Review of Devilman: Crybaby

Yuasa Masaaki’s adaptation of Devilman was a disgrace. I felt that I should discuss what I had problems with, since I’m a self-proclaimed Devilman fan and I’ve been posting about how excited I was about it since its announcement and I subsequently, fanatically, binge-watched it on Netflixーonly to feel sad because the Devilman that I had grown to love was turned into a shit show. · One of the most bothersome aspects of Devilman Crybaby, in my opinion, was the gratuitous sexual content. I know someone is probably going to say, “Well, what do you expect? It’s Go Nagai!” And while I am aware ofNagai’s pants off approach to his stories, Crybaby made the original manga look like it was made by Walt Disney. It was so vulgar that it detracted from the story, and with the ONA only being ten episodesーnot the wisest thing to waste time on. This series was more like Devilman Lady than the original comic, which every Go Nagai or Devilman fan will know is just pointless smut.

· Another complaint was the additional characters, who didn’t do anything for the story. There’s a graphic rape scene of one of Miki’s classmates, then she masturbates, and then later in the series, she willingly has sex with a hobo. There’s really no point to her character, not to mention that she transforms from looking like a typical Japanese girl to Sasorina from Heartcatch Precure? Why? There’s also the addition of a homosexual track star, who serves no purpose in the story, other than to slaughter a stadium full of people, become a good guy, and then betray Akira’s group.

· There is nothing to be gleaned from the constant references to track and passing the baton. There was a reference to Akira (metaphorically) trying to catch up to his workaholic parents by joining the track team, but I found it exceedingly tasteless when the same metaphor is used before Miki is beheaded and killed.

· Akira’s character is not very well-written, he’s pretty much transforms from a wimpy porn-addicted loser to an athletic porn-addict who every girl at school wants to bang, who rapes Sirene while battling her in the air. No, that’s not a joke. With the exception of the last scene between Sirene and Kaim, Sirene was delegated to nothing but a sex object. I felt that it was an insult to her character. I mean it makes sense, seeing as she’s the most sultry woman in the Devilman franchise and is crazily obsessed with Amon, but anyone who’s read the original manga or the spin-off, knows that there’s more to her character. Like the overzealous pride that she harbors her strength in her demonic strength, which Crybaby only states in a single sentence of exposition.

· I disliked that they ACTUALLY made Ryou and Asuka childhood friends, where in the manga, it was implied that Psycho Jenny altered Akira’s memories to enable Ryou to get close to him. I think there could have been some interesting dialogue between Akira and Miki regarding that, if Akira was the only one with altered memories.

· With Yuasa Masaaki being the creator of Tatami Galaxy, I thought that there would at least be one reference to Satan having to kill Akira over and over again because of his falling out with God, but Crybaby doesn’t even mention that Ryou had feelings for him, so the ending was confusing and moot. I browsed Reddit afterwards and people new to Devilman seemed to be confused about that, which is understandable because I did not see Crybaby as a an entry level series, or a series for the fans.

· The best parts of this god awful, doujinshi of a series were Ryou Asuka and Psycho Jenny. I think their personalities weren’t horribly debased like the others. Sadly enough, the Amon Apocalypse OVA (which was full of cringey, edgelord crap and numerous plot holes) was better than this series. I feel like the theme of humanity being the true devils was overshadowed with random shocking events and Masaaki choosing to be artsy, rather than a tasteful director.

· I wasn’t going to mention much about the visuals, because you know what to expect with Yuasa Masaaki, if you’ve ever seen anything else that he’s done. The character designs are really, really ugly. I don’t know who green-lit them, but Ryou with bowl-cut hair, Akira with a bulging cleft chin that looks like a pair of testicles, and Miki having a tan-line similar to Azusa’s from K-On and looking like she stepped straight off the set of Digimon Tri was not aesthetically pleasing to me.

· The music sounds terrible, with the exception of the Devilman no Uta cover, but everything else sounds cheap, like what you would hear at the end of a Hallmark movie. Not to mention that nearly every episode, we are bombarded with freestyle rap that is completely unnecessary and seems to be trying too hard to be racially inclusive, producing unbearably moronic results, and failing at making the Devilman franchise appeal to a Western audience.

· The whole experience left a bad taste in my mouth and I don’t even connect the name of Devilman, a manga that had a big impact on me (along with the OVAs), with this monstrous, lewd fanfiction of an adaptation. Much like that terrible Neo Devilman anthology, but worse, because this is an officially released Netflix seriesーnot just a bunch of mangaka drawing interpretive one-shots. I am really disappointed in this series and hope that anyone new to Devilman will skip it and go back to the source material. I haven’t been a fan of Yuasa Masaaki’s works since Tatami Galaxy, so this will probably ensure that I never watch something that he directs ever again. I give Devilman Crybaby a 3/10.