Review of Devilman: Crybaby
It's really confusing to me how some people actually dislike this anime?? First off Masaaki Yuasa did a fantastic job of creating an anime adaption of devilman which was created in the 1970's to bring into the modern times of the 21st century. His use of narrative starting the series with much action and gaggy humor only to turn it into something completely dramatic serves the title well. The music works perfectly well, everything from the demonic chanting blending with the EDM influenced music to the rap/beatboxing segments - which mind you if you actually pay attention brings in a lot of symbolism about the storybut also the philosophy about it, e.g when they rap about the how the demons are roaming the earth and taking everything, which can be very frightening but also saying how are humans any different to demons because were basically the same. I MEAN COME ONE IF THATS NOT SYMBOLISM RIGHT THERE???
The anime bombards viewers with images of neon, jiggling, distored women and sliced up, bleeding men. The action is uncomfortable to watch, but eventually you find yourself becoming numb to it, as you'll realize it's not there for entertainment it's been shown like this because as viewers we need to visualize what it would be like in that situation how things would have looked like and I think Masaaki Yuasa again does a gorgeous job by portraying these images of distressing humans and demons.
The use of editing by Akari Saito, also serves the aesthetics and context of the series quite good (e.g when Miki wrote an article about Akira saying how she doesn't think his a bad person whilst those scenes of hate comments raided the screen she still continued to type, which i thought was great as it shows that this is what reality is and people no matter what you say, people will continue to hate on what you have to say), with the same applying to the drawing and the rather intense animation.
Another thing that stood out was the ending, most people seemed to also dislike the ending and maybe that's why they dislike the anime, but if you dint know that manga in the 70's ended like that as well, and the fact that Masaaki Yuasa didn't do a whole 360 turn where it's been changed and just stuck the original ending made me quite happy. As much as I love a happy ending as the next person you could say I've been selfishly waiting along time for tragedy ending and devilman crybaby has satisfied my needs. It might have left a bitter sweetness in heart but to me that was the goal, although how much I and many people didn't come to like Ryo towards the end Masaaki Yuasa created such a great ending that made most people sympathize with him even though we didn't want to.
I believe the fact that most people didn't find this appealing was because (and i hate using this word) was for a more "mature" audience, and I'm just taking about age in general, I'm talking about emotionally and psychologically. There's a lot of heavy and intense subject matter this series encounters, and not many people will be able to handle or understand for that matter. personally I think devilmen crybaby was a straight 10/10. I haven't seen in a long time where there has been such a show that tackles many harsh topics that can relate to reality in many ways but still manages to create such a fine animation specimen out of it . Well done to Masaaki Yuasa.
Will I recommend it?
Yes, but remember it's not for faint hearted.