Devilman Crybaby - Instant AOTY? 

In my honest opinion, the death of miki's dad was much more emotionally impactful for me. The way his brains just get blown out, almost without ceremony. It shows how he will be forgotten, along with the rest of his family, and that's the saddest way to die, honestly. His death is the most direct reminder of the cruel, uncaring species that humanity turned into

Netflix please, lend your money for some GOOD Berserk adaptation!

Personally I wasn't bothered by Ryo's English. It sounded like it should, a person speaking a second language.

Really hope Netflix keeps putting money in the table and supporting these cool anime

Btw Kukun the rapper who confessed to Miko via rap isn’t the same guy as Koba the gay super-athlete. Kukun died at the sabbath where Miko became a devilman.

this anime kept me up at night for like 3 days just thinking about humanity... im tired

I think Digibro is missing several points of what he's criticizing. (This happens a lot.) Akira being a "crybaby" is about his empathy. He cries when other people are sad. It's a somewhat bizarre level empathy that almost seems involuntary. He acknowledges the tonal shifts as being effective, but totally misunderstands the children scene. The show makes deliberate effort to juxtapose devilman the dark brooding manga with Devilman the children's super hero anime. That's why the little kid is obsessed with it and why they use a remix of the old intro in some scenes. People who claim to not take the show seriously because of its silly moments fail to appreciate how juxtaposing happy moments with horrific ones makes the horror more potent. In the scene where the children hug devilman it's a deliberate absurdity. Akira is the last bastion of empathy in a world teetering on the edge of depravity, just like he is. Coupled with the obvious (and overlooked) puberty allegories, children gathering around devilman to embrace him is emblematic of that focus on empathy. That kids could embrace fucking Devilman as their hero. Also Ryo being the focus or main character is about him receiving the show's final moral. They're the ultimate end point. It's about what Akira teaches him. It's why Miki is important and Miko, it's what the again obvious (and missed) metaphor with the baton was getting at. Ryo learns love, remorse, and empathy from the succession of characters before him. He still dies, but his arc is central to the story. He's the primary cause of most of the main plot turns. Jeez this was long-winded. While I really liked crybaby, I didn't exactly think it was super subtle, but it's still flying over people's heads somehow apparently.

I'm kinda disappointed that you didn't talk more about that soundtrack which was fucking phenomenal. Tracks from the OST like Buddy Ryo, Devilman no Uta, and Konya Dake are really good examples of how good the soundtrack is.

The Butterfly dude and the Running are actually two different characters. In one of the episode you can see the remains of Butterfly dude's hand (with the tattoo of the Fly part of butterfly) in Miko's house (presumably after she devoured him in a fit or uncontrollable hunger or lust). The runner dude however is alive until the final fight of the series.

I see your points for the last episode but I think that is precisely what makes this Devilman crybaby Yuassa's and not Nagai's. The stark difference between the two lies in how they deal with the carnage. You see, Nagai's work is crushingly hopeless and brings into question what it means to be human without ever offering an answer to it. But Yuassa does not. He sees the hopeless situation and how fucked up humans are but what happens in Yuassa's work is that he still believes in humans, or at least in the human spirit. This is made perfectly clear by the ending of show. Ryo cries. The Satan fucking cries. The literal fucking Satan cries and mourns and feels emotions of sadness. This is where we can start talking about the differences between the two. Yuassa's devilman, unlike Nagai's, can be more appropriately thought of as Greek Tragedy with Ryo as the main character. Greek tragedies, as we all know, are mostly defined by this idea of a flawed character who deals with shitty stuff happening to him only to realize his flaw later on but not being able to do anything about it since it becomes too late. THAT IS DEVILMAN. At the end Ryo looses everything, his demon army, his dreams of re-inhabiting the planet and most importantly, he looses Akria. This flaw and emotion is precisely what bestows him with the human spirit and this what Yuassa wants to focus on. All this bad stuff happens because Ryo suppresses his Human spirit. As we all know, Yuassa's works have always been really optimistic about things and this would fall in line with that too (and the fact that Yuassa thinks that Ryo is the main character of the show). You see, this is not just a story about Akira and humankind losing, it's also about Ryo losing. Ultimately what Yuassa has done to this story is that he's completely transformed what it's supposed to say. At the end he wants us to know that both Ryo and Akira lost because they abandoned their human path - one suppressed it while the other left it to save Humanity. I agree with you that it's not Yuassa's best work (ranks 5th for me in his filmography) but there are parts about this show that will unfurl only when you compare it to Devilman and you'll just how densely written this story was in terms of it's ideas. This entire video inspired to make my own video about this show, where I hope I can explain the ideas of this messy comment much better and actually flesh it out.

I actually didn't think the scene where the kids hug him is stupid? Nothings seemed out of place with her "preachy" post, like Akira had been preaching to the idea of there being a balance between demon and human this whole time. Even though Akira couldn't save her, the way the scene played out gave the impression that they'd saved each-other in a sense.

The 9th episode absolutely nailed the idea of despair. Nothing is worse than having all hope being ripped away you and not being able to do anything in front of impending doom. Along with the eclipse, it's one of the more memorable moments in anime imo.

8:35 You made the exact same mistake I did when first watching. The guy who was into Miko died at the party, the person that you think went off into random directions was actually a completely different character. I'm not going to blame you for it though since he was only really introduced briefly in the first episode and the rap that the Miko guy did would imply that the scene in the clothes store was just him getting back at his friends for what he felt was them being dicks and not the other guy being a dick to some randos, but it's worth mentioning that they aren't the same guy and the arc that we saw had some setup to it.

"the worst scene in the show" was actually one of my favourite scenes .

"Devilman is really topical, but in a scary way. The idea that a single tweet can lead to the end of the world just hits a little too close to home right now." - Gigguk

Also, the most important rap of the show was actually dubbed. It's kinda funny seeing digi show a clip of that scene and claim that it is not dubbed.

To me this story was about how we should be more empathetic, loving and accepting and how we can be very violent towards something we don't understand. That's what it meant for me.

>Like when Ryo's father trasition to spooky latin in the first episode He starts speaking Russian (if I understood you correctly that you are talking about dude burning himself at the beginning). Plain and clean russian. There is suprisingly a lot of russian language in this. But why russian soldiers in the end speak english with a russian accent is a mystery.

Huh, while talking about the rap dubs not being translated to English you show the one most emotional rap that's actually translated in the English dub.

I really wish the anime explored the theme of uncontrollable empathy more. It's not just about crying when people feel sad and wanting to protect people who are being stoned to death. Every single person you interact with, you care about like they were your family. You want the best for them and feel for them every time they suffer, even if it's something minor. When people are angry at you you're less concerned about how they're making you feel and more concerned about how terrible you're making their lives as a result of your actions, even random people on the internet. You're not just sad when they're sad, you're also angry when they're angry, happy when they're happy, etc., even if you can't historically relate to their situation at all. As a result, you might even make an effort to distance yourself from emotional attachment and appear as "the logical one" because you realize how susceptible you can be to emotional manipulation. This series isn't the best at going in-depth with things though, but when MC having empathy is so important to the plot that it's included in the title as what differentiates this retelling from the previous versions, you'd think they'd talk about it more.

Crybaby introduced me into the Devilman franchise, and I read the original manga a day after I finished Crybaby. Crybaby is without its faults, as you have pinpointed some of them; pacing, some character threads' getting lost in the middle, but I still think Crybaby is better than the original manga. Now don't get me wrong, I can understand how the og manga was a momentous creation for its time, but in watching Crybaby I think it is important to understand that this is an entirely different series than Devilman. As Yuasa's have mentioned a few times, Crybaby is a story about Ryo. Crybaby Ryo was thoroughly reformed from its original; he's borderline psychopathic as opposed to the loving Ryo in Devilman manga. This change was made for one reason: To give Devilman Crybaby a different ending than its predecessor. Devilman manga ended in a tremendously bleak, and inherently nihilistic manner (moral and existential nihilism, to be precise)(I know this is your shit Digi, so I get how you could not enjoy Crybaby's ending as much as some of us do). All efforts made by anyone was rendered useless; humans are still vile until their end, Akira threw away his humanity, Ryo's burgeoning love and effort were unrequited, and this faceless God entity just restarted the shit out of the world. There is no point in assigning the hero and the villain, it's all moot anyway, and the series drove the point home pretty much effectively. But is it an ending that WE need right now? In Crybaby's ending, there IS an outcome that tied the knots of all the thematic choices Yuasa's made. Throughout the show we saw that Akira is a bundle of emotion that emphatize with every thing that breathes and would cry for them (crybaby, is Yuasa's eponymous motif). Ryo, the emotionless literally-a-satan motherfucker, never shed a single tear. But at the end, he recited a monologue that we also heard at the beginning of the series "Love doesn't exist. There is no such thing as love. Therefore, there is no sorrow. That's what I thought." with that monologue and a single tear from Ryo, we know that right then that Ryo learned that he (they??) loves Akira. Therefore, love exists. Therefore, Ryo felt sorrow at that moment. And in tow comes remorse and regret. AND the "what ifs". Right then, viewers felt the same harrowing sense of dread that Ryo experienced, while knowing that Ryo is not only the antagonist of this series, but ALSO the villain. Audience felt that the ending was unjust, but it is ultimately not a nihilistic one. There IS hope, if only Ryo found his humanity through his love for Akira beforehand. Now I know if we started the series with Ryo knowing his love for Akira, we might as well repeat the manga (which is why some fans theorize that Crybaby is a prequel to Devilman og manga), BUT if we treat Crybaby as an isolated series, as it is for many many people who made acquintance with the franchise for the first time, Crybaby's emotive ending is what we need right now as opposed to the Devilman og manga's dismal ending. I'd like to say that Crybaby's ending is Yuasa's answer to the questions that Nagai posited in Devilman og manga's ending for current political and societal climate. Is it a good answer? It is naive, but heck, it doesn't even matter. Yuasa still managed to convey his message, and it gave the audience a different experience from the og manga. Of course this IS biased, as I watched Crybaby before I read Devilman og manga. But at the end of the day, as it is obvious, how we perceive this series depends on what we value as an audience. And mine just so happened to differs from yours.

This video: Terrible finale, bad pacing, preachy tone, makes you feel like devilman 10/10

I personally do think that alot of the big issues you had come from reading the manga first. Thus you subconsciously expect it to be just like it and don't want it any other way. Despite this obviously being a completely different take on the original

You seem to miss the point of what the anime was trying to say to you. I met Masaaki Yuasa at Annecy Animation Festival last year and in the conference, speaking of how he can make happy shows like Lou and extremely horrible ones like Devilman, he said "I think that even in the darkest of the darkest things, there is still some good, some light and some hope". This was in the manga too, the horrible devil Sirene, probably one of the most violent ones, in the end was beautiful and we could sense love in her. In that scene you seem to dislike, even if Devilman seem like a giant monster, horrible to them, completely different, they could still see that light in him, that emotion that lead them to understand him. Why is that? Because Akira didn't try to kill them for what they were doing. Instead he cried, like a baby, he haven't done a thing to them, he just cried until the good side of the human heart that is present in even the most evil persons in the world, begin to resonate in them. And that was the whole point of the original manga too. You never solve anything with violence, even when it seems legitimate, people should accept difference, even when it seems terrifying and full of bad sides.

Why does you’re writing feel like a college student who is just adding stuff to meet a page limit?

Voice actors absolutely NAILED russian pronunciation. It sounds exactly like it should be. I'm so, so impressed

The last episode feels so clusterfucky, but for me it kinda works... I guess you could say it's a "pacing apocalypse".

As someone who is more a cinephile than an anime fan, I found the reveal of Miki's fate to be especially effective. I like to think of myself as being damn near desensitized at this point to most displays of violence, but this one in particular struck me as especially cruel and horrific. Furthermore, the ensuing destruction of humanity was simply an incredible audio/visual experience. I'll never insult someone for focusing on narrative in a review (that's where most movies, shows, and anime place their emphasis after all) but I think it's also important to remember how the visuals and sounds can be just as important, and I think that's where Crybaby focused most of its energies. It certainly helps that the narrative is still good, but this is the rare show where you could remove all the dialogue and it would still be worth watching. Or maybe I've recently found myself being generally unimpressed by anime due to derivative art styles and overly long, meandering stories that stretch into multiple seasons simply because they rushed the show out even though the manga it's based on has barely gotten off the ground. Considering that, Devilman's concise storytelling and visual audacity is quite refreshing.

This anime gave me emotional PTSD

I liked the part where the kids hug Devilman. It even made me cry.

Tbh i liked crybaby better than the manga. Maybe cuz i watched it first but i feel like the story has more depth.

Digi, you confused the 2 characters with a similar hair-style. The rapper fucking died of screen. The core of this is decent, but you just got so much wrong here, it's not Ryo's father and it's bloody Russian, some changes were shared with the 90's ovas, they even further undercut Miki's death with Akira's refusal to reject humanity, and the ending scene with the moto-cycle was mostly pure fanservice, as it's a reference to the original show.

Isn't the motorcycle ending a reference to the original TV Devilman series?

FIANCE?! Congratulations!

''unsexy design'' you what mate?

I understood the kids hugging devil man thing. It was sort of a biblical thing. I never watched the original devil man so I don't share many of the complaints but thanks for making this video cuz I don't think I would've watched this anime if you hadn't

when pewdiepie makes a review of this faster than other anime youtubers 🤔

Best adaptation of the manga so far even with all the liberties taken IMO

This is how shonen jump was back in 70s, there were no limits to what creators can get away with specially go negai

Ryo's English was great wtf?? He spoke it fluently, just because you can hear his japanese accent coming through doesn't mean he's terrible at English...

I owe Devilman thanks to influencing some of my favorite series such as Shin Megami Tensei and Berserk!

The thumbnail looked like Venom

There's one thing that really describes Crybaby. Its rebellious in every sense of the word. From the animation, to the story pacing, to everything else. And GOOD GOD THAT FREAKING ENDING WAS GREAT.

I literally only watched this show because akira looks like mugen

The brief flash of monochrome when Akira flips out at Miki's death and unleashed his flame attack gives me chills. I love that animation style that's almost entirely raw energy, like during the Devilman transformations, and in stuff like the Divine Sandstorm attack in the opening of JoJo part 2.

Wow, Digi's "Worst scene in the whole show" turned out to be my favorite. That scene really moved me.

Miki's death in Crybaby shook me to my core. I dunno what you're talkin' about. It was so brutal and disgusting. Nightmare enduing. Sure they never showed us her full head but the silhouette of her head and other body parts bouncing up and down on the stick with the mob dancing and cheering. Her bruised dead expression over what used to be such a cute and hopeful one... seriously. Not many anime make me feel like Crybaby did.

okay, maybe this is just me but i love it when hearing an english dub leave a japanese rap or song untouched, I absolutely hate it when they try and change the language on a song, because it just doesn't have the same feeling.

I know that some characters were showed and killed quickly, but even so, some of them were made in a masterful way. Akira's mom, even with little screen time was filled with emotion.

I absolutely love this anime so much. It's like a mix of berserk and neon genesis evangelion and the art style is so well done. It's just so amazing Edit : I meant this new version, especially the ending, which is much similar to Evangelion in its abstract and erratic way

Anime of the year easily Edit: I watched it dubbed and Kyle McCarley’s performance as Ryo was fantastic!

I personally like the alternative ending when Akita just walks off after defeating Amon in his head to take control of his body again and just becomes violence jack afterwards

"American Audience" sorry I forgot you are the only ones who speak English

I'm with you there. After her death I kind of went numb to everything else. Episode 10 (the Ryo parts) didn't do anything for me. I felt that backstory would have been better at the beginning kinda like a episode 0. I liked Devilman: Crybaby to the point I will buy it on BluRay, BUT like Now and Then, Here and There. I'll never watch it again. lol! I won't lie, it messed me up a bit.

Latin? That was russian rite?

I have seen the first part of the Devilman OVA and yes, the gore has gorgeous detail to it. Anyway, I need to check out Devilman Crybaby and the manga because Go Nagai is a very interesting creator overall across various genres. I looked at its OVA randomly and didn't know to read the manga beforehand, though. Sigh.

I just watched the entire show overnight. This was my first exposure to the Devilman story, so it had a large impact for me and put me on an emotional roller coaster that will be difficult to match. I am definitely interested in consuming other Devilman media in the near future.

They actually DID rewrite one of the raps in English; it's the one that the butterfly dude does. And it's pretty good

H U M A N C O N T E N T M A C H I N E

One note: Murase Ayumu, Ryo's Japanese voice actor, was born in LA and lived in the States until about 8th grade.

One thing that's appreciable with Crybaby is the English dub. It's decent enough, especially since the OAV from the 1990s apparently sounded like Amon/Devilman was being dubbed with the aid of a full tank of helium.

Yeah trust me the way they handled mikki's death was very impactful for first timers I had to take a 40 minute break before finishing marathoning the show The image is burned in my mind forever

At first i hated this show then i watched again and i loved it but why the fuck are we trying to crown this AOTY and we aren't even 1 month into the year.

17:19 - 17:24 Truer words have never been spoken

Now if Violet evergarden is as good as ppl say it is then Netflix is clearly the Winner of this season! First Netflix gave us Castlevania and now this! Netflix you better keep on going like this! Let's face it. Binge watching is just better.

Good analysis. But i have to say that the way the ending is done makes a lot more sense if you consider the fact that Satan/Ryo is the main character. It takes him up until the last few minuets to realise that he to feels a loveing conection to others. The visuals and action of the last episode are all about him realizing and accepting that fact.

I don't consider Miko's character direction towards the end as weird. Her whole life she was hung up because a girl she liked has the same name as her and got better at her passion than her. Miko is a lesbian, the sexual nature of the show never let us see Miko, that's the significance of her and Koji having that rap moment and heart to heart later on. Koji being gay, Miko being bi, these are things that were suppressed in them, feelings they had put aside because no one sees them, like how they're names have been taken away from them, so have their identities. That's the significance of Miko saying i love you to Miki at the end. She genuinely loved her, and it wasn't weird. It was just very gay.

I just realized Production I.G. Could've also reached out to Netflix and made the following seasons through Netflix as a Netflix Original so that it could be in it's purest and rawest form. Kind of like what they did with Devilman. Like after seeing Devilman Crybaby and seeing it became a Netflix Original, A door just opened to raw and uncut anime with complete creative freedom that could really change the industry and introduce new ideas as well as outstanding production for these series.

When I heard it was called devilman crybaby I thought it was just gonna be Re:Zero but with devils

keep in mind i didn't finish the manga as i write this so im sure someone can give good counterpoints from it I liked how they handled the end in the sense that there were a bunch of scenes near the beginning of the anime, as well as the end, which helped establish ryo and akira's relationship. while by itself i agree that too much of it was done too late, i felt like it all built up to the impact of the baton pass scene. i felt it really embodied this idea throughout the show that akira desperately wanted to be close to ryo and have everyone be on the same side, but even though ryo cared deeply for akira, he was never willing to pick up the baton and listen to or fulfill anyone else's wishes, ultimately leading to his sad lonely end. it makes it feel like, regardless of everything, if ryo had just stopped and reached out to see akira's side of things at any point this story could have had a happy ending. but everytime, over and over, he drops the baton and he drops the baton and he drops the baton. i feel like it forwards and goes along with the idea that we dont get happy endings because people are terrible.

All I got from this video is Read the manga and see the difference and why the original is better

about the post credit scene of episode 9... Crybaby makes a lot references to Devilman, the 1972 anime. I mean Xenon was that show's final boss. now the character designs in Crybaby's post credit scene kinda resembles the that iteration. to me it's a parallel world of what could be. Akira and Miki could've ride straight into the horizon, happy, hugging and loving... if humanity wasn't shit...

Pewdipie beat you to it my man

I watched both and honestly, even though I felt horrible for Miki in the original for how brutal it was, Crybaby felt more intense because it toyed with the feelings she MAY survive, and as you said she had a more active role so it was easier to get attached to her.

>calling Russian latin lmao interestingly though, the Russian here was good unlike the English talk

Last few vids have been killer man. Keep up the great work.

I didn't read the manga, but loved the OVA. I always meant to read the manga but never got around to it. I think the show was a solid 8. Music, animation, aesthetic, characters, themes all save it from the botched pacing. However I liked the Christian element to it, which you don't see often in Japanese anime. That is the turn the other cheek philosophy that exists. Akira and Miko refusing to kill humans, until Miki's death drives Akira towards arguably Divine Judgement. I think the sequences with mankind fighting their end is out of the feeling that some of my friends told me was out of the confusion of the manga's ending. Having finally caught up on it, I agree.

This anime is fucking wild. I'd considering watching it long enough; Only to want to destroy humanity after having deep thoughts. Go Nagai is an absolute genius.

I love the raps in this Series

I actually really enjoyed the moment where he questions the crowd. I found it as the pinnacle of his chracter development, the children were meant to represent his innocence; all the while the message of love being given by his dear friend is slowly resulting in her death before our eyes. I suppose I just focused more on the juxtaposition present, and what was being conveyed, rather than the fact they re-used scenes. I don't usually mind the re-use of scenes, when used properly it is a very effective story telling device. I honestly can't think of an anime that doesn't fall into that trope at some point. I respectfully disagree with the majority of the last half of this video, but it was nice to hear another pov =]

This style of anime is so refreshing. It almost has no barriers and that allows it to be so flexible in story AND animation.

I am also a Devilman.

I think that having not seen the original, it was a really excellent show and I have to disagree w digit at some of his points, but I think that if I had read the original (and knew much of the plot details ahead of time) I might've made the same criticisms. For me the story unfolded fairly well. I don't think it's a perfect show, but I think it's definitely up there, and I think it deserves the praise and recognition it's been getting!

Signs point to yes.

6:37 when you put that shot in there i was like "STOP YOU VIOLATED THE LAW"

It’s refreshing to see someone actually go into the negatives of the show instead of blind praise because it was “deep and made you think” it’s definitely nowhere near anime of the year, at least to me.

i didn't even know of devilman's existence until crybaby was released, and i can confirm that miki's head on a pike had the same extreme shock that you probably felt upon seeing it in the manga

Who else knows of the original devil man through anime abandon?

I totally agree with you that Miki death scene in the manga has more impact. In Crybaby, we saw that Miki was likely dead right away from that dragging back stab wound and those people "played" with her face and body later. In the manga, that severed head just popped out suddenly and I had no idea how she was killed and could only imagine the most fucked up situation possible i.e. rape, life-mutilation all combined. I would guess that the director really like this version Miki as you have mentioned and just wanted to send her off in a more struggle-filled gracious way. I love this Miki too so I don't mind this direction of change at all

Didn't even watch the video yet but totally agree with the title.

Always bringing me great anime suggestions for my watchlist! Thanks, Digibro!

Devil Man Cry

(Spoiler btw) Im not disagreeing with you you're correct but it's also mainly about love and I think you see it completely differently if you think if it's a story about Ryu, learning that love actually exists. In the end akira kind of wins, he convinces Ryu there is love because of the sorrow he feels after his death, earlier he says there is no love therefore there is no sorrow but Ryu only realizes it when it's all over.

God, I haven't thought about devilman in ages. Can I blame all my problems on reading it in middle school?

Masaaki Yuasa was the perfect director to make this anime stand out among so many others. However I do believe that studio Saru was not the best choice for it's production. Netflix was a necessary evil due to them being the ones to make this possible. But if they worked with a better run/high budget studio with the pedigree of Madhouse or Sunrise many of the problems (pacing/consistent animation) would have been fixed.

Holy shit the cuts in this are pretty

Also I unironically like the scene where everyone comes up to give Devilman a hug.

It's only the 10th

This is so often a lighthearted channel and then digi pulls out stuff like this. It's eclectic and interesting.

tbh I didn't find ryos English speech all that bad. even tho he's caucasian looking it's pretty obvious he spent most of his childhood in Japan and him having an accent makes sense imo. not that the scene wouldn't have been fine if he had perfect English but him having a strong accent didn't break immersion for me personally. I can see where you're coming from but... idk people have accents, it's thing