Devilman Crybaby | Anime Review | Pinnedupink.com

DEVILMAN CRYBABY

2018 marked the 50th anniversary of the career of Go Nagai, creator of Mazinger Z and one of the most influential manga authors of all time. It was not so well known in many countries, but his work Devilman marked several generations with its exciting stories and extreme approach.

To commemorate the anniversary, this manga and anime were "resurrected" with Devilman Crybaby, an anime available on Netflix that certainly made noise with its plot. Without further ado, let's start with the review.

Devilman Crybaby Anime Review | Pinnedupink.com

Akira Fudo, a young student, after a life or death situation and thanks to the machinations of his best friend Ryo, gets the powers to kill the demons that awoke after centuries of hibernation, becoming a Devilman, a being fused with a demon.

Now he will have the body of a demon but a human heart, thus protecting humanity from the dark threat that is coming. Both embark on a mission to save humanity, but neither Akira nor Ryo could have expected what was to come and the sinister twist they would end up facing.

"Devilman Crybaby" features some elements that the original author wanted to put in his work but could not do so at the time. From there, this Netflix anime presents us with a violent crusade to find the rest of the demons, understand the origin of their evil and exterminate them before they eradicate the human race.

What might seem like just another action story becomes a true symphony of gore, eroticism, and extreme emotions. Be warned; this is not a series for sensitive hearts: in Devilman Crybaby, dismemberments, explicit sex scenes, and the most absolute cruelties are almost as normal as breathing.

While such hyper-violence may saturate viewers less accustomed to seinen a bit at first, it actually makes sense towards the end of the story. There is a lot of guilt, redemption, and reflection on our nature in the story, something that reaches its climax in the last three episodes of the series (there are ten episodes in total, about 25 minutes each, so you watch them almost without noticing). All of this ties in very much with a Catholic iconography that permeates the whole story, partly as a moral but mainly as the driving force behind the events. Love and compassion are the only elements that stand in the way of a world that increasingly distrusts itself.

Another thing in favor is how it manages to expand segments of the final arc, which in the manga are reduced to only a few pages where you can't see what is happening. You are only guided by the narrative of the text boxes, which talks about the battle with a way of telling the events in a very western comic book style. Crybaby, on the other hand, are pretty well animated and eye-catching scenes.

It is an adaptation that tried to capture an audience of this decade and not stay only with the old fans of Go Nagai, adding and removing things to be to the taste of current generations. This is how they bring a more contemporary society and technology and a more urban environment to the work, giving the impression that it is set in the present day.

The protagonist duo is very particular: Ryo is cold and calculating while Akira, although after the possession has become more confident and violent, can cry and feel pity for humans even when transformed.

But the change in their relationship compared to their manga counterparts didn't appeal to me. In the manga and the OVAs, you could see a more sincere friendship and how they mutually served as a team, Akira putting the muscle, while Ryo the head (and weapons in the beginning). Akira tended to be the aggressive one of the two due to Amon's influence on his body. On the other hand, in "Devilman Crybaby," Ryo is presented as someone overbearing, manipulative, and incapable of empathizing and understanding humans since here he is not an independent personality, but simply Satan with amnesia.

This leaves Akira in a terrible light by looking too naive to trust so blindly in a person that you can tell from the beginning that he does not plan anything good, even continuing to do so after having several confrontations. This makes the character have a totally different approach, which is not a bad thing, but the way it was done in Crybaby only leaves you with a feeling of naivety bordering on absurdity from Akira and a total indifference to others from Ryo.

The worst part of it is that in the anime, it's disgustingly obvious that Ryo is not well when in the manga (and the OVAs) it's laid out as a puzzle that you slowly piece together until you realize what's going on.

At the same time, they try to develop characters that in the original manga were merely background characters, without much background to serve a specific purpose, such as Miki and Miko. Making them more dynamic characters within the work, making them interact more with Akira and give (a little) more solidity to the group, making the viewer get attached to them more easily. At the same time, they gave a consistent approach to Akira, leaving him as a character quite elaborated.

Other characters were added in this version to move the plot forward, and they tried to give a common goal to most of the cast. Achieving certain harmony in their interactions, although, anyway, they did not achieve enough development and closure of all the themes presented (something that, for example, would have been avoided if instead of giving certain scenes of the end as a flashback, they could have shown them as part of a prologue, as was the case in the OVAs of decades ago).

Everything because Crybaby wanted to cover all the secondary characters, but it became impossible because there were so many. Still, the main characters' friendship-rivalry relationship and the conflict between humans and demons as a background continue to stand out.

Another of the virtues of 'Devilman: Crybaby' is its spectacular animation. And what a fantastic animation it is. The physical and emotional characteristics are enhanced by a nervous, blurred, almost deformed stroke, which brings a beastly dynamism to the forms in constant movement. The expressive possibilities of the animation are taken to the next level thanks to the technical evolution and aesthetic refinement to which Yuaasa subjects it.

This aesthetic choice, combined with the musical aspect, further reinforces the depth to which 'Devilman: Crybaby' aspires. The contrasting soundtrack serves as a contextualizing key that adds to the adaptation. All the risks that the anime takes aesthetically contribute to a dazzling display.

This is the most interesting self-produced anime that the streaming platform Netflix has right now. Okay, some plot twists you can see them coming, and sometimes it abuses blood and... other things that don't make it suitable for all ages, but it's worth a look.