Story: In-Wan Youn
Art: Kyung-Il Yang
Genres: Shounen, Demons, Action, (Drama), Supernatural, Comedy, Ecchi, (Romance), (Mystery), Adventure
Status: finished
Synopsis:
Mephisto Bart Kucabara is a devil lawyer. In order to return to the demon world that he was exiled from, he needs to collect enough Dark Matter. To do so, he creates a plan to claim the Dark Matter from the souls of sinners sentenced to hell; prove the soul’s innocence and the Dark Matter becomes his.
But how can he gather enough Dark Matter when his kind personality causes him to continually use it up in order to defend the soul from the Shinigami that has come to take them to hell? (source myanimelist.net)
Take a second and think about this scenario. After you die, you would go to hell to suffer forever without even knowing what you have done wrong in your life. That is, even if you haven’t done anything wrong, you would still go to hell. Worse, no one can help you. At the depth of despair, there is one small light of hope! Our hero, Kucabara, is the devil lawyer who would help you defend your innocence!
Thus, the tale of our devil lawyer begins. The manga starts off superbly. It managed to pull off an introduction that is at the same time mysterious, dramatic, and hilarious. The first 20 or so chapters are very good, fraught with all flavors that a Demon/Ecchi/Action/Mystery manga should have.
However, just as things are getting interesting, the quality of the manga suddenly dropped. At some point, Defense Devil turns into just another Comedy/Adventure with slapstick humor and a lot of fan-service. The good news is that it never crossed the threshold of being utterly mindless trashy manga.
To be fair, though, Defense Devil managed to achieve the minimum requirement for plot complexity and sensibility, a reasonable mix of fan-service, battles, and laugh-out-loud moments, several semi-stereotypical main characters who are not completely cliched, and finally, some pleasant (or not) surprises at various points in the manga.
Defense Devil is a pleasant, relaxed, and well-balanced choice of manga if one does not take it too seriously . I can’t find any crippling flaws in this manga, even though there are numerous blemishes. Giving it the 19th place for Top 30 Manga Countdown may be a bit overrating its quality. In terms of pure entertainment value, though, it is justified.
bunny1ov3r 