Review of Devilman: Crybaby

Rating:9.6 Humans' potential for malice/evolution is limitless ~Netero(HxH) Human. What makes us human? Is it compassion or kindness? Love or empathy? If we come from it's antithesis, demon(animal but aye demon should work too);objectively speaking, almost anyone can agree that any form of savagery can be attributed to a demon. Since animals have been known to love and empathize just as humans do in their own impressionistic way, it gets harder for us to understand what being ‘human’ entails. DevilMan Crybaby’s take of what it means to be human, and how humans can be the vilest of the demons, ironically something that they have conceptuallycreated.

Bizarre, unorthodox and eclectic seems to be most synonymous with DevilMan Crybaby in so many of its elements. The ambience of this anime was eerie and unique. It’s take on the nature of human beings is similar to that of Shiki and Parasyte the Maxim, but perhaps what makes this anime singular from those two is the way it portrayed its storyline.
In this world, surreptitiously, demons live among humans, and typically they take over a human to live among them, with the only exception being the mental forte of the human overcoming the demon’s own will for the reverse to happen. Ryo, a renowned scientist despite being relatively young, after the demise of a fellow scientist who turned into a demon after working with an ancient civilization who were suspected to be demons, tasks himself in bringing demons to the attention of humans. He seeks the help of his old and childhood friend Akira, a highschooler in Japan. Akira is shown to be an empath and is especially sensitive to the plight of others, easily tearing up even for things out of anyone’s control. After coming to know that people have received supernatural abilities and undergone acute changes in personality and appearance after visiting Sabbaths, Akira and Ryo visit a Sabbath. There the unexpected happens and Akira while trying to save Ryo from a demon, unexpectedly takes control of it. Akira becomes a DevilMan, having a demonic body with a human heart. Ryo decides to use Akira to hunt down demons, as they both try to bring the existence of demons into light. Ryo, and Akira are your contradicting archetypal plot driving characters in any anime. They felt similar to Suzaku(righteous) and Lelouch(a greater evil must exist) from Code Geass in many aspects,with the story centered around Akira, who is more righteous here. The other characters these two can be analogized with are Light and L from DN, Slaine and Inaho from AZ.etc.
Many of the characters, though distinct, are sometimes bland and undergo instantaneous transformation in personality, but the latter I felt was reasonably justified. Despite the anime making you feel like certain scenes and moods changed too quickly, it only attributed to the bizarreness and made me feel that the characters in it were rightly and sufficiently used to make us think about them a lot even after the scene changed. The rappers in anime with their raps felt like they were breaking the fourth wall, and making us understand the plot and some of the characters to a greater extent, which was really innovative and original, for the genre.
Despite the plot feeling like it took foreshadowing to the extremes with an erratic pace, felt succulent and very detailed and is brilliantly portrayed. The vices have been always attributed to demonic behavior and this anime uses everything it could find in humans and demons to depict it in its plot in a very uncanny way. Especially lust, as we see a great deal of sexual conducts, and nudity(almost every episode/hentai). Surprisingly it actually adds on to the feelings of eccentricity, and doesn’t divert us from the plot much, like an ecchi or hentai would. In fact this could be attributed to the animation and music. Moreover, the animation and the music appears to have been the most important elements that help us feel the plot deeply and makes us see everything in a different light than we normally would. The animation seemed to maintain a certain equilibrium with quality and ambience. It wasn’t too detailed, and though I felt sometimes the absence of light made it harder to know what was happening, it was intricate enough to create a unique blend of colors and saturation for a given scene and tone making it aesthetically sombre, while the overall color palette transitioning from a ecstatic, vibrant and eerie mood to a more grim, dour and depressing one by the episode. The soundtrack was flawless, with the extreme mix of techno, satanic and melodic tracks that constantly make the plot have an impassioned and more meaningful impact on us. The entire album reminded me of the album Ken Arai made for Parasyte the Maxim, and judging by the similarities these both stories share, I am thinking that the moods these albums create are perfect for depicting such plotlines.

Whatever I felt at the ending is something I can't put my finger around. Was it unsatisfactory? Definitely not. Did it do justice to the rising action? It did in its own way. Perhaps it wouldn’t make me feel ambivalent if it were extended to a bit more time, but was nevertheless a decent finale making me give it an overall 9.4. Despite rating it a 9.4/, I wouldn’t recommend DevilMan Crybaby to a lot of people for many reasons. The biggest one being its extremely depressing scenes, which can be a little too much. The other reasons are obviously the extraordinary amount of nudity,sexual conduct, gore and the bizarreness. But anyone who is into plots with aspects high on philosophy and questions on humanity must most certainly watch DevilMan Crybaby, especially if the warnings appear to be appealing to them.