Is Devilman Crybaby Anime of the Year?

Greetings, ladies and gentlemen!  It’s Sunday and I’m back in action with a special post that will hopefully wrap up Flahsback February.  Cause let’s face it, my Vs. post and Character of the Month didn’t do that.  Getting straight to the point, is Devilman Crybaby really the anime of the year?

Devilman Crybaby was nothing short of a fantastic show with a lot of effort and depth put into it.  I know that watching it for Flashback February, I personally enjoyed it… a lot.  But I’m not the only one who feels the same way because there are so many otakus and anime fans alike who have been praising this show since its release earlier in the year.  Everything from the story, to animation, even to the music, people have been going nuts for it, so much so that some have been calling it “anime of the year.”  Hearing something like this makes me both hopeful for what other shows this year will look like, but it’s also kind of off putting-first and foremost, IT’S MARCH 2018!!!  While most people who saw Crybaby are riding the hype train, I’m unfortunately not one of those people.  So no, I don’t think Devilman Crybaby is anime of the year.

Don’t get me wrong, I loved this show and thought it was wonderful!  But I think a lot of people who saw it are jumping the gun here, like they’re not slowing down and really taking a look at this series.  As I said in my Top 5 Problems with Akira, no anime is perfect, and Devilman Crybaby is no exception.  So that’s pretty much what this post is, an analytical look at Crybaby and discussing things that I liked and thought were done right and the things that weren’t.

 In order to approach this, I decided to separate this post into four sections, each one talking about what fans have been praising about the series –the animation, the story, the music, and it being Netflix’s best anime.  And very similar to how I do my reviews, I’ll look at what was good or what I liked about it and then talk about what I didn’t like.  So with that, let’s take a look and see what I really thought about Devilman Crybaby.

The Animation

Staring off the list is one part of the series that honestly is almost kind of hard for me to defend.  In my review on Devilman Crybaby, I straight up admitted that I was not a fan of the animation style.  But that’s a personal preference; I prefer the animation to be clean, crisp, detailed.  Still, in spite of that, there is one thing that the animation style does that it wouldn’t have been able to do if it was all nice and detailed.  If you watched Crybaby, you know that there was a lot of blood, gore, violence, and loads of nudity and sexual content.  But the strange thing is, it’s not overwhelming.  This is because in a way, the animation lightens the content; the minimalistic, highly-stylized approach this show took made the content easier to handle because it wasn’t presented as being intense.  Think about other shows that are just as dark and violent as Crybaby.  In Berserk, the animation is pretty structured and detailed, so the violence and other whatnot that goes on can get pretty heavy sometimes.  In Hellsing Ultimate, one of my favorite shows and one of the bloodiest in anime, is insanely violent and gory, and what makes it hard to watch is the fact that the animation is very detailed.  So because Crybaby didn’t focus too much on detail, it didn’t seem as dark or graphic.  That’s one thing I can back the animation up on.  But while I can appreciate the animation for doing that much, there are some things I can’t back it up on.

While the minimalistic and highly-stylized approach to the series works really well given the subject matter it deals with, there are times where the animation is so minimalistic that some scenes look lazy or so stylized that they look either strange or just over the top goofy.  I can definitively say there were very few moments where the animators seemed really lazy, but that mostly seemed to come from the demons.  Some of the demons had so little detail that it looked like the animators didn’t try.  There was also another famous moment from the first episode where Akira is running from a demon and then his face looks all weird.  Again, did we get lazy or something?  And given that was a pretty important moment seeing as it leads up to him being possessed by Amon, you’d think there’d be a little more effort put into it.  Then there’s those moments where the animators seemed to try too hard. 

It seems kind of strange and disappointing that nobody looks and critiques those moments where the animation got too detailed.  And you know what scenes I’m talking about.  First there’s the way the devilmen run.  Has anyone who seen Crybaby joke at how Akira learned to run from Scooby-Doo?  For that matter, how come nobody else in the series picks up on that?!  I get that the show is implying that being a devilman enhances your abilities, like making you a better runner, but is there a less awkward way you can show that?  Speaking of awkward, there’s the crying scenes.  

I’ve mentioned before that those moments where Akira starts crying in the series make almost no sense.  The only time these scenes worked was mostly when he was Devilman.  It worked in these scenes because it showed that while Akira was possessed by a demon, he still has a human heart.  And don’t get me wrong, there were times where Akira cries as a human and it works, but those were far and few in between.  And by far the strangest and most awkward moment happens in the sixth episode where he talks to Koda before the track meet.  You can’t tell me that you looked at that face and not snicker or just bust a gut from laughing so hard.  I’m the latter of these two, and it is bar none one of my biggest laugh out loud moments ever.  Not only that, this seemed to solidify the fact that for me, having Akira be-for lack of a better word-a crybaby after he’s possessed by Amon is stupid.  But while there were moments that made me laugh, there was one particular moment that made me feel disappointed in the animation team.  And this was the infamous scene I’ve affectionately nicknamed “Sex de Soliel.”

I briefly mentioned this scene last week during my Vs. post.  But for those of you who don’t know about it, let me enlighten you.  During his battle with the demon Sirene in episode five, Akira is able to gain the upper hand by mortally wounding her.  But that’s not enough for him, so to add insult to injury, he proceeds to rape her.  Reading this, it sounds like a very disturbing and graphic scene.  But in my opinion, this scene was one of the dumbest looking moments in the entire series.

Now, before I go any further, I want to make it clear that I strongly believe that sexual assault and rape are very serious crimes and are not something to make light of.  But that being said, I’ve seen some pretty graphic and disturbing scenes of sexual assault and abuse in anime.  Watching Akira rape a demon mid flight was not one of those moments.  I don’t know why the animators had them doing somersaults the whole time like some kind of acrobatic circus act, but this scene was just so ridiculous to watch.  And again, I felt like the animation was a major problem.  Granted, it wasn’t lazy or awkward, it was just weird.  I could go on, but I’m just going to leave it at that for fear I’d offend someone. 

 So overall, the animation serves it’s purpose, but there are some flaws in it that make it look lazy, awkward, or just plain ridiculous.

The Story

Ok, this was something that I could really agree with the anime community on here.  I’ve mentioned before in my review on Devilman Crybaby that the story was the biggest strength that it had.  And while it doesn’t follow the manga exactly, it does come close and does pretty well for it.  But what is it about the story that makes it so great?  Well, before I answer that, there’s a neat little trick that Crybaby pulls that I don’t think people who’ve watched the show picked up on.  Though I have yet to hear someone say that the plot for Devilman Crybaby was original, quite frankly, it’s not.   When you get to the core concept of the show, it reads out as being a boy who gains some sort of power and uses that to protect things he cares for most and to save the world.  If this sounds like the plot in every shonen anime ever, that’s because it is.  At its core, Devilman Crybaby is a shonen anime with a very simple plot, which brings me back to my earlier question: what is it about the story  of this show that makes it so good?  The details.  It’s those touches of themes that make it so fascinating and entertaining.  For me, there were three major aspects to the overall plot of this show that really made it stand out.

One of the things that people who’ve seen Devilman Crybaby talk about is its view on human depravity, or showing the line between humans and demons is pretty blurred.  There have probably been many anime series that have explored this theme, but I don’t think they do it the way Crybaby does. Watching humanity turn for the worst after finding out about the existence of demons really shows how humans can be just as cruel and evil monsters as the demons.  This theme also brought about one of the most beautiful and moving moments I have ever seen in anime, and it happens in episode nine.  While Akira defends group of people being tortured by an angry mob, we hear Miki narrate a post she’s making on social media defending Akira as a human being.  As this is going on, we get a glimpse of a little boy in the mob who goes up to Akira and hugs him in spite of the crowd mocking and attacking him.  The people in the mob see this and eventually follow suit and go up in lines to hug and apologize to Akira.  This was one of the most beautiful moments out of the entire series, and was one of the few moments in anime that made me cry.  It was that good.  And while we’re on the subject of crying, let’s talk about the ending.

This ending was another one of the most beautiful moments in the series.  It’s also the best I’ve seen in anime, period.  Why?  Because it brings the human depravity theme to its ultimate conclusion; when people act like monsters, nobody wins.  Sure, by series end, Ryo-now Satan- won the battle for humanity’s survival-ultimately wiping it out-and Akira is killed.  But when you really think about it, no one, not even Ryo, really has a happy ending; Akira is dead and Ryo is left alone to contemplate with himself and deal with the fact that he’s just killed the one person who really cared about him.  That realization and unhappy ending, again, were beautifully executed, making it one of the best endings ever.  And speaking of Ryo, let’s talk about another element to the story that I particularly liked, the religious themes.

These were far and few in between, but they’re there.  I was pretty taken aback at watching the Makimuras pray on more than one occasion throughout the seires (by the way, did anyone else notice that they have “The Last Supper” painting in their dining room?).  There was also the reference to the Book of Revelation later on in the series with Ryo quoting God’s army coming to destroy Satan’s demon hordes, which made for some great foreshadowing to the series’ ending.  And, believe it or not, Devilman Crybaby had one of the most accurate depictions of Satan I’ve ever seen.  Now for any Christian who saw Crybaby and are reading this, you might be taken aback by it.  But hear me out for a second. 

Think about Satan’s origin story.  Sure, Ryo quotes it and all, but let’s take a look.  Satan was once an angel and –if I understand correctly- God’s second in command.  But after he challenged God and lost, he was cast out of heaven.  Thanks to a certain literary work called Dante’s Inferno, Western culture has always depicted Satan as being this red, horned, Satyr monster thing.  What a shock to find that Crybaby depicts him as an angel!  It made a lot of sense to me that even though he was cast out from heaven, Satan could still maintain his angelic form.  Plus, it seemed to give a perfect example of what sin can look like for the modern Christian.  In my opinion, as a devout Catholic, sin is something that doesn’t have one singular form.  So sure.  Why not have Satan appear as this beautiful hermaphrodite thing?  There’s a lot more I could talk about here, but we’re going to move onto the last point here.

One final great thing that the story did for the series was set it in modern time.  This was a fifty year old manga series that was made relevant and fresh to a modern audience because it got a pretty modern upgrade.  One of these big upgrades was including social media.  I mentioned earlier in that one moment in episode nine.  There’s also another beautiful moment in there, too; after making the initial post, other people start coming out as being devilmen themselves.  Social media obviously plays a huge role in the plot not only in helping people sympathize with each other, but mostly turning on each other.  We’ve seen in recent years how social media, or heck the Internet in general, can impact an online community.  Crybaby takes this idea and puts it into overdrive.  Again, it made the show feel very fresh, modern, and relatable.

Ok, so for all the long-winded discussion I can do about the story, where does it fall flat?  Well, like I said in my Vs. post, the story was pretty good for the most part.  But what really bugged me about the story though was the final episode.  The ending was beautiful, the beginning was shocking, but the middle was a rushed mess.  We get introduced to literally an army of new characters and don’t have a chance to learn about a single one of them amidst the minute’s long montage of chaos.  Personally, if you’re going to introduce a new character, introduce them properly; develop them!  Anyone remember Jenny?  You know, Ryo’s assistant who has a thing for not wearing a shirt?  She barely gets any kind of development throughout the entire series in spite of making several appearances.  We get to see her in her demon form as well as her abilities, but other than that, we don’t know that much about her. The lack of character development was probably the big reason why the last episode really should have been two.  We could have not only gotten an extra episode to learn about some of the Devilmen and even some of the demons, but we could have also gotten a more in-depth look at some of the battles.  It also would have made the ending that much more sad and grounded.

So sure, I can praise the brilliance of Devilman Crybaby’s story all day.  But still, I think there could have been a lot more done to the final episode than what we got.

The Music

This was probably the lesser of praises, so I don’t think I had that much to say about it.  Still, it’s something that a majority of fans constantly talk about.  Devilman Crybaby’s soundtrack is mostly dubstep.  Because of this, many people see this as the manga’s underlining theme of rebellion and praise it because of this.  I think what people are really seeing though is good production.  That it is, the production team knows when and where to put their music.  As much as it is to have a good soundtrack, you need to know when and where a song is best suited.  There were some great moments where the music sounds phenomenal and I think that’s why people talk about how great it is.  But for me personally, I thought it was…ok.  Yeah, just ok.

I actually listened to the entire soundtrack on YouTube one day at work.  Overall, it wasn’t anything really spectacular.  And for a soundtrack that seems to brag about its dubstep, I thought it was pretty underwhelming, and that’s coming from someone who loves dubstep.  Then again, I’ve always kind of preferred more of the crazy and almost obnoxious sounding stuff (think Skrillex).  Oddly enough, the tracks that I think I’ll vividly remember were the two orchestral pieces, especially one called “Crybaby.”  It’s only heard twice throughout the series, during Miki’s social media post and the very end of the series, but it makes these scenes just ooze with emotion.  But outside of that, it’s just as beautiful as it is in the series.  And that’s probably the problem that the rest of the soundtrack suffers from; it sounds great in the series, but isn’t anything special outside of it.  Now while I said it’s good to have a good music but also a production team that knows what they’re doing, you still have to have good music that can stand on its own.

So again, the soundtrack was pretty good and does its job, but as stand-alone music, it was ok.

Netflix’s Best Anime

Now this last point I think I’m reading out of context, but much like the music, this is something that is talked about amongst the anime community.  Plus, it’s probably not something very widely discussed either, but I think it’s something that needs to be addressed here.  Getting straight to the point, there are a good chunk of people out there who saw Devilman Crybaby and are saying that Netflix finally made one good anime series.  Here’s the thing: it’s not.  Don’t get me wrong, it is great anime series, but it certainly wasn’t the first great anime Netflix produced.  Again, I may just be reading these comments out of context, but I feel like those who saw Crybaby are automatically assuming that it’s been the only good anime series the service has produced, and that’s simply not true.  More often than not, Netflix is often seen as producing some pretty poor quality anime shows.  Fans more than likely hold this belief and tend to ignore anything produced by the streaming service because of it.  Still, there are other good anime shows on Netflix.  Little Witch Academia was great, and is in fact one of my starred reviews.  The Seven Deadly Sins is your typical run of the mill shonen anime, but it was still pretty entertaining; people have been pretty excited about the second season coming out.  And then there’s probably my personal favorite, Ajin.  Now granted, when I reviewed it last year, I thought the animation style made no sense and could have been done just as well if not better with hand-drawn 2D animation.  But I just loved the story.  It was very entertaining So you bet I’ll be picking up season two.  But even for all the defending I can do for these shows, they all have one downfall: they’re all pretty generic.  It’s sad to admit that people don’t talk about these shows more because they’ve been done so many times over, but it makes a lot of sense; none of these shows really had anything that made them stand out.  That’s not to say they were terrible shows- I have to disagree-, they just didn’t have that something to make them more noteworthy.  And that’s where Devilman Crybaby unfortunately dominates the Netflix anime shows.  But even so, that’s no grounds to call it the best anime on Netflix.  It just knew how to cater to otakus.

So to wrap up this extremely long post, Devilman Crybaby was in fact a great show and one of the best I’ve seen so far out of the new shows.  But I think we need to take some to remind ourselves that no show is perfect and prone to mistakes, and I think some people in the anime community need to recognize that.  So yeah, I didn’t think that Devilman Crybaby is anime of the year and it’s probably best to wait a little longer to see what else 2018 has in store for anime.  Again, IT’S MARCH 2018!!! 

So what do you think?  Was Devilman Crybaby really anime of the year?  Were there some other points I missed?  But seriously though, please don’t kill me for not getting on the hype-train.  Be sure to stay tuned next week when I finally get out of this Devilman phase and onto some good old-fashioned reviews!

-Hanime on Anime