If you've read any dark Berserk, and other similar titles in its pages. It is also very much of the time when it was originally created, which may not make it particularly appealing to readers who aren't interested in the history of manga as a storytelling medium – while certain elements are simply Gō Nagai doing his Gō Nagai thing, others are rooted in the popular entertainment styles of the 1970s and haven't aged particularly well.

Chief among the latter is the general attitude taken by the characters towards what it means to be masculine. When we first meet protagonist Akira Fudo in chapter two, he's the kind of guy who today would be cast as the appealing hero: quiet, kind, and of an academic bent. He's not a fan of violence and is invested in doing the right thing. All of this diminishes him in his friend Miki's eyes, however: she consistently berates him for not being tough or violent and for being too bookish; none of those things make him “manly” in her eyes. This attitude appears to be shared by almost everyone Akira encounters, steering him towards what today we'd call toxic masculinity. That this is remedied when his best friend Ryo shows up and gets Akira possessed by the great demon Amon, making Akira a much tougher, more violent guy, highlights the issue in a way that's a good indicator of changing attitudes towards what it means to be male over time. What's more interesting is that Akira is fully in charge of his and Amon's merged self, and his kindness is still very much in evidence over the middle chapters in the 600 page volume; it's just that now it's acceptable for him to be nice because he can also rip a guy's throat out with his teeth.

That's perhaps the one thing Devilman doesn't do as he's fighting for humanity's continued survival/supremacy on the planet. Devilman as a series is as violent as it can get away with being, but most of this is in the vein of 1970s schlock entertainment: over the top and vaguely ludicrous. It bears the mark of Nagai's more interesting tropes as well, such as female demons whose breasts are fanged mouths or who have literal vaginas dentata. There is a fair amount of male nudity as well, and we do see some penises in the opening color pages of intersex angels descending to a dinosaur-filled planet, but for the most part the guys are just not wearing clothes rather than being presented as sexual, appealingly or otherwise. Perhaps that's what makes it so noticeable when, in the last third of the book, Akira and Ryo are spending a lot of time hanging on to each other, both clothed and unclothed – there's a definite homoerotic vibe to a lot of their late interactions that makes for some interesting reading of their relationship.

Primarily that's reserved for the time travel chapters, which honestly feel a little random. That's likely because they're not part of Devilman's original five-volume run: they form a book called Adolf Hitler and attempts to explain his extreme anti-Semitism as encounters with a demon masquerading as a Jew. It doesn't seem to mean to be uncomfortable (unfortunate big-nosed iconography aside), but as someone with a personal history with the Holocaust, it was not an easy read.

The hook-nosed Jewish characters and a couple of people of color thrown into other chapters are the most unfortunate aspects of the artwork. Otherwise Nagai has a very dynamic style that doesn't necessarily adhere to anatomical norms (arms seem to grow depending on the ) but absolutely gives a sense of motion and action. His use of both s and white-on-black imagery is impressive, and it really feels as if the pages are moving rather than static drawings. As I mentioned before, there is a lot of nudity, and humorously we always see female nipples but very rarely male. (Also it takes Miki four s to take her underwear off for the bath, which is impressive in its own way.)

Nagai originally wrote Devilman as an anti-war story, and while that comes through most clearly in the Shin Devilman chapters, it is a theme that we can see lurking beneath the surface of the entire book. That Akira doesn't lose his good, kind heart even though he acquires the anger and power of Amon makes him a force for humanity, one who regrets each casualty that he has to deal with. Although it's very firmly rooted in the 1970s in of its sensibilities, Devilman is still an interesting piece of manga history to read, if only to see how it still influences writers today.