ittedly even I couldn't predict that Kyubey was Devilman's best friend all along. And no, I'm not talking about Satan (wait for episode 10).
There is no story here. It's literally just 'the current thing is boring, let's move to the next thing', which is usually also completely random. Mix in some funkay drawings of boobs and maybe some penetrative sex and some rather ridiculous 'art', probably masturbation, and there ya go. Done. Also gun violence and lots of biting and stabbing. More time is spent objectifying or detailing sexual violence and harassment and assault, particularly against women, than developing any particular character save Akira (sort of), and the problem isn't that the boobs and masturbation are present, but that they serve no purpose other than like... hur dur boobs and ejaculation and photographers taking advantage of minors isn't that so gritty???
Ryo wants to reveal demons to... someone. Because. This involves turning Akira into Devilman... because. He wants to film Akira fighting as Devilman against demons... because. From some basic research into the series, I knew that Ryo is in love with Akira from way back in the 70s when the original manga first came out, even without seeing the heavy homoerotic subtext between them throughout the show and, of course, the climax, no pun intended. I thought maybe the Devil just wants to make his boyfriend stronger or sexier. But wait, he fell in love with the weaker, cheery, pure Akira. So why does he want to change that? Maybe he's bored? Maybe he's answering a hypothesis? Maybe he wants to eradicate demons?
No. Just you know. Cause. Where does he get his wealth? We don't know. Doesn't matter. Why's his secretary so weird? Who cares. It sort of doesn't matter anyway. Which is hilarious because of how that plotline ended and the way they've built it up left me feeling nothing. But the government conspiracy! There isn't one, really, outside of Ryo's babbling early in the show. By the time we get to the government, it's random shots of people somewhere, who we don't know, worrying about the present situation, likely already demons, likely close to getting killed. Why does Akira cry for other people? Just cause. His backstory is handled so poorly. Why do his parents seldom if ever him, particularly in this story's age of instantaneous Internet connectivity? Surely by this point they're aware that Akira doesn't seem to be working towards being a doctor (although we don't even know what he's actually interested in, besides track, which he apparently sucks at anyway).
I appreciate the worldwide reach of whatever social media the characters are using that allows pretty random people to reach everyone on the planet with a mobile device or TV instantaneously (except Akira's parents to their only child). That's pretty nifty. Not how most social media works, particularly with different international laws and network infrastructure in place and human habit, but sure, whatever. I also give kudos to the person who thought that people seeing one massacre live, on TV, would make people across the globe lose their minds and nations to collapse. I hope that person has a good supply of whatever drugs they're taking.
The art is pretty bad, not just from a stylistic standpoint, but after the first episode or so it loses all precision whatsoever and mainly turns into stretchy bits of color attacking other stretchy bits of color, usually in the dark. Sometimes there is blood or semen or breast milk. Frequently there are wonky boobs and implied sexual acts (but don't worry, no dicks until like episode 10 and you gotta squint for it!). It reminded me a lot of Peter Chung, which isn't great because I really don't like Peter Chung's art style: too stretchy and ridiculous. Lots of muscles on muscles moving and veins and random sweat and eyeball shots. Which is contrasted with the rather spare attention given to human movement and expression in this show. There are a lot of scenes at the Mikamura dining table, where no one save Akira and Taro ever eat anything, and everyone sits rigidly straight in their chair having rather detached and disturbing conversations with each other. You could call this the "Puella Magi Madoka Magica" room for how it features a ridiculously large version of "The Last Supper" on a wall behind them, with the ridiculously straight-backed emotionless family 'eating' together. PMMM frequently featured background imagery that sort of looked like it was added with crayon or paint, versus the more fluid animation of the story itself. That's really all I got out of the sequences between all the awkwardness.
The art quality really deteriorates around episode 5, when regular humans turn into blobby squares or rectangles with ridiculously long torsos and wonky heads, and the art only sort of improves around episode 9. I know all shows reuse animation to save money and time, but this one had a lot of issues with it, particularly when most of the reused bits had big errors in them, either from physics or logic or both. There's one they reuse a lot, where Ryo is driving his car. The 'camera' is located where the wheel is coming out of the dash, staring upward at Ryo, so you can see his hands on the wheel. From that angle, he's driving with his palms facing the dash, and his fingertips resting on the wheel. When the 'camera' switches to be near the shoulder of the enger seat, looking towards the windshield, Ryo's hands have moved up, and he's holding the wheel more 'normally', with his palms facing towards his stomach. But then the camera frequently switches back to the underwheel shot, and his hands have moved again. It's a very wonky thing that shows up two or three times, but first shows up in episode 1 and/or 2.
That giant "Last Supper" reproduction should have been foreshadowing for the rest of the 'story', with heavy-handed metaphors for everything. Perhaps the most hilarious product of this, even moreso than the ridiculous "Last Supper" painting, is when Ryo literally pulls out a Christian Bible for no reason and starts reading from it. And then heads for Peru to dig up something. What, we never find out. Doesn't matter. I do wonder what happened to all the other religions. Why does everyone think Christianity will save them? Other religions talk about devils and evil, and this IS Japan. Where are the Shinto priests? The Buddhists? I wouldn't be surprised that they ignore other religions, since this is Japancentric, even with the frequent references to the US, but at least pull those into the mix. If this is just a story about "what if Christianity was the dominant/only religion and the stuff in its mythology was true", sure, but it's hardly enjoyable to watch.
The rap is random, overly drawn out, and by and large bad, which is pretty sad because Japan has some really great rap artists. Lost opportunity there. The only moment this really works is when the one guy raps at Miko, at least at the beginning of it. About 3/4s of even THAT moment were pretty ridiculous.
The only character I cared about was Miko. She had the only real character development in the story up until episode 9, when Akira actually started developing his own character arc and the mini rapper group started going somewhere in episode 8. Miko has a backstory and character development, and her story is really tragic. Unfortunately the showrunners apparently couldn't decide whether they wanted the audience to care about her story, be alarmed at the way adults can take advantage of desperate minors, or just fap to masturbation and boobs. Also, for a show that features a lot of track team race time, and with at least one person on staff who understands how a sports bra works at one time in the show, every time they had that repeated track of Miko's basketball boobs running was just so strange.
Also, for a show that seemingly wants to only showcase how evil humans are or can be, they have a very limited understanding of evil. You have sexual assault, pedophilia, sexual harassment, child pornography, massacres of indigenous peoples, racism, racial profiling, mob violence, drug usage... and that's about it. And it's really minimized for a focus on how sex (or at least boobs) is a hallmark of devils/evil. I'm not sure if it's a ham-fisted parody of how Christianity demonizes women or what, but it's... it's not great. It's boring, if nothing else.
There is no overall message here, other than that humans can be really screwed up and nuclear warfare is very likely and quite scary (and female sexuality is so scary, and gay/lesbian love always leads to death - like seriously, how "original"/end sarcasm). Akira is not a savior. As far as I can tell, this series better follows the manga than older anime adaptations did, at least overall plot-wise, which may make "Devilman" fans happy.
Honestly, if you want to watch something that sort of looks like a drug trip that isn't almost always in the dark, watch "Gankutsuou". That has story and the art is nice. If you're not a "Devilman" fan, I'd suggest ing on this one. It's just not worth the time, although it's thankfully relatively short.
