Ryo Asuka

Ryo Asuka (飛鳥 了, Asuka Ryou) is a character from the 1972 manga Devilman (デビルマン) by Go Nagai. He has appeared in many sequels, spin-offs, and adaptations of Devilman, as well as made cameos or small appearances in other media.

He is best known for the surprise reveal that he is actually Satan, the true antagonist of the series, after playing a supporting protagonist role up until that point, as well as his tragic love with Akira Fudo ending in Akira's death by Ryo's hand. Due to the widespread influence of Devilman, both of these elements would be borrowed or referenced in many other works of fiction.

Appearance
As a human, Ryo appears in most canons as a young adult with a tall, lean build. He is stated to be mixed race, with a Japanese father and a white American mother. He is usually depicted with pale skin, blond hair styled in a short mullet with his signature pointed sideburns, and blue eyes with long eyelashes. He is generally shown wearing a tan trench coat over a striped shirt, casual slacks, and 70's-style dress shoes, but the specifics vary depending on canon. He has also been shown to wear suits and a occasionally a school uniform. Many characters remark on his beauty, both as a human and as an angel.

As an angel, Ryo is completely nude, and has twelve white wings: eight on his back, two on his head, and two on his ankles. Rarely, he will have six wings on his back and two on his wrists. His penis and testes are sometimes visible but are often covered by the wings on his lower back. He also has visible breasts, which he is not shown with as a human.

In Amon: Apocalypse of Devilman (アモン デビルマン黙示録), Ryo's eyes are green instead of blue, and he wears a white suit with a black cross choker. As Satan, his wings appear golden like his hair, and he has a patch of fur over his crotch.

In Devilman Crybaby, Ryo's appearance is drastically different. His colourscheme remains the same, though more muted to suit the palette of the show, but he wears a thick, white coat over a white button-up, baggy white pants, and white tennis shoes. His hair is styled in a shaved bowlcut. As an angel, his hair becomes shoulder length.

Personality
Before the events of Devilman, Ryo was shy and sensitive, although somewhat odd and aloof, and did not have many friends. He is kindhearted and has an affinity for nature as shown in Neo Devilman. Throughout the events of the original manga, he is very serious and behaves somewhat erratically, likely due to stress and trauma of the situation, but Akira remarks that this is not his normal demeanor. Though usually stoic, he can also be very dramatic, frequently going off on long, philosophical monologues, and has a dry sense of humour that sometimes comes out at inappropriate times (such as while being pursued by a demon).

After regaining his memories, he becomes very formal and reserved.

Future adaptations, such as the OVAs and Crybaby will often emphasize his stolidity and downplay other elements of his personality, Crybaby going as far to characterize him as not understanding human emotions at all. This is perhaps to give him more consistency as a character and to better foreshadow him being Satan.

Role in Story
In the original manga and most adaptations, Ryo is protagonist Akira Fudo's best friend. Using the research conducted by his late father, Ryo leads Akira to fuse his body with a powerful demon and become Devilman. According to Professor Asuka, only a human with a strong will and a pure heart can overtake the demon and maintain control of their body, and Ryo believes that Akira fits this description. Ryo also attempts to fuse with a demon, but is unsuccessful, and ends up alive but hospitalized.

Throughout the second act of the story, Ryo plays a supporting role to Akira's efforts as Devilman, even going out to hunt demons on his own in a few instances, but he soon becomes concerned by how much Akira seems to be enjoying the violence and bloodshed. He tries to reason with Akira, but is met with hostility, and wonders if he has made a mistake by leading Akira down this path.

When the demons' presence is announced worldwide by Lord Zenon and the takeover begins in earnest, Ryo is pessimistic about the outcome, particularly after countries begin deploying military force, and is still very concerned about Akira's eagerness to go out and fight the demons even though he may get killed. When the news channel shows a mysterious white light engulfing part of Russia, it causes Ryo to have a panic attack.

After regaining consciousness, Ryo heads back to the Asuka manner to look for answers, but finds that his father's research is missing, and, furthermore, that the person in his family photographs is not actually him. The demon Psycho Jenny reveals herself, and restores Ryo's memories that he is not the human boy Ryo Asuka, but rather the archangel Satan, and the ruler of the demons. Posing as a human was part of Satan's plan to learn their weaknesses and exploit them during the takeover.

Satan, posing again as a Ryo, sets up a broadcast to reveal the existence of devilmen and specifically Akira, leading to more mass hysteria. Akira goes to confront Ryo, who asks him to join the side of the demons, but Akira refuses, and concludes after Ryo leaves that he must be Satan. While this conversation happens, an angry mob attacks the Makimura household where Akira had been staying, killing everyone inside, particularly Miki Makimura, Akira's close friend and (debatable) love interest. Akira, enraged at Miki's death, sends his army of devilmen to fight against the demons.

It's revealed then that, during his time as a human, Satan had fallen in love with Akira and had sacrificed his most powerful warrior so that Akira might survive the apocalypse and join him in the new world. But Akira will not back down in the fight, and the two forces remain at war for the next twenty years before Akira eventually is killed by Satan. In Akira's last moments, Satan sits by him on a ruined shore, explaining his motivations, but Akira dies quietly before he is finished.

Akira Fudo
Ryo is Akira's best friend since childhood, and at the end of the manga it is revealed that Ryo has been in love with Akira for an unknown amount of time. It's implied in Shin Devilman (新デビルマン) that Ryo has a crush on him even has a human, but throughout the series it is implied he believes his affections to be unrequited. Akira views Ryo as a very close friend, and up until the Satan reveal has positive feelings towards him, but it is left ambiguous whether they are romantic or platonic. After Ryo's betrayal, Akira outwardly expresses his anger and hatred, but in his final moments remarks on the beauty of the moon, a Japanese literary reference and a subtle love confession.

In one continuation, Devilman Lady (デビルマンレディー), Akira states outright that, though he hates Ryo for what he did, he still loves him despite it. He also shows romantic and sexual feelings for Jun Fudo, who, unbeknownst to him, is actually one half of Ryo taking the form of a human woman. Conversely, he shows suspicion and dislike for Ryo's other half, Ran Asuka, symbolizing his conflicting feelings. Jun herself immediately trusts Akira and feels drawn to him, despite not having memories of either being Ryo or Satan.

In Devilman Crybaby, love is a central theme and it is strongly implied that Ryo does love Akira, but lacks the emotional capability of admitting it. Akira never outright says that he loves Ryo, but the two are still very close friends, and the use of a passing baton metaphor to represent love occurs frequently, with Akira attempting to hand his to Ryo over and over.

Miki Makimura
Ryo and Miki are often shown with a mutually antagonistic, though not generally hostile, relationship. In the side story One Summer Day (夏の日), Ryo is shown to be jealous of Miki's closeness to Akira and sees her as a threat to his own relationship with him. It's unclear whether or not Miki's feelings for Akira are romantic or platonic, and her behavior towards him varies widely from adaptation to adaptation, from an implied crush such as in Devilman: The Demon Bird (デビルマン 妖鳥シレーヌ編), or an adoptive-sibling relationship such as in Crybaby. Regardless of what her intentions actually are, Ryo consistently views her as a rival for Akira's affection, and Miki generally distrusts him.

Ryo also shows little to no remorse for indirectly causing her death, which contributes to Akira's hatred of him.

Lineage and Legacy
Devilman is arguably one of the most influential mangas of all time, and was a source of inspiration for many future works. The character of Ryo Asuka was conceived because Go Nagai wanted Akira to have a cool friend to serve as his foil and give him a reason to become Devilman in the first place. Originally, Ryo was going to die at the Sabbath, but Nagai decided to keep him alive, which would end up being one of the most important decisions in the entire series.

Nagai knew that he wanted Ryo to have some plot importance, but he did not intend for him to be the antagonist until much later in the writing process, and it worked very well with what had already been established about his character. This contributed to why the reveal was such a shock to both the audience and the characters, and why it became so widely known, as up until that point Ryo had been treated by the narrative as being unquestionably on the same side as Akira. Though Ryo is far from the first literary character to switch sides in the final act, he certainly became one of the most iconic for doing so, and is often credited as being the origin of his specific archetype.

Controversies
Nagai realized in retrospect that the way Ryo behaved towards Akira read as more romantic than platonic, and felt he could "get away with" making Ryo's love explicit on account of angels being "both male and female". This undoubtedly lead to some controversy regarding Ryo's gender and whether or not Akira returns his feelings, but generally Ryo is treated as male, even as an angel, with adaptations and translations sticking to masculine referral language. He also presents as male any time he takes human form, with the exception of becoming Jun and Ran in Devilman Lady, but this was likely to avoid detection from Archangel Michael.

Nagai is somewhat known for having characters which break or bend the rules of gender and sexuality, but more for shock or comedy than any intended form of representation, so his treatment of these characters in his works is often outdated and inconsistent. Still, the impact of including a same-gender romance, even if perceived as one-sided, not being directly stated, and ending in tragedy, was also widely influential, and many future works would draw inspiration from Ryo and Akira's love/hate dynamic.

In the short story Shin Devilman, which takes place some time during the events of the manga, Ryo states that he "is not interested in women" after Akira tells him that a girl has a crush on him, confirming that by 1979, Ryo was intended to be read as gay. In that same conversation, it is implied he has developed feelings for Akira by this point in the story.

While most can agree that Ryo is in love with Akira, it is much more debated whether or not it is requited. While not without plausible deniability in the original narrative, Akira's feelings are implied to be romantic by the end of the manga and stated outright as such in some sequels and adaptations, but in some adaptations they are ignored in favour of focusing on his feelings for Miki instead, which vary from platonic/familial to romantic depending on the specific interpretation of the characters.

Trivia

 * Ryo is often credited as the origin of the "morally gay" archetype, as his character was the result of natural development during Nagai's writing process rather than being based on or influenced by an existing character.
 * The name Ryo or Ryou written as 了 means "completion". Asuka written as 飛鳥 means "flying bird".
 * The decision to make Ryo half American was to make him seem "cooler".