Digital Devil Story (Megami Tensei)

[Sean O'Hara]

Digital Devil Story
By Aya Nishitani
Illustrated by Hiroyuki Kitazume
Published originally by Tokuma Shoten, currently by Fukkan.com
3 volumes

Before Persona ...
Before Devil Survivor ...
Before Shin Megami Tensei ...

There was Digital Devil Story

When a Japanese computer geek reads a book on the occult, he realizes the principles of magic are entirely congruent with computer science, and he decides to write a program that can summon demons and force them to obey his will. What could possibly go wrong ... besides the end of the world?

---

This is where it all started. A trilogy of novels about high school students fighting Lovecraftian monsters (Miskatonic University even puts in an appearance). The books made enough of a splash to spawn a videogame when they were first released in the '80s, and that videogame has spawned sequel after sequel for more than thirty years.

You want an old school light novel, this is as old school as it gets. Crazy powers. Exploding brains. Tentacle sex. Even though this is the starting poing for the Shin Megami Tensei franchise, the books are closer to Hideyuki Kikuchi's urban fantasies (Wicked City, Demon City Shinjuju) in tone.

[Shinberoy]

I absolutely love the SMT Games and would love to read this!

[the green death]

Hell yeah!

[paulnamida]

I'd give all my savings for a chance to read the third Volume at the very least. I won't even be greedy enough to want the sequel series, just give me the original trilogy and I can die a happy man.

[shrike_al]

Ugh. To be honest, I've been more interested in the sequel series rather than the original.

Sorry. I'm an avid SMT fan too. But honestly, I dunno guys. (Even IF it has a flaming sword!)

[raddevlin]

I'm hit and miss on this. As an SMT fan I'd love to own these in English but on a more objective level these three books are pretty dated, there's complete decent English fan translations for the first two books which means a lot of fans have already read them and... they're really not all that great.

As an aside, if you're an SMT fan with a hankering for English SMT-related novels then you should look into the Quantum Devil Saga series by Yu Godai! They're being released at a glacial pace but the first two volumes are out and worth picking up.

[Hyperion]

Spotlight time! A friendly bump to an older post that hasn't had any recent conversation in order to draw attention to it.

[Cid]

I'll admit these books interest me. But I heard they're not very good.