Review of Devilman: Crybaby

Maasaki Yuasa creates another close masterpiece with Devilman: Crybaby, and most of what his style does best is pretty much encapsulated once again in this anime. For me, it was especially the subversion of human sexuality in Devilman's artwork that defined the kind of show Yuasa intended to create. This show is probably the most perverted show you'll ever watch, perhaps even more than the monogatari series. At first those exaggerated body shots are kind of awkward and not very satisfying, but I think I grew to appreciate it more when they showcase that ridiculous running form (and also how no one in the audienceseems to notice the difference). Even despite having watched many of Yuasa's work, I found each episode to feel like a unique experience or something different to mention. I think the ending is probably one of the most unique endings I have ever seen in an anime too. Perhaps it could have been done better, but it nonetheless caught me off guard. Maybe it was the fact that the show was so short, the ending felt like everything was cut off too soon. Like I didn't have time to accept what was going on. One thing that didn't leave me so satisfied was Ryo's character, or at least what he represented. I think me along with a lot of other people weren't so convinced. On that same note, I couldn't really resonate with any of the characters really, like I usually would in some of my other favorite shows. Akira, for example, felt a little too boilerplate and lacking a lot of the more human characteristics that I wanted. I think all of these points could be addressed by the fact that the show was simply too short. There's so many scenes especially at the beginning that made zero sense and re-watching them didn't really help either, you kind of had to accept the whole premise there. Plenty of scenes I felt were just kind of roughly done and super awkward, like something I'd try to do in an attempt to be artistic but obviously would come out meaningless because I'm no artist. The most interesting character had to be Miko, and there was something definitely there to expand upon which I guess the studio just didn't have enough screen time to cover. Most of it was spent on trying to unravel the story, which was just a generic "evil paradox" kind of plot but worked so well with the ugliness it was able to capture through the art and through the characters. I hope the new Science SARU studio continues to grow as the stylistically weird and unusual signature Yuasa's associated with, and hopefully with even more money next time.