The Good:
Devilman Crybaby is certainly worth a watch if any of the promotional imagery or description tickles your fancy, and was my first delve into the franchise. It's filled with aggressive sex (that's only a short walk away from being hentai), visceral gore, superb synthwave style music that gives a real "underground" vibe and explosive animation. The character designs of the demons are also quite aesthetically pleasing/intriguing, particularly of Devilman himself. The fantastic action scenes, intense soundtrack and fast pacing of the show make it so that you'll never become bored, which is a blessing as the show probably wouldn't hold up without them. The very ending was also unexpected and somewhat refreshing, with an interesting moral and a conclusion that makes it possible to tie in Devilman Crybaby as a sequel/prequl to every other previous/future Devilman story respectively. The show is also apparently very faithful to the original manga.
The Average:
The (dub) voice acting is not exceptional but still perfectly acceptable by anime standards so there are no real issues there. There are also certain moments where the animation quality seems to take a bit of a nose dive, but whether this is the result of the director's (Masaaki Yuasa) fairly unique style is up for debate.
The Bad & The Ugly:
Where the problems really begin is with the story. The story's basic plot points are interesting enough, although they never really have a chance to develop properly and there are plenty of moments that bring up questions that are never actually answered. This ranges from "world building" related questions to characters that just turn up, act like we know that they're a big deal and then vanish, never to be spoken of again. These instances are fairly unimportant and can be glossed over quite easily but as a Devilman first-timer it's very confusing. Some people may take more issue than me with the logistics of the story not making much sense at times but... eh, it's an action anime so y'know.
The characterisation is also pretty flat. Almost all of the characters stay exactly as they start off as which makes any twists or revelations either entirely predictable from the start or just dull, not because the twist is bad, but because you just don't really care. The only characters that I kind of felt for by the end were the rapper guys (who can basically be treated as one singular character for the most part), Miki "Miko" Kuroda, Akira Fudo (Devilman) and Ryo Asuka (within the show's closing seconds). That's not to say that they're bad character templates, but that's all they ever are, templates.
Conclusion:
If it looks cool to you just watch it. You'll have a fun time and at worst you'll wonder what all the fuss was about. If it gets a sequel I'll certainly be watching it if you want to put it that way. If you're looking for something more emotional, in-depth and that is a bit more intellectually stimulating however, this probably isn't it.
