The Wish List That Misses the Point

Every few months, the same thread surfaces in collector circles. Someone asks when Discotek Media is going to give the 1972 Devilman TV series a proper 4K restoration. Someone else posts a comparison screenshot. A third person drops the word “upscale” like a grenade. Then everyone argues for two hundred replies and nothing changes. Meanwhile, the actual Blu-ray sits on a shelf, unwatched by half the people debating it.

Here is a fact that should settle the argument but never does: the Discotek Devilman Blu-ray features “a new high quality upscale from Japan” with revised subtitles. That word, “upscale,” has become a kind of original sin among physical media obsessives. It implies compromise. It suggests the release is somehow unfinished. But this thinking confuses technical ceiling with artistic truth, and in the case of a 39-episode monster-of-the-week anime from 1972, the distinction matters less than you think.

What This Show Actually Is

Devilman was a 1972 monster-of-the-week style anime series by Toei that ran from July 8, 1972 to April 7, 1973 on NET Television. It was directed by Masayuki Akechi and Tomoharu Katsumata under the supervision of Go Nagai. It was born out of a compromise. Devilman evolved from Go Nagai’s previous manga, Demon Lord Dante, after Toei Animation approached Nagai about turning Dante into a television series. The producers wanted certain elements toned down, and a more human-like anti-hero created. Devilman was born as a result of this.

Go Nagai worked on the anime’s scenario along with renowned screenwriter and science-fiction novelist Masaki Tsuji, who wrote the scripts for 35 of the TV series’ 39 episodes. Tsuji was not some hired gun. He was a prolific screenwriter and novelist and fan of Nagai’s work. The scripts he produced had a density and a weirdness that transcended their Saturday-night time slot. The show aired alongside Toei’s tokusatsu series Android Kikaider, and the two programs fed off each other’s darkness like vines sharing a trellis.

Even though tokusatsu television programs were still in their infancy, shows like Kamen Rider, released just a year before, had already started to pave the way to darker, more sophisticated heroes. Devilman ultimately lives up to this era, and stands as one of the trailblazers for the dark heroes. The animation is bold-lined and colorful, the demon designs genuinely eccentric. The background art is particularly innovative, especially in scenes where the demons are on the attack and we see Devilman take to the skies against hellish red overcast skies.

The Upscale Question Is a Trap

Collectors who have examined the Japanese Blu-ray source have been blunt. One did “a 1080p>480p>1080p test in Photoshop and didn’t see any loss of detail compared with the original image,” concluding “it’s definitely an upscale (or a really, really crappy film scan).” Others were more generous: it “looks better than most upscales,” though some noted “SD digital noise where the film grain should be.”

Fair enough. But consider what Discotek actually accomplished here. The Blu-ray contains episodes 1-39 of the anime directed by Masayuki Akechi and Tomoharu Katsumata , and it represented the first time all of them existed on a high-definition disc in the United States. The subtitles were personally revised. The extras traveled intact from the Japanese release. For $69.95, you got 860 minutes of a show that most Western fans had only ever encountered through bootleg tapes with subtitles that famously rendered “Devilman” as “Debiman.”

Compare this to Discotek’s approach with other restoration-intensive projects. For Urotsukidoji, they created a brand new 2K scan and restoration using one of two last known existing 35mm prints of the uncut version, which originates from a private collection. It took nine months to restore using AstroRes upscaling technology. That kind of heroic effort makes sense for a title where the physical prints are vanishing. The 1972 Devilman is not in that situation. The show exists. It has been preserved. The question is whether it needs to be preserved at a higher resolution, and I think the honest answer is: not urgently.

What Nagai Was Actually Doing

The obsession with scan quality obscures what makes this series genuinely important. The series was originally ordered by Toei Animation as a toned-down anime version of Nagai’s previous manga series, Demon Lord Dante. Devilman’s 39-episode anime series was developed by Toei Animation in 1972, while Nagai began the Devilman manga in Kodansha’s Weekly Shōnen Magazine, barely a month before the anime series started. Two versions of the same idea, running simultaneously, diverging wildly. The manga became Go Nagai’s anti-war masterpiece. The anime became something stranger and, in its own way, just as valuable.

Nagai designed Devilman as an anti-war work; the fusion of humans and demons is an analogy for the draft, and Miki’s violent death symbolizes the death of peace. “There is no justice in war, any war,” wrote Nagai, “nor is there any justification for human beings killing one another. Devilman carries a message of warning, as we step toward a bright future.” The TV series softened this message but never erased it. Beneath every colorful monster battle is a show about a creature who chose love over orders. That is not a story that improves at 2160p.

The Release We Have Is the One That Matters

Discotek has proven it can do 4K when the material warrants it. They previously released Space Adventure Cobra: The Movie on Ultra HD 4K Blu-ray Disc in 2019, the first UHD 4K Blu-ray Disc release for an anime in North America. More recently, they announced a “Project A-ko Perfect Collection 4K” containing the original film and its three sequels. If the day comes when a proper 4K scan of the 1972 Devilman makes practical and commercial sense, Discotek is the company that would do it right.

But that day is not today, and the hunger for it reveals a particular collector’s disease: the belief that a release only counts once it reaches the theoretical maximum of the format. I have watched all 39 episodes on the Discotek Blu-ray. The colors are vivid. Kazuo Komatsubara’s character designs hold their line weight beautifully. The show breathes.

The original story still manages to shock people even to this day. Not because of its resolution. Because of what it is. A demon falls in love with a human girl and turns against his entire species. A screenwriter named Masaki Tsuji poured 35 episodes’ worth of invention into a time slot designed for children. A mangaka born in the shadow of the bomb encoded an anti-war protest into a Saturday night cartoon. No amount of additional pixels will make that more legible. It is already there, on disc, preserved by a label that treats this material with the seriousness it deserves.

Stop waiting for the version you think you need. Watch the one that exists. It is more than enough.