Violence Jack

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.

Violence Jack is a manga by Go Nagai that was released from 1973 to 1990. It's a sequel to Devilman and both a sequel and prequel to Devilman Lady. The series is particularly infamous for not only including large amounts of sex and gory violence, but also has cameos from several of Go Nagai's other manga as well. In fact, many of the chapters seem to be dedicated to taking classic Go Nagai series and then Deconstructing them by placing them in Violence Jack's brutal setting.

The entire Kanto region of Japan is destroyed in both an earthquake and a volcanic eruption. Any survivors are now forced to fight for their lives, due to biker gangs and warlords having taken over. The worst of them is the Slum King, who practically has all of Kanto under his control.

Luckily, there's Violence Jack, a mysterious, gigantic man with an equally gigantic knife. Jack travels around Kanto, killing warlords and, eventually, the Slum King himself.

Violence Jack has three OAVs based on three different arcs from the manga (Harlem Bomber, Evil Town, and Hell's Wind). All three have been released in the US, the UK, Italy, and France, but were heavily censored (especially Evil Town). It wasn't until a few years later that uncensored editions were released.

The series got a short revival in 2005, a short 2 Volume adventure under the title of Shin Violence Jack.

As for the manga, the only place it's ever been released outside of Japan is Italy and very few arcs have been scanlated into English.

Tropes used in Violence Jack include:
  • Absurdly Sharp Blade: Jack's signature jackknife.
  • Action Duo: Mondo and Tatsuma in the manga.
  • After the End: Violence Jack is probably the first post-apocalyptic anime/manga series, even pre-dating Fist of the North Star.
  • Amnesiac Hero: Having no idea who he is (and mostly not caring about it), the titular character named himself after his violent fame—Violence—and iconic knife—Jack--. Being Akira Fudoh, he has no recollection of the events that ocurred in Devilman.
  • Anyone Can Die: And how!
  • Apocalypse How: Class 0 in the manga, class 1 in the OAVs.
  • Back From the Dead: Violence Jack is Akira Fudoh reincarnated as the Human Avatar of Death.
  • Big Ol' Eyebrows: Several characters, primarily Jack.
  • Biker Babe: Jun Hono in the Hell's Wind arc.
  • Bloodier and Gorier / Hotter and Sexier / Darker and Edgier: Even though the manga was already pretty gory and dark while running in a shounen magazine, it got even gorier, darker, and gained more sex, nudity, and Fan Service when it began running in a magazine geared toward middle-aged men.
    • The OVAs themselves are much more darker adaptations of the manga story arcs, it added many cases of rape and related sexual violence.
  • Bodyguard Babes: Slum King is protected by his wife, Slum Queen and her army of masked women in suits.
  • Bond One-Liner: "Call me Jack; call me Violence Jack."
  • Bondage Is Bad: Many villains (in the Harlem Bomber OAV) are S&M costume-wearing weirdos who like to tie up and sexually torture innocent young women.
  • Character Development: Jack and his streak of violent rampages in the post-apocalyptic world, initially he made it clear that didn't care who he was fighting or saving, it was all collateral, he felt like saving/killing one here and one there; as the series goes though, Jack becomes quite focused in saving people, mostly children and women, after his newfound resolve the body count of people who seeked his help lowered considerably.
  • Cluster F-Bomb: The English dub of the OAVs just love using them.
  • Crapsack World: Even worse than the world of the series it's a sequel to.
  • Cruel and Unusual Death: So, so many.
  • Deconstruction Crossover: Several of characters from Go Nagai's other manga show up in Violence Jack, usually as alternate universe versions.
  • Distant Finale: The manga's epilogue focuses on Ryou Takuma several decades after the battle against Slum King.
  • Downer Ending: The manga ends with nearly every character dying while fighting against the Slum King and Jack and Satan beginning their fight once again.
    • The Harlem Bomber OAV ends with the heroine's boyfriend and friend dead, leaving her to wander the wasteland alone.
  • Dude Looks Like a Lady: Tatsuma and Shingo.
    • Inverted with Blue
  • Exactly What It Says on the Tin: He's called Violence Jack because he's a very violent man who carries around a jackknife. Enough said.
  • Gorn: The entire series. A prominent example is in Evil Town when Evil Redhead Bitch kills all the children and when Mad Saurus eats the corpse of his gay lover to "gain his power".
  • Fate Worse Than Death: Ryo Asuka and Miki Makimura are brought back to life to be the Slum King's sex slaves. It turns out Ryo/Satan wanted this as his punishment for killing Devilman.
  • Friend to All Children: In the original manga Jack was often saving children in the post-apocalyptic world, mostly unitentional or just because he felt like it; In the series revival in 2005, it seems that children have grown on Jacks's heart, he is even a self-proclaimed defender of children.
  • Heel Face Turn: Slum Queen.
  • Hijacked by Ganon: Slum King is the supreme warlord of the post-apocalyptic world with no equal, it was by Satan's own will that Slum King reigned; except that when Slum King's slave, Ryo Asuka, sacrificed himself to help Jack kill the warlord, Satan came back and quickly killed the Slum King, wanting to resume the eternal grudge between Violence Jack (Akira Fudou) and Ryo Asuka (Satan) in yet another epic fight.
  • Hotblooded Sideburns: Jack, of course.
  • I Am Who?: Violence Jack is Akira Fudo.
  • I Call It Vera: Inverted. See Knife Nut below.
  • Infant Immortality: Averted hard. The first arc alone has children getting their heads smashed in and getting burned alive. At one point, Jack decapitates a little girl being used as a human shield.
    • Not even the OAVs are spared in this one except Saburo from Hell's Wind arc
  • Kill'Em All: Nearly every character introduced dies.
  • Knife Nut: Jack, to the point where he named himself after his jackknife.
  • Lesbian Jock: Ricki from the Evil Town arc.
  • Lipstick Lesbian: Honey Kisaragi and Aila Mu.
  • Major Injury Underreaction: Jack is king of this trope. In the third OAV, the Hell's Wind gang shoots him with automatic weapons for nearly a good five minutes. He turns to yell something about taking a picture at the kid watching.
  • Psycho Lesbian: Rose from the Harlem Bomber arc.
  • Rape as Backstory: In the Evil Town arc, the reason Aila Mu and the other women of Area C refuse to associate themselves with Area A is because the men of Area A raped them shortly after the earthquake.
  • Rated "M" for Manly: The entire series.
  • Redemption Equals Death: Slum Queen chooses to rebel against her husband, but he kills her with her own whip.
  • Sequel Reset: The original manga ended with Jack fighting against Satan, but with no clear conclusion on the fight's outcome, Shin Violence Jack comes and Jack is back to killing warlords and other opressors from Slum King's remains, at least his Character Development sticks for this one.
  • Spell My Name with an "S": Harlem Bomber/Harem Bomber and Mad Saurus/Mad Saulus/Mad Zaurus
  • Tin Tyrant: Slum King wears heavy samurai armor with a mask. It turns out the reason he wears a mask is because his face has no skin.
  • The Tokyo Fireball: An earthquake and three volcanoes erupting AND a tsunami.
  • Tomboy and Girly Girl: Honey Kisaragi and Hurricane.
  • Unbuilt Trope: Violence Jack maybe was the first After the End manga. Compared with it, mangas set in a post-apocalyptic setting -such like Fist of the North Star- became Lighter and Softer. The manga devotes one whole arc to show how all of it happened -with plentiful High Octane Nightmare Fuel scenes of people dying awfully, lovingly depicted by Go Nagai-, including a very tense build-up to the earthquake-, providing plentiful geographical details and giving a death toll. And afterwards it shows the resulting world is a Crapsack World, where people are nothing but worms, Humans Are the Real Monsters -and how!-, It Gets Worse ALWAYS, and The Hero is rather a Villain Protagonist does not feel compelled to protect helpless people and he only intervenes into a fight if something draws his attention or he would like bust some heads.
  • Vasquez Always Dies: In the Evil Town story, muscle girl Ricki gets torn to pieces, while most of the more feminine women live on.
  • Villainous Crossdresser: Blue in the Evil Town arc.
  • Villain Protagonist
  • Whip It Good: Slum Queen wields a whip made of razor wire, while Rose in the Harlem Bomber arc has a whip with thorns on it.
  • Would Hurt a Child: Gratuitous child-slaying in Evil Town.
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