Defense Devil

In every fantasy series I read, the “laws” of magic are always intriguing to me.

A new comic I’ve been reading lately is Defense Devil. It’s in a Japanese manga magazine, but it’s actually drawn and written by two Korean guys, and I’m not sure what type of legal/religious background they have. The premise of the comic is interesting, though.

What happens to “good” people has not been covered, but “sinners” are sent directly to a hell based on what their sins were. How souls are judged is not clear, but apparently the judge is not omniscient, because there are “questionable” souls who are sent to “Event Horizon,” a Purgatory of sorts. Here, shinigami (Japanese Grim Reapers) will try to take these questionable souls back to their personal hells.

Kukabura, the protagonist, is a demon who acts as a public defender for the souls. He and his helper, Bichula (who looks like Batman when he goes Super Saiyan), interview new souls, get the souls to sign a contract agreeing to give trade their “dark matter,” or the taint of sin on them, in exchange for an innocent verdict and a ticket out of hell. Not a bad deal at all for the soul. In fact, there doesn’t seem to be a downside for the souls, since the worse that could happen is that they go to hell anyway. For Kukabura, though, he gains dark matter if he wins the case, but will disintegrate if he loses for going against the natural ways of demons.

Wow, when I look back at my description, it doesn’t sound too hot. But you should give it a shot anyways.

I guess the big draw for me is the concept of “dark matter.” In the demon world, it is everything. It is a measure of a demon’s fighting power; demons are naturally born with varying levels of dark matter in them. But dark matter is also a commodity – it can be transferred between demons, and even bottled up and used as currency. Dark matter is created with sin, but used up by releasing it in fights. It can be absorbed by people or objects and transform them into more powerful forms or it can also be released directly in energy-based attacks. Demons also seem to have “signature” dark matter which can be stolen and used to copy their attacks.

The series is pretty new (only 31 chapters have been fans-lated to English), and I’m really looking forward to seeing what else the authors can do with dark matter and Kukabura’s story.

Note to self: Keep a vial of dark matter on me when in court, just in a case a trial goes bad and I need to turn my pen into a lightsaber to kill the opposing counsel -