The Anime of the Year?

Every once in a while you'll come across a piece of media that hits you.

Hard.

Every once in a while you will find that one show, that one movie, that one, well, anime, that grips you in such a way that it's difficult to properly review it or provide any sort of feedback that isn't just nonstop gushing.

This anime is precisely that, for me.

Devilman Crybaby, for those of you who don't know yet, is a "Netflix Original" anime series that is somewhat loosely based off a manga from the 70s. The original manga, when read now, is a bit dated, obviously (or so I've heard...I haven't read the source material yet), but the basic premise is that Akiro Fudo, the main character, is convinced to attend a demonic rave (called "sabbath" in the show), where his friend, Ryo Asuka, helps summon demons in order to fuse Akiro with one and prove their existence/prepare for the supposed oncoming demon invasion.

The show has excellent visuals for the most part, largely due to its director, Masaaki Yuasa, who has worked on other critically-acclaimed shows such as Ping Pong the Animation, Tatami Galaxy, and Kaiba. He has a talent for creating very stylized characters that not only look good and stand out from each other, but, just from the nature of their design, are easier to animate. This allows him to go absolutely nuts with it, drawing nearly every frame in the action scenes and not cutting any corners, while still producing a product in a timely manner.

His use of washed-out neon colors and bleak backdrops make for a very surreal effect during the gorier bits (yes, there are gory bits, and lots of them), reminding me a lot of the movie Sin City, as well as classic western comic books.

The music is incredible, changing smoothly from rock, to techno, to eerie soundscapes. It all blends into each other and supplements the surreal imagery in incredible ways. I personally think that if it didn't have such a well-implemented use of sound and music, it wouldn't be nearly as well-praised, as it really does add so much to the overall product.

But that's enough technical elements. Let's talk about what everyone probably wants me to talk about- the characters and story.

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This, of course, is where the spoilers happen. If you are considering watching this and don't want the plot ruined for you, I suggest watching it first. It's only 10 episodes and is on Netflix. Very binge-able, and, if you couldn't tell already, well worth your time. WATCH IT FIRST, unless you don't mind getting a condensed, not-as-well-written version of the plot right now.

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So. The plot and characters....let's start with what they got right about them.

The plot, at first glance, is relatively simple. Naive, somewhat innocent teenager gets goaded into merging with a demon at a rave and now is a superhero. Cool. Great. What next?

Well, to be honest, about half the series is monster-of-the-week, as he fights and kills numerous demons. This can arguably be one of its faults, but I think that it serves as a great way to lull the audience into thinking it's going to be another Hellsing Ultimate or Kill la Kill, with a bunch of adrenaline-injected action and gore. Don't worry, however, it does deliver on its promise...in heaps.

But beneath all that fighting and slashing and yellowish demon-blood splashing on the screen, the series starts setting up for some major tonal shifts that I expect would turn a lot of people off.

Right from the get-go, I didn't trust Ryo. He was obviously a sociopath, and once I saw him filming Akiro and suspiciously not doing anything with the footage yet, and once I saw him scream out a demon's name when trying to get him to fuse, I knew that motherfucker had something up his billowy robe-like sleeves. Even the way he presented himself seemed a bit fake, with that pure-white coat and his pure-white apartment. He seemed emotionless other than when he was socializing with Akiro, and when he first appeared, he wasn't given a proper introduction.

"This is probably going to be a villain later," I thought to myself.

Lo and behold, I was right- he was a villain. The main villain, in fact. The head honcho, Satan himself.

Did I mention spoilers?

Ok, good, I did. Yes, this friend of Akiro turned out to be Satan. Apparently he had lost his memories due to childhood trauma, but he is literally the antichrist, and the demon within him had slowly and subtly been changing things behind the scenes the whole time.

Wow. I saw it coming, but it still blew me away, especially once they showed all the other signs I had missed throughout the series.

And when the series ended, with Akiro dead and Ryo being the last living thing on Earth before the angels came and rewrote history once again (thus creating another moon orbiting Earth as a reminder of the dead planet that was lost), when he repeated the monologue heard at the beginning of the series, a chill came over me.

In short, despite being predictable and a bit forced at parts, this series executes its twists and turns VERY well.

I think the part that hit me the hardest (other than the haunting ending) was the part where the very last person, the one person Akiro wants to save, dies. She doesn't die to demons, she doesn't even die to other devilmen. She dies to paranoid, angry, confused humans, and with her death, the last of Akiro's compassion, the thing keeping him from joining Ryo's side, dies as well. He no longer cares about humans, he no longer holds himself back.

This is further hammered home when we see him attack Ryo. He joins him, all right- he attacks him and not a single tear is shed as he does so. The last of his humanity is gone, and Ryo, despite being attacked and beat up in front of his legions, has won, turning Akiro fully into a demon with no hint of compassion and mercy.

All the other devilmen rally by him, merging with him, making him nearly equal in strength, but it doesn't matter, because through all of this, Ryo wins, both emotionally/mentally, and physically.

But the bitter irony is, by taking away Akiro's precious friends, by ruining what was left of his human life, he doomed himself. By taking away what he had left to lose, Akiro had nothing left to lose except his own life.

The battle they waged killed everyone else off except Ryo, and as the angels slowly began to descend to the ravaged and lifeless husk of what we now know is the second Earth to wipe the slate clean and begin anew, Ryo thinks back to when they were children, back to when things were simpler, and he first saw Akiro cry for another living thing. He thought it was foolish then, thought that love and, by extension, suffering and pain didn't exist and that humans were weak and foolish for crying for others, but now, completely alone and the sole ruler, the sole king of a lifeless planet, he realizes that love does exist.

It's just that suffering and pain are far greater.

We finally see Ryo confess that he loved Akiro, that he was happy they could enjoy the last moments of Earth together, but realizes that Akiro had died long ago, had, in fact, died right at the end of their battle. He'd been talking to the lifeless husk of his friend the entire time, and didn't even know, wasn't even there for him in his final moments.

As the angels finally begin falling to earth, shown at first as shooting stars in the distance, he finally cries, as he realizes that all this was pointless, and that he is the only one left with nobody there to care about him or comfort him.

The post credits scene hammers in this haunting image further, as we see a new earth, now with two moons- one to represent the initial destruction of demons/dinosaurs, and one to represent the second apocalypse that just occurred. Life once again flourishes on Earth, but without our main characters a part of it; they are gone forever, never to return and never to be remembered. Martyrs for a cause that didn't need to exist and went nowhere.

I am a sucker for sad endings, and I love it when the villain wins- so long as it's done well. I don't think the hero should always win, because if the hero always won, there would be no negative consequences to show what happens when the villain wins, i.e. why should we care that the hero won if we don't know what would happen if things failed?

The funny thing is, if we never even knew about Ryo and Akiro, if we never even knew they existed and only saw the side characters dying and then earth reforming, we could safely assume that everything was back to normal.

But the simple fact that we watched their struggles and their martyrdom turns what could be an oddly anti-climactic "happy" ending into a nihilistic, depressing one that plays with the duality of human nature and shows that, in the end, despite there being good people in the world, the bad will always outweigh the good eventually, and when that does, everyone loses.

It even brings the tale of sodom and gomorrah into it as metaphorical proof, showing that humanity not only has the power to save itself, but destroy itself, as well. And if the power is given to the masses...

Humanity will eventually destroy itself.

Now. Let's talk about what the anime did wrong.

The side characters were forgettable. I don't remember many of their names. I remember Miki and Miko, and if I try hard I might remember that one character that has reggae hair that turned into a total fuckboy playing for the wrong team, but many of their names simply don't come up.

It probably is just my stupid white-boy brain that can't remember Japanese names very well, but I don't even remember much of what they did other than the things that moved the plot along. This is a bit of an issue, as I think the side-characters would have really helped the series have an even bigger emotional impact than it did already and turn it from a VERY GOOD anime into a MASTERPIECE.

In addition, the fuckboy I mentioned earlier...what was his name...looks up character for 15 minutes in the wiki ah, yes, Koda. I don't exactly know why I couldn't remember him, but I fucking hate him. Not in a good "I hate this villainous person" way that old Disney villains have, but I legitimately despise his character. They made him sympathetic after killing people in a panic when he transformed, made him have a rapport with some of the characters, Akiro saves his life more than once, and he STILL sides with the demons because he's a beta male cucklord who would rather save his own hide. Ugh.

In addition, some of what I'll call the "beatboxing beatniks" (the ones who give exposition by beatboxing, a la Samurai Champloo) randomly turn and kill Miki. That was kind of stupid, guys, not going to lie. There wasn't much warning, there wasn't really much of a motive, and two of them randomly turn Judas? Come on.

But overall...

The series is incredible, for the most part. Other than some awkward character interactions and maybe perhaps some characters that were "lost in adaptation", it stands as one of my favorite anime of all time. I place it up there with Paranoia Agent, Shiki, FLCL, and Madoka Magika.

Also, it made me cry. I can legitimately count only three pieces of media that have made me cry. This is one of them.

8/10, would reccommend.