Too much cute happy stuff this week for you? Are you just raring to get your hands on demons slaughtering people in grotesque ways? Well awesome, because this week we’re talking a look at Go Nagai’s Devilman Crybaby, the newest – and possibly, the best – entry in the Devilman universe. Currently streaming on Netflix, this series was so good I binge-watched it in two days and only had to have two sleepless nights full of terrible dreams of people being devoured by demons. So that was good. ^_^
We don’t often cover the Devilman side of Nagai’s work, with the exception of Devilman Lady, so here’s a quick synopsis of this iteration. Puny little Akira’s inner demon is awoken so that he becomes the Devilman. Overnight scrawny crybaby Akira becomes a hunk, but he’s still a crybaby, even as he’s destroying the demons who have taken to attacking humanity.
Akira lives with fellow student and track star Miki. Miki’s rival at school is also named Miki but is nicknamed Miko. Miki likes Miko as a friend, but it’s pretty obvious that Miko resents Miki and is struggling with a love-hate relationship.
To begin with, Masaaki Yuasa’s animation has never before been so exquisite. The style in the series slowly morphs as the story becomes darker. The first few episodes are positively pastel and cheerful, with cartoonish character designs. As the series progresses, the color palette shifts, the art style sharpens. It’s brilliant and perfect.
Devilman Crybaby is also the second-gayest entry in the Devilman mythos. (Devilman Lady still wins, but this comes close.) During the course of the story we meet another champion runner, Koda, who has become a demon. Koda has, as a result of his demonization, killed and devoured his gay lover. We’re able to see that they truly loved one another and Koda is grieving deeply.
At the end of the series, a demonized Miko confronts Miki – and while I will not tell you what happens, because that’s the climax of the series, I will tell you Miko confesses she’s always liked Miki.
That said, it’s not Miko’s feelings that are the best scene, although it comes close. The best scene is when a random guy who likes Miko raps his feelings to her and both she and I welled up with tears. It was a magnificent scene.
I want to reiterate that this is a very, very, violent story. Demons decapitate and render people limb from limb, Devilman pulls demons apart,and humans respond to all this with very base, violent and tiresome but predictable mob behavior. As we so frequently find at the end of a Nagai story, everything is destroyed. If you object to Nagai’s violence or the existential angst of a Yuasa series, you will definitely wish to give this series a hard pass.
Ratings:
Art – 10, no, 11
Story – 10
Characters – 10
Service – 9 There always is in both Nagai and Yuasa’s respective works
Queer – 7 It’s not really Yuri and not quite LGBTQ
Overall – 10
I thought Devilman Crybaby to be an honest-to-god work of genius by two creators who are in their own right geniuses. I’m actually glad that I was able to see it. Sleepless nights and all.
I still have the live-action movie in my library. While at worst it’s a cheesy campfest (and not as gay as Crybaby), I find it more rewatchable. Both versions still tell a compelling story of humanity sinking itself into darkness and being responsible for its own destruction, and it feels all too real for it.
I haven’t watched that, but I do have the Kekkou Kamen Live-Action series and that’s three steps past cheesy, so I sympathize. All of the Devilman franchise seem to be about humanity’s complicity in its own destruction. By that standards, Devilman Lady has a happy ending as Jun only loses everyone she’s ever met and both arms, but Tokyo/Earth survives. ^_^
Well, I do not know how the situation is now, but the original manga was also openly anti-war, at least according to Go Nagai. However, Violence Jack, on the contrary, seems to enjoy its Mad Max’s setting and atmosphere.
It’s always openly against the madness that turns humans into mobs, reacting with hatred.
“Queer – 7 It’s not really Yuri and not quite LGBTQ”
Let us leave aside the almost memetic question of the Satan’s gender identity, I wonder what your impression of Miko? In general, it seemed to me that her confession was probably platonic, but in the long term it was pretty obvious that this was meant as a kind of yuri-ish subplot.
I think Miko had no idea what she felt until she was the recipient of a confession. Then it became clear to her that her resentment was worse because she admired Miki and resented her. Her confession was left ambiguous for a reason, akogare is a word we don’t have an equivalent for – it’s admiration, but it can tinged with a little desire. As with many things, it is left up to us to decide for ourselves what she felt.
Ah, I get your point. If in my country “akogare oneesan” from Himote House was translated as “your beloved girl”, then I am not surprised that during the premiere so many people argued among themselves about whether the two girls were bisexual or not.
Well, as far as I can see, in English, akogare is often translated as crush when it comes to Class S or the yuri-ish context in general, but I was told that crush is too romantic a word for what should be ambiguous.
The word “crush” is similar enough. If it fails, it’s only that it fails to communicate admiration, as well as infatuation.
So, if use this word, can akogare be succinctly described as “passionate admiration” by another person? Tsurune, who talks about something like the “S” relationship between boys, compared akogare with a kind of teenage “platonic obsession” which fills ordinary friendship with passionate idealization and jealousy.
Yes.
I wasn’t as stoked as many other people on Devilman Crybaby. I did enjoy watching it and appreciated that it was a very creative and ambitious work tackling bigger ideas and themes. It’s certainly head and shoulders above the vast majority of shlocky derivative anime. But I definitely didn’t think it was an all-time great the way many reviewers did; not even sure I’d put it at the top of that season.
The biggest issue I had was that the show was never very clear with what it wanted the metaphor of demonic possession to mean. For Akira it was a puberty metaphor, as he dealt with physical changes and urges he couldn’t control or understand. Sometimes the show tried to make it about human excellence, positing that people who were outliers in their fields had made deals with devils. Akira was supposedly the first devilman, but then how do you explain these other people who hadn’t morphed into demons but had superhuman abilities? And how do you explain the demons who could act rationally and take human form? And then what about Miki’s little brother, who was neither in puberty nor striving for greatness? For him there was some suggestion that exposure to “evil” things like porn on Akira’s computer caused him to be possessed… so is this a morality issue now? And if the demonic transformation was ultimately not possession but rooted in the individual themself, why do the demons have specific names and are known to each other, and why is Ryo able to summon Amon into Akira? I don’t know about the source material, but for sure the show tried to stretch the concept to comment on too many things which made it very weak to me.
I had other issues – I felt like the characters were pretty flat, especially Miki who was a chipper moe dream girl long past the time when that would make sense narratively. And although I don’t need every story to have a happy ending, the “Everything you just saw doesn’t matter because everyone and everything is dead. The End.” ending is just a big raspberry for me. Even Evangelion has a glimmer of hope at the end.
But anyway, I really did enjoy the show. The music was great – I loved the opening theme especially. And there were many touching and exciting moments, in a very unique production. It just didn’t blow me away the way it did many others.
The question of what demonic possession means is, as far as I understand, always left as an ambiguity. Certainly it was merely a stand-in for almost all forms of othering in Devilman Lady. Humans are clearly shown as eager and willing to other, to blame, to mob and destroy anything or anyone that is different. Possession is more like a virus that has potential to be destructive but is also motivation for destructive people to be destructive.
IMHO, possession is less a metaphor than a tool. We watched the movie Philadelphia and understood that bias against AIDS victims is horrible and we acknowledged that AIDS is destructive but the people with it still deserve sympathy. IMHO, this is not too far off for the various forms of possession on the Devilman mythos.
Well, in the manga, the story continues in various spin-offs, sequels or even reboots, the anime simply adapts only the original manga.