Devilman Crybaby

Even though I am not familiar with the source material, I decided to watch this anime. The first couple of episodes, I felt were ok-ish. What I did not realize is that this was setting up the story for the second half of the series, which is where the show really shines. It is then that it becomes immensely brutal and uses the background of the first episodes to build on. Blood and gore go hand in hand with the drama that unfolds in front of your eyes. I was shocked to see just how brutal it becomes and had to fight against the tears on some moments. If you're looking for a feel-good anime, this is not for you.

If there is one bad thing I can say about this show, it is that it's too short. With 1 or 2 episodes more, they could have clarified some background stories and made the final battle more intense. The ending is thought provoking (in fact much more than neon genesis), but if a bit more time had been invested, it would have gone into the history books as a classic for sure.

One of the best animes on Netflix and highly recommended.

Yeah, first and second episode may seems illogical but in the end they explained it well, the ending is good.

Art, characters, sound everything is great.

While not entirely faithful to the source material, I think Masaaki Yuasa captured perfectly well its themes and essence, particularly its blatant anti-war themes, as well its overall disturbing bleakness.

A very effective horror tragedy anime series.

This anime is actually true to the manga, not like the 1972 TV version. It is cruel, bloody and in the end, it really touched me.

It may look very strange at first glance, but it got really interesting from episode 3 onwards, so give is a little bit of time if you are hesitant on the first two episodes.

Devilman has a good length (although I wouldn't have complained about 1-2 more to explain the archaeology part/demon background a bit more - the manga did a bit of a better job here I believe), since it's very common with Anime's nowadays to stretch it out over many episodes and seasons.

It's visually stunning, the narrative style very different, and the soundtrack great. An amazing anime, I loved watching it. It touched some sensitive topics, how humans treat each other and what's the real evil in this world.

I'm actually happy that Netflix supported this kind of production - I kind of would've expected them to censor it more, but it's perfect the way it is.

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.