Devil’s Crest Anime Series Creator On Not Being Just Another Sword Arts Online Situation

Sword Arts Online was an influential anime series revolving around players getting stuck in an MMORPG hellscape and having to play and survive, lest they die for real. Some may argue the show and manga have lost the plot, but you cannot argue its success and mainstream appeal.

Not one to rest on his laurels, mangaka Reiki Kawahara penned a new light novel series still using an online virtual world but with a tinge of science fiction and horror: Devil’s Crest. The light novel series is about a playtester named Yuuma Ashihara who experiences the real world melding together with the virtual reality MMORPG he’s testing on his day job, resulting in a lot of horrors coming his way. Needless to say, this is a lot different from the Kirito (and sometimes Asuna) Show.

Curious to find out more behind the scenes, we talk to Reki Kawahara and Shinji Ushiro about the show and how it plans to tell its “Augmented Reality MMORPG” story while setting itself apart from Kawahara’s previous series.

On the horror elements of the show, and Reiki Kawahara’s fascination with the genre in Devil’s Crest.

Reiki Kawahara (RK): Regarding my interest in Stephen King and the horror genre, Stephen King said that the reason he writes those novels is to frighten people. So, he loves to have horror elements in his works.

That is because he really likes to frighten or surprise people. That actually applies to me. I have been writing novels and different works because I wanted to give really emotional moments to  the readers of my books.

Especially, the frightening moments are the number one way for me to make people really emotional or people get really scared.  I tend to be careful trying to be away from having horror elements intentionally because otherwise, since I love horror elements, I tend to go towards that colour immediately. That is the reason partially why SAO also has lots of horror scenes as well.

However, on  Devil’s Crest, that is a survival horror type of series. I didn’t really have to put myself on a break on anything about the horror elements. I could intentionally try to incorporate those horror moments intentionally to frighten people so that  I can change or I can really take people’s emotions.

On adapting the series to an anime, and the challenges behind it.

Shinji Ushiro (SU): So, within novels, there could be two patterns, I should say, when the story itself is focused and when the gimmick itself is focused and introduced.

However, if we emphasise this gimmick too much, we tend to lose the storyline; the story itself gets diluted. So, I just wanted to avoid that situation for this work. However, I just wanted to maintain the excitement of the gameplay as well.

And then many people really love playing games by themselves and know really detail about it. And then among our staff members,  there are so many people like that. So, we had a lot of conversation among those team members and trying to find the right balance of setting.

On Devil’s Crest’s main themes in its narrative.

RK: The main theme is “confronting your true self”. I would rather the audience find out by themselves. However, if I dare to say, that will be kind of a confrontation or encounter with yourself, because most of the characters in the work are possessed by evil spirits. 

And actually, that evil spirit is just their darker selves, so they cannot lie to such an evil spirit. So, they are kind of forced to see their own picture that they really didn’t want to see, because that was kind of hidden in their heart. They were not showing that outside, you know, externally, usually in their life.

So, the point will be, when they see their true selves, how they’re going to feel, how they’re going to try to confront with that self, what would they do after that, that kind of thing. It could be a theme for the work. But actually, to be honest, I want the audience to just simply have fun looking at all of those stories.

On the video games that influenced Devil’s Crest.

RK: There are so many role-playing game works that I love. In this context, my favourite series is Atlus’ Shin Megami Tensei: Persona. 

The main character of that work is having a really ordinary student life,  and then they are wandering into this mysterious world, and they have to fight there. So there is clearly a boundary or a drawing the line between those two different worlds. So probably the demons are devils, the crest is false, actual magic, and then Altea in the closed world where they have to fight in.

Actually, the Persona series gave me a hint for this setup. I should say that this Persona series is one of the many works that has influenced me in that sense. In terms of Augmented Reality, I have not used many AR devices so far.

I should mention QR codes as one of the AR-related technology that is really blended into our daily life. For example, recently I heard that price tag has only QR code. And then if you read that QR code with smartphone,you can check the price of that product. That pricing itself can change not only over a day or even hour basis. So I was really impressed to hear that and then thought that AR technology has advanced that much. And that is the ultimate dynamic pricing, right? So I’m not sure if that is really positive thing or negative thing for consumers, but that was really surprising to me.

SU: As for me, I don’t really use AR that much. Also, when it comes to games, I don’t really like MMOs that much. But when it comes to games, I really like Skyrim. I really like that kind of world where you can collect various tools, make various tools, and build a house on your own. It’s really fun.

I think that kind of thing is also shown in the video,  so I hope you can enjoy it.

On the kind of anime series that resonate with audiences today.

RK:  In Devil’s Crest, the main cast are a group of elementary school students. They have a complicated relationship with each other. They have a complicated relationship with each other.

And then I know they have dozens of members, so among them, there will be different groups, some are in good terms, some are in not good terms. So really complicated in a relationship among classmates, right? So and then the audience as well, they must have experienced a similar situation in their childhood as well. So for sure, I believe that they can find some character who will be really close to himself or herself or whom you might want to really cheer up and support and so on.

So I want the audience to or they might even want to support the whole class. But then I want the audience to feel such a resonance into one or many of the characters and then even, you know, feel as one of their classmates and then have fun together in this survival world.

SU:  I hope that the audience will enjoy the world of action and magic. However, when I talk to my teacher and make this work into an animation, my theme is that people are alive. This may not seem like it at first glance, but there are many things in life and in life, and there are many things that you can’t see just at this moment.

There are many things that you can’t see just being at school. There are many things that you can’t see just being at home, but for example, when people who are connected remotely are put in the same room for a moment and can’t get out, what kind of thoughts do they have? What kind of words do you use to express your humanity? What do people think?  That kind of thing, I want people to pay attention to and just try to make clear that people can try to see that in this work this time.

On what international audiences can expect from this anime adaptation.

RK: There are 82 main characters in the anime. I don’t think there are many anime with this kind of dynamic in recent years. I hope people will enjoy this complex and rich human drama.