Crying Freeman

Crying Freeman is something else, it’s one of those shows that I went in thinking that I would love to death for specific reasons and although I was wrong I still came out of it thinking, ‘I really like this’. If you’re going into this thinking that you’re going to get a cute romance between a gangster and a regular girl, you’re dead wrong. I feel like all of the romance geeks that might come to watch this will actually be quite disappointed. Although there are little sprinkles of romance in this, it’s mostly violent crime syndicate battles and sex and not every sex scene ... or romantic moment is with the same woman even if it’s with the same man.

What Crying Freeman does best is it’s characters, sometimes the character development is a bit rough and I’m certain it’s because it was adapting a 76 chapter manga into a 6 episode anime (although the episodes were all around 58 minutes long). Yet, I still found myself attached to the characters.

The pacing of the storyline is definitely a bit quick, but the plot is always interesting and even if it goes into a wild direction it’s still hard to not be entertained by it. Of course, there were some things that had me rolling my eyes and because of the absurdity but at the same time, it was still a fun and entertaining watch. Don’t take it too seriously and I’m sure you’ll have fun with it. The plot is ridiculous, it’s all just the writer going “what if we put him in this situation, he’ll obviously win but who will we make him have sex with and how does he kill them”. You can tell that whoever created this and directed it was having a lot of fun and I guess I can respect that.

It’s definitely not a masterpiece but it’s great for what it was and I enjoyed myself a lot. I’m sure that of you’re looking for an older anime to watch but you don’t want to commit to a series with a lot of episodes or a super serious plot line, this is a good one for you.

What do you get when you cross Sanctuary's setting, Hellsing's brutality, miscellaneous porn, and a storyline about as deep as Bleach? Crying Freeman.

Crying Freeman is a potter that apparently seemed skilled to the Chinese mafia "108 Dragons". Through the magic of acupuncture, he becomes their ultimate assassin slave. He's programmed to do their dirty work despite how it tears up him inside and makes him cry. However, he quite evidently does have free will and he exercises it regularly. He doesn't cry out of pity for his victims; he often CHOOSES to kill people entirely on his own, then he cries simply because that's the ... gimmick. In the first episode, he goes from slave to leader of 108 Dragons because... uh... because. Yep, by the end of the first episode, they've already ruined everything that's supposed to catch your attention.

The storyline is nonsensical at best. Beyond Freeman's hasty promotion, there's no development or purpose whatsoever. You can bet your ass there isn't a proper ending, so don't get suckered into watching the whole thing like I did if that's what you're hoping for. The characters contradict themselves. Freeman, an innocent man that goes out looking for trouble and killing people since that's what he does. Wife of Freeman, a delicate woman that would rather dance naked in front of a bloodthirsty gang than kill them when she has a sword in hand because she has no intentions of killing anyone, but she does it a lot later on. Each episode kinda has a plot, but it's always really stupid.
In one episode, 10 people jump in front of Freeman one after another to take bullets for him... instead of one person sacrificing himself and everyone else pulling out a gun to kill the assailant. I couldn't take it seriously; I started laughing at how utterly stupid it was.

There's so much completely needless nudity in this series. The first episode has a couple of sex scenes; why they felt it was so urgent to show us, I do not know. It adds nothing to the story whatsoever. Was it to try and show the characters are in love? Not at all. They go on about how deep their love is, but it's total bullshit. Freeman has sex with other women even though he's married. It was only AFTER he had some with some random woman that he asked her for her phone number, which she didn't even give to him. Yeah, that's some deep love there. After catching on, I skipped the sex scenes and nothing of value was lost. He preaches about his views on love in one episode and talks down to someone that believes love is about living for your partner. The guy he was insulting happened to be a rapist, but still, that's pretty arrogant.
Anyhow, the nudity. This annoying, obese woman, Bayasan, is clothed one moment, then she's naked the next for no reason at all. She didn't even fight or anything while naked. They went home and simply didn't speak of it. The main characters often strip down before or during fighting, or sometimes they're simply naked from the get go.

The violence is top notch. There's lots of blood and killing, and not in your usual way. It's often either swift assassin work with a knife or it's a knife fight. The animation is really cool for both, as well as all other fight/killing scenes. The knife fights are really badass with how the fighters are kinda hunched over with a knife in hand, slowly circling or moving towards each other, swinging and dodging elegantly. The art is very nice and the animation is detailed and smooth.


I feel that I've been betrayed. I could let one sex scene slide; I didn't think there'd be shit like that in every episode. I didn't think this would be ero. If anything, I thought it'd be the opposite; a sad story about an assassin that wishes he could stop killing people. He shouldn't have been made the leader of 108 Dragons, he never should've had any personal motives to kill, and he shouldn't have been such a slut. A proper ending was too much to ask for since there wasn't even a proper storyline to begin with.
This was somewhat enjoyable and its cheesiness made me laugh at times. The action scenes are awesome, the sex isn't need nor wanted (go watch some porn on your own time if you must; leave it out of my entertainment). To be frank, I'd only recommend this to a handful of people with perverse taste. Otherwise, don't bother watching it.

Crying Freeman
Crying Freeman is a messy piece of work, which includes a very bad story, mediocre art style, mediocre sound, bad character development and the only enjoyment you can have is the laughs one can have when watching the absurd story and how nonsensical it is.

Story
The story is poor on this one, the first time i have watched something so bad that i couldn't take any possitivity from it, although the beginning can be deceiving because the first ep. did things almost right, if i have to score it just for that one ep. i would give it a 7 and it would deserve that ... for the fact that it was good, seeing this man crying because he has to kill and can't get out of this life style and then finding love in someone that he has to kill (after having consensual sex, both virgins too) and risking his life to almost being killed and proving the organization (108 dragons) that he would die for her and then he's told to rescue her and forget his name Yo Hinomura to have a new life with her at that moment i thought he was going to be betrayed by them and thus suffering (although it seemed like a TV drama serie for the obvious reasons) but next ep. was not what i expected, now all of a sudden we are introduced to both with different names and married by the organization, now Yo/Long is the leader of the clan and Emu his wife, then a fair amount of nonsense thrown here and there with a weird storyline, he wants to make the things peacefully and that's ok but after that the next eps. were dropping in quality even further and becomes absurd and bad and more nonsensical and WTF?, and a lot of soft hentai scenes, he fu**s a lot of women that fall for him in two min. and is infidel towards Emu but hey he's the action hero right? so who cares?; They like to be naked too, almost every time they are naked and he cries but it's not for remorse because he kills whenever he wants, crying is just a gimmick, he likes to be the leader and f**k girls so why cry? because he was hypnotized by the clan to do so, as he doesn't know why he cries neither but is not for remorse and the ending was bad, a sex scene with his wife saying that he will only love her or something along those lines but he fu**ed more girls than the times he fu**ed his wife, is just a messy very bad story.

Art & Animation
I was surprised with the animation of the first ep. from an '88 aired ep. really detailed and great gun fight scenes and the art style was good for that time, i was wow look at the detailed gun shots, bullet holes and blood but, each and every single next eps. the art style and animation was getting really bad and different from ep. 1 which had the best character design and better overall but it was mediocre in the end.

Sound
The music started really great with a couple or more songs that reminded me of the 80's action movies from Van Damme to Kurt Russel or Steven Seagal etc. movies (i like a lot the 80's songs and the New Wave 80's song like the ones from Far Cry Blood Dragon) but later it was repetitive out of place and not the same from the first ep. which had better songs, so it was mediocre.

Character
The characters made the story, so that means they were bad, i kind of liked Freeman at first but later on it was predictable what he was going to do, and their interaction is dull, it was cringe worthy at times, the characters are always changing in mood or personality, so it was confusing for me just like for them, i didn't felt that much impact when a certain character was raped by a guy who had a family and was criticising Freeman for having sex and spread his love with other women and not with his wife but he's no one to say that when he raped a woman and throw her to the ocean to a possible death (and that part was absurd and nonsensical because she found a radio transmissor to contact Freeman but why would a big ass radio transmissor be in the sewers?) and he dares to talk about love and be with one while he might already raped more than one woman, c'mon bad character development.

Enjoyment
Thie first ep. is good, other eps. are bad, no enjoyment value other than the laughs at how absurd this was and how random things happens in some absurd ways, it was bad, the first 4 i give to an anime too and it deserves it and even lower.