Review of Devilman: Crybaby

overall: 6.5 (SPOILER REVIEW) Hey, its a lil long so im sorry😭 I wanna start off with the production quality cause this shows production quality was quite possibly the most unique and expressive I’ve seen, and it was high quality as well. The Music, or OST’s, were able to communicate a very cyberpunk punk vibe and I live for that. They weren’t overused, there was a good amount of variability, and the series just had great background themes in general. The animation was, as I said earlier, expressive and high quality and reminiscent of mob psycho 100, albeit cranked up a notch higher.This shows in the maneuverability & expressions of characters, and the overall action sequences.

On the topic of action sequences themselves, I found them to be hit or miss but that’s mainly due the narrative issues I had with crybaby, but more on that later. As for the fights I AM a fan off, they usually were narratively relevant, and choreographed in a dramatic and adrenaline inducing way (a positive). However taking ur eyes of the screen potentially means you missed something important (which is one drawback with these fight scenes I did like).

The art style is okay. Nothing to write home about, but not bad at all. Entirely Subjective here.

The direction of a lot of scenes is also innovative and relatively good. This shows again in how characters move, behave, and the overwhelming sex scenes this show has (more on this later lol)

As for characters themselves. I’ll be honest. It took me quite a while to really take a liking to anyone. After completing the series I can say Akira and ryo and the rappers (lol) were the only impressive characters, or characters I could more more or less get behind, due to personality, growth, backstory, or narrative impact.

Akira had a bland personality at first and the only interesting thing about him was that he was EXTREMELY empathetic/sympathetic towards people going through sadness, tragedy etc. another positive was his inner psycho sexual obsessions as a demon... While all these seem like good selling points, I wasn’t sold on his character yet. however there is a turning point in the story, which I’ll speak about soon, and he’s provided the chance for more character development/growth as he has to deal with this morally gray conflict or better put, war, between “humans” and “demons” and we see him progress in a pretty captivating way, as he has comes to terms with the reality of what humanity and demon kind truly is, and this is “coming terms” is done in a very sadistic, and realistic way that makes it compelling. Let’s just say some people go to heaven in the least pleasant ways.

As for Ryo, wasn’t interested in his character in the slightest, until he made the announcement about demon kind existing to the world. His character in the beginning seemed like the typical sociopath who contrast the main character, but is just void of any real characteristics or actual depth. I, as a first time watcher, had no clue what he was doing or what purpose his character actually served until at least 7-9 episodes in where we see everything revealed. It was only then that his sociopathic, and immoral logical behavior made some semblance sense. And I respect the writers for the creative decision they made. He manipulates the storyline for the back half and it leads to enjoyable stretches of the series, which I’ll address. But the moment I truly fell for his character was in the final moments in the show. Where after reflecting on his ideals on life and his past as satan, he realizes the cracks in this philosophy. For the first time in his life he begins to feel something. He tells this to the mutilated akira, unaware that he just killed the one thing he learned to love. As he’s forced to restart this entire journey once more.

There’s much more to this moment that would take much more words to fully elaborate, but will leave that there

As for the rappers, their just dope, and always speak on the current status quo of every episode, and just provided an ounce of more depth and world building this show needed.

The storyline I think is the most interesting case study, and easily the thing Im most conflicted on. Id like to distinguish this story in two parts. Pre Ryo announcement and Post Ryo announcement.

Pre Ryo announcement, is the first 6.5 episodes. This period of story is inconsistent, messy, hollow, and borderline bad in my honest opinion. Some micro stories here and there have merit but overall it really was not doing the right things. Ryo is too shrouded in mystery, and doesn’t really elaborate on any meaningful goals he wants accomplished. And Akira is just exploring his demon abilities, and fighting ‘monster of the week’ every episode which i found to be a bit to cliche for my taste. Although I’m all for that when capitalized on correctly and meaningfully. This portion of story also includes the worst part of the series and also one of my worst anime experiences to date, which was with Akiras parents death. This was horrendously done in my opinion, and practically cringe. They spend an entire episode focusing on his parents, but at the same time not an ounce of characterization is given to them, no meaningful connection to their son is provided and ultimately lack any sort of depth characters like these require for the level of screen time their given. They immediately die when on screen for first the first few minutes, which is bold but alarming, and the following portion is very bad due to the criticisms I mentioned earlier. Akira cries for 10+ minutes of screen time, constantly sulking as his parents throw “sad” one liners, or caution. Artificial drama with zero depth and I wanted to to stop watching the show, thinking this would be the type of show If be watching for 6+ episodes but I kept I moving forward. To add on the use of sex was done to levels so obscenely high I couldn’t take it seriously anymore. Some scenes with akira exploring sex are interesting. And the nudity of this show was a cool aspect at first but it became over saturated. Circling back, akira was simply battling monster of the week, and Ryo lacked any focus as a character. Overall this portion lacks any sort of focal point, story telling wise.

As for Post-Ryo announcement, this is easily leaps and bounds better then the rest of the short series and it’s sadly less then four episodes.

We finally get a glimpse at character motivations from Ryo, and the stakes and status quo of the world and story change and go up to levels I did not expect. We see humans perceive the demons as a rigid dichotomy to themselves. This is seen through the use of social media and extreme cyber bullying, and people are indiscriminately killing one another violently under the pretense they could be a demon. This leads to powerful and epic sequences highlighting how fucking crazy humans can be. Ryo continues to manipulate the populace, and everyone starts killing each other in a satanic and deplorable manner, and I liked this heavily. A more specific example can be seen with mikis family. Her brother painfully and reluctantly eating the mom as the Dad is speechless and subjected, because he can’t make the decision to kill his son. He’s supposed to perceive the son as a non loving creature, and mental qualms he went through was powerful. And In the end gets murdered by the military with out second thought. It really showed how the lines really are blurred and that humans are the most hypocritical creatures in existence. This is also seen with the death of Miki, who tries to unite the population with hope in the form of akira. While also being sympathetic towards people going through this demon change and having to hide it. But at the end is put on the stake and decapitated by humans and not demons. This is where Akiras key development happens as he kills these human murdered realizing demon kind and human kind are one in the same. That scene is my personal favorite of the series.

Finally the last episode with the reveal of Ryo being Satan was great and an interesting plot twist on the story. And his final fight with akira encapsulates the pros of the production quality and overall direction of this series. As mentioned earlier the final moments with akira and Ryo did in fact make the series worth it in the end.