I generally as a viewer try to watch anime as a medium which provides me
entertainment along with substance. As such, I try not to be biased about a show and
try to understand its themes, symbolism and allegory and try to judge the show for
what is. But there are certain shows which make my blood boil and spark
animosity inside me. I always believe there's something good in a show, and there
will always be some redeeming qualities through which I can acknowledge and
appreciate the show and feel content with watching it. But some shows just infuriate me. And to add it, i get more frustrated when I get to learn about toxic
fanbase the show has, which is too reluctant to admit it's shows fault. And
Devilman Crybaby is that. I wish I could get my time back I wasted on rewatching this shit (Because a dude was like, you aren't deep and edgy enough to get this show, so I rewatched it)
So ladies and gentleman welcome to my rant; if you agree with me; thanks for being
reasonable if you don't.. IDK what to say.
So right of the bat, The premise of this show is quite a cliche and is frequently repeated. Humanity in decline and shackles has been a cherished
topic of reasonable people and off-course young-nihilistic-edgelords. But portraying it on screen and compartmentalizing on the concept is really
difficult and this is where Yuasa manages to gravely vandalize and tarnish the entire anime. The show doesn't have an iota of an idea as to how to portray
a dark and nihilistic setting There's an abundance of sex and gore in this anime which only exists for shock value or to say for the heck of it. The
writer clearly is incompetent to write an actually relatable and impactful dystopia narrative, thus they add the obvious cliches called sex and gore
and then add some deep meaning or allegory to it and then sell it as being deep. The deep themes conveyed in the anime are true considering how
ignorant humans can be at times, but this show just makes a joke out of it and milks it so much that it just becomes unsavoury I will touch upon this
later.
Moving onto the writing- it's appalling and dreadful because the way this show is structured removes any kind of possible enjoyment anyone can
derive from this show. The entire transition of humanity from a relatively peaceful place to a petrifying warlike zone where people are losing their minds;
came out of fucking nowhere and it was so quick that there was no way i could find it believable and feel anything but awful about it. A general rule of thumb when
writing a dystopian world is to exhibit, a slow buildup where the viewer initially understands the events leading to the doomsday scenario; gradually
and slow-paced. Thus the viewer is able to relate with it personally and care about what is to happen and feel the consequences, In this case, they just splattered in some hyper-aggressive mass hysteria and spewed out
how irrational humanity is blah blah to add some depth to the story. But what about the world-building and exploration? why; I mean why is the outlook of humanity not deeply explored? so i can even remotely care about its fragile state, Why couldn't we see the gradual decline of government? Why couldn't we see the decline of society and humanity more INTIMATELY?. How am I supposed to care for anyone; be they the fucking underdeveloped characters or the sadist, irrational, mindless, and shitfested society and people s if they aren't explored well enough or not even given an insider or backstory and are just being put together for the sake of it and then jump in to cause ruckus out of literally nowhere... As I said earlier, this anime is just a hyper-exaggerated set of cliches paired with some half-assed deep meaning without any substance or exploration to it. Honestly, Racism is a huge issue, but not everyone goes around killing minorities out of hate. Why? Because in our world, people are rational-minded and not like the ones in Devilman. Even in War, where mass killings and hysteria is common, humanity's morality and intellect won't decline that much as it did in this show, to a point where everyone will plant the seeds to their own destruction. Ignorance is a thing, Devilman Crybaby level ignorance? Gosh no. There always will be some sanity left.
It's impossible to lose your mind to that level, people in Crybaby were acting like they were on fucking on LSD. In a nutshell unrealistic and lazy writing using cliches to show nihilism and shock value.
Moving on to the characters; they can be summed up as; The rebellious Blonde White Surfer Dude who turned into Satan (Claps) The Wimpy Crybaby friend-zoned kid who turns into Rambo and nobody literally notices or bothers to care about it. The out of the league nice girl who is the only nice and rational person, in a world of nutjobs, with titties (edgy shit huh ;), The social critic Esque rappers (They were repetitive but sane enough for me to like them) And who's that girl again? who got stroked and bolted out.
You get my point. The character development is subpar and zero and they use cheap tactics and force the audience to feel sympathetic about Akira (HIm killing his parents for emotional impact was a tactic to reinforce sympathy because heck the show is bland and has nothing to it thus the need of these tactics to sell it)
and Expect us to feel bad about Ryo after he vandalized everything. Man who wrote this show? Ryo was just terrible.
Pacing- The first half drags out, the second half... I talked about that. Rusheddd
The animation is horrible. Yuasa's style can be appreciated as being abstract and symbolic, which I'm open to. But what I hate is zero effort being put into drawing faces consistently (seems like most of their budget went into the jiggly squiggly and da assets of the senoritas)

I have to say I do carry some bias when it comes to Yuasa's work in general, But I appreciate dark anime and manga (I've watched ergo proxy and planning to watch Parasyte, Berserk and Texhnolyze) But this show is just an overly-pretentious shitfest, which is a prime example as to how not to make a show with nihilistic themes. If you are an edgy teenager, wishing to see Doomsday, in the most watered-down, lazy way and don't have the patience to actually watch well-made seinen shows go watch this. I honestly have nothing against anyone who enjoyed this show, but I personally feel this terrible piece of hot garbage is overrated as hell and should deserve more constructive criticism than blind praise. For what the show stands, it failed to give me the wow factor, thus my final score
13/100