Devilman Crybaby- First Impressions

MFW Netflix decides to license original animation content that is both innovative, weird, disturbing and unusual by traditional anime standards:

That's right, I'm talking about Devilman Crybaby. Devilman By Go Nagai was an early Japanese comic classic, and one of the first to explore genuinely subversive and adult themes in manga. He might appear almost tame by todays standards, but back in the early 70's, an ultraviolent devil who fought evil was on the top of every Japanese PTA's shitlist.

Tonally, Crybaby stays true to the violence, subversive and bizarre nature of the original Devilman, while also being downright beautiful as a work of animation.

The Director Masaaki Yuasa of Mindgame fame could not have picked a better commercial project to attach his weird visionary animation style. Incorporating his minimalist but compositionally beautiful aesthetic into the story only helps further the sense of psychological unease and surreal mood.

Unlike earlier works of experimental japanese anime with similar themes though (I'm looking at you, Belladonna of Sadness), Crybaby manages to maintain a coherent and put-together story in the midst of wild an unusual visual language that communicates the inner human condition like few other works of art.

If you're looking for something anime that has real arthouse flair and a penchant for the sexually explicit and unusual, this show is for you. If you just want to see something weird you've probably never seen before, this show is for you. If your favorite kind of animations are Disney Classics, stay far, far away from this one.