Review of Devilman: Crybaby

A rather awful series. I truly do not comprehend how this was upheld as something groundbreaking or how some compared it to the absolute genius of Berserk (manga and 1998 adaptation). It is utterly insane to me someone described it this way or any of it as a masterpiece. It is void of depth and it does not make you care for really any of the characters. There's no investment. It doesn't sufficiently develop the time and interest and involvement to get characters involved when anything negative happens. If I didn't know any better I would think everyone who declared this a brilliant show was apaid actor.

I had to drop it initially halfway through, I couldn't do it anymore when the show never even attempted to get me to care about something relevant to the main character in Episode 5 and had no impact at all. I will avoid stating the specifics for the sake of spoilers. I then went back attempting to complete it and ended up somewhat skipping to the end out of boredom. I found it utterly ridiculous, terribly built up, lacking in consistency or characterization or development or plot or world building. It fails to develop everything relevant entirely.

The main character's entire character can be summed up by the title. He cries a lot, he's very sad, he has devil powers. At most you get a sudden change when the devilman becomes the devilman in terms of being more confident and uncaring towards how others view him. That's about the furthest it goes. There's no depth to it. It just happens magically. That's how almost all of the events of the series can be described.

The only characters that had any development at all are the rapper side characters. They have an actual story arc in the couple 5 minute segments they show up. There's much more development in them, and it's largely pointless and disconnected to the main story.

Devilman: Crybaby appears to be attempting to be deep, some degree of philosophical, to be smart, when it is utterly shallow, fails to lead, and does not develop any of it. It makes no genuine effort to invest the consumer in terms of character or plot.

Animation quality is... it's smooth but the use of contrast and shading is... I've seen better in an extracurricular graphic design course for university freshmen. For the most part it's nonexistent on characters, and what does exist on very rare occasion is pillowing which is a terrible technique that is specifically taught to be avoided. The linework is usually all uniform which can work with certain stylization but doesn't really here, everything is so flat and boring unless it's a demon with interesting and complex design characteristics. Dolls have more life and interest to them than this, as at least they have shadows and contours. It's worse than any of the generic character designs or weakest anime or poor CGI implementations. It isn't paying homage, even the original 1972 run does this correctly, it just skips an entire step of animation. It's also very inconsistent otherwise with quality of character work in all other aspects.

There is nothing of value here except lessons what not to do and how people can be swept up by something that if analyzed fails narratively, artistically, character, world development, etc.