The “best” of us consume the most.
In order to break records and win championships, athletes eat more than us, make more money, and often consume more goods due to their affluence. Those who work more “important” jobs do the same, as their consumption grows with their prosperity. The concept of the food chain is predicated on entities eating those “below” them in order to survive, until you reach an apex predatory who need not worry about something above them ending their life in order to sustain their own. They will eventually become food for decomposers, but that is long after the fight to thrive is over.
There are the eaten, the soon to be eaten, and the never-to-be eaten. We look down upon the first and celebrate the third while waiting in line in second place.
Our morality is based on the denial of consumption.
Do not kill. Do not harm. Do not steal. Do not consume harmful yet pleasurable things. Only take what you need. Leave more to the next generation. Moderate sex and enjoyment. Self-denial is the path to enlightenment. We celebrate one ideal in others– the peak of consumption– yet celebrate the opposite in ourselves. We see gods in fellow men who revel, yet see gods in ourselves by denying.
Of course, there is logic, decency, and kindness in much of that denial, and we often desire those traits in others, but there’s a reason why we celebrate consumption. It’s the remnants of our bestial ancestry, when survival was the thing that made us “us.” It’s the remnants of those ancient beasts we now see as devils– the things from before we were people who are now the darkness lying in the shadows.
We know they will make us powerful, but we also know that we may cease to be “us” in embracing them. And yet Devilman is a hero, and his very essence is consumption. Perhaps he consumes in our place, so that we can endure the denial that makes us human.
SHIN MECHA GUIGNOL 