The series tells the story of Ryo Utsugi, a student who finds himself in the body of an ancient demon known as Dante and sees himself in the middle of a conflict between God and the devils.

The series challenged the traditional view of God as good and Devil as bad and was created to provoke the critics of his previous works.

God's Association (神の結社, Kami no Kessha), a religious group secretly led by Ryo's father, Kosuke (康介), attack the ritual, but Dante arrives and kills them.

When Dante pilots a powerful jet fighter in an attempt to buy time for his friends to escape, he is grabbed by a Pteranodon.

Careening into a nearby Tyrannosaurus rex, Dante was left open to be consumed in God's fires, causing him to be fused with his jet and the two prehistoric reptiles to create his current form.

Defeated by God and sealed in the Himalayas, Dante transferred his human body and soul to Judas Iscariot and Ryo Utsugi respectively to be reborn two thousand years later.

To fight back, Dante, Medusa, Satan (サタン), Lucifer (ルシファー, Rushifā), Asmodeus (アスモデウス, Asumodeusu), and Beelzebub (ベルゼブブ, Beruzebubu) use super-weapons called "demons" that magnify its user mental energy.

In the ensuing war, the demons are defeated because Dante hesitates to kill Eve, a giant made out of human bodies, when he sees Olga is part of her.

Twenty thousand years later, in 2010, high school student Ryo Utsugi is having nightmares about a woman, a city being destroyed by flames and a demon trapped in ice, while Medusa is reborn and is trying to communicate with Dante through Satanist rituals.

When Medusa is captured by God's Soul, Ryo helps her when she convinces him she is the only one who can save Aya and tells him he is Dante's reincarnation.

Amidst the conflict, the Satanists summon a mindless demon Dante, who cannot distinguish between friends or foes and eventually eats Ryo.

Ryo is hidden in a refugee camp as he does not want to get involved, but Zenon attacks him and Dante recovers his gigantic body during the fight.

Meanwhile, the cultists capture an unnamed princess and kill her by successfully performing the Black Mass used to summon Dante for the second and final time, though her body was not found anywhere.

When Satan and the people refuse to comply, God proceeds to use animals as vessels to destroy Sodom, an action that resulted in many of its occupants turned into their current demonic forms from being exposed to the residual energies.

After Dante/Ryo succeeds in destroying the first form which was a large serpent featuring Adam and Eve, she transforms into an angelic knight with Saori's body placed in its forehead.

Afterwards, the anime ends with its final scene which shows them holding hands and walking in a prehistoric version of the Garden of Eden.

[6] His most popular manga until then, Harenchi Gakuen (1968–1972), an erotic comedy set in a school, featured satirical critics to the Japanese scholar system and society,[5] and was campaigned against by parent-teacher associations across Japan.

[7] As a response, with Demon Lord Dante, Nagai tried to subvert the traditional view of God and Devil to provocate "the keepers of the standard".

As such, Demon Lord Dante "represents the struggle between the monster and the standard seen through the eyes of the former", as a pair of literary critics put it.

[15][16] In 2018, as part of the 50th anniversary of Nagai as an artist, the series was republished into two volumes by Shogakukan as Maō Dante: The First in a version meant to be closer to the original Bokura Magazine serialization.

A crossover between Demon Lord Dante and Getter Robo G was created by Nagai and serialized in Akita Shoten's Monthly Champion Red from August 10, to December 19, 2011.

[26][27] The series was published in a single collected volume on March 19, 2012,[28] and it reenacts the events of Dante's resurrection with Getter Robo G's Ryoma Nagare in the place of Ryo Utsugi.

[34] Most voice actors of the "manga video" were replaced for the anime, except for Susumu Chiba who played the role of Ryo Utsugi.

[3] Directed by Kenichi Maejima and written by Shozo Uehara, the television series ran for 13 episodes from August 31, to November 23, 2002.

[39] However, the company dropped it the following year, and it was Geneon Entertainment who brought the anime to the North American home media market.

[48] Nagai's biggest success in his early career, Demon Lord Dante attracted many people because of its gruesome contents.

[50] Jonathan Clements and Helen McCarthy wrote in The Anime Encyclopedia that the series "is undoubtedly a prototype, not just for Devilman but for all the apocalyptic tales that followed, particularly Nagai's later Shutendoji.