Is Violence Jack a sequel to Devilman?
Yes, secretly, for seventeen years of publication.
Violence Jack began in Weekly Shōnen Magazine on July 22, 1973, weeks after Devilman ended, in the same magazine, from the same hand. It presents itself as a separate saga: after a devastating earthquake, the Kantō plain is a wasteland of strongmen and slaves, and through it walks Jack, a giant with a giant knife. Only in its final chapters does the manga say out loud what it had been hinting at for years: this world is a re-created Earth, and Jack is Akira Fudo.
It is also one of Berserk’s two named ancestors: Kentaro Miura credited Violence Jack as the inspiration for Berserk’s story and atmosphere. The lineage page in this archive, how Devilman influenced Berserk, starts here as much as with Devilman itself.
THE PUBLICATION MAZE
1973–2008The Kodansha run · 1973–78
Weekly Shōnen Magazine (July 1973–September 1974), then Monthly Shōnen Magazine (1977–1978): the original serialization, collected in 7 volumes.
The Goraku run · 1983–90
Five years later the saga resumed in Nihon Bungeisha’s Weekly Manga Goraku, August 5, 1983 to March 23, 1990, 31 more volumes, and the bulk of the legend.
Shin Violence Jack · 2005–08
A revival in Weekly Comic Bunch, irregularly serialized 2005 to 2008 and collected by Media Factory in two volumes in 2010. Across all its editions, the Jack saga totals around forty volumes.
THE CONNECTION
Hidden in plain sightThe hints
At the Slum King’s court, the warlord keeps two familiar figures in diminished form: Ryo Asuka and Miki Makimura. For years readers were left to wonder how the Devilman cast could stand inside this other world.
The reveal
The final chapter answers: this Kantō is a world re-created after Devilman’s ending; Satan is punished within it, and Jack is one of three parts that form Devilman, Akira, reborn. The 1991 comedy OVA CB Chara Nagai Go World confirms the same link on screen.
The OVAs
Three of Jack’s arcs were adapted as OVAs in 1986, 1988, and 1990, the form in which most Western viewers first met him.