Review of Devilman: Crybaby

Overall Crybaby stays true to its promise to adapt the manga in its entirety. Given the short season, certain arcs were jammed into a single episode (ex: the first OVA which was 40 minutes in length is the first episode and the Jinmen and Sireine arcs get similar treatment), and overall the pacing is incredibly fast. Personally, I didn't find this a problem, as Yuasa's previous work, The Tatami Galaxy, tends to be able to condense lots of content in a short amount of time. As far as story goes, there are certain instances where I feel as though Yuasa executes the emotional scenes better thanthe source, and Crybaby puts a lot of interesting twists on certain elements of the story and characters. The flashback sequences also add a lot more to the cast, making certain scenes more poignant than in any other version of the story.

The directing style captures Devilman's original over the top tone, and the animation is very expressive. The designs complement the fast paced action very well; my primary complaint is just that certain scenes are so darkly lit that it's difficult to see what's going on at times, but those scenes were few and honestly that could just be my problem due to my laptop screen.

As much as I enjoyed Crybaby overall, one thing that does detract heavily is the amount of sexual content in it. While Nagai's work is known for including plenty of lewd content, the sheer quantity of sexual violence and sexual content in general can seem gratuitous and distasteful. Certain instances of sexual references just seem oddly placed and unnecessary and it doesn't really take a back seat until episode 7. In particular there's a certain scene in episode 5 that was cut from the manga due to Nagai's editor's requests and for some reason they decided to include it in this adaptation which, in my opinion, hurts more than it helps; it's another instance of "this really didn't need to be here."

I'm still pretty satisfied with Crybaby.
The ending was pretty much just like the manga's (barring the changes they made to adhere to the minor story changes Crybaby makes). It's a little disappointing that it was labeled as the "love story of Akira Fudo and Ryo Asuka" but didn't quite feel like that in the end. Still, it did follow along with the source material fairly well, so the ending wasn't too much of a surprise.