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Wonderfully animated, excellent sound, and great coreography! Everything else? Abysmal.

They couldn't even bother to make Terra's ability coherent. First he somehow survives a giant laser which cuts through rock like paper. His ability requires him to say "precedence self -> laser" or something but he just gets baked alive. Then he reappears in the next scene, literally says "I can survive anything, so long as it's just one thing at a time!" ... Not 5 seconds later his comrade drops a rock on him and he dies. It's just... Sigh.

The series contains almost no plot or character development; it's merely one battle after another mixed ... in with contradictory terms, lots of talk no jutsu, and so many "gotcha" moments that it becomes routine. The entirety of Accelerator's screentime involves him rambling about being a villain while doing absolutely nothing villainous. Index is seen in the shower and chasing a cat. Some random people get involved in the story only to die immediately. Stuff blows up more often than a Michael Bay movie and I have no idea why I should care.

The coup de grace? A battle... for lunch. No, really. I quit watching. How did it get EVEN WORSE?

This anime is based on the Douluo Dalu novel.

It seems to be translated as "Soul Land" here but the original translators called it "Combat Continent."

Doulou is the name of the continent, and according to Chinese dictionaries, "dou lou" means "to bring to light" to "shake out" or "to squander." Dalu means "continent." So the name of the novel is literally "Doulou Continent." Making my amateur transliteration "a continent which squanders and oppresses but also brings forth the light." Chinese is pretty interesting for fitting all that in a title.

Point is, we know the story is excellent because it originates with Doulou Dalu. A few important ... parts from the novel are left out but overall it comes together nicely.

What really sets this anime above the rest are the combat scenes. The way combat is choreographed and animated in Doulou Dalu is the best I've ever seen. I've watched a lot of combat anime! None have managed to reach the level of Doulou Dalu except perhaps Gantz: O, which was a full-fledged movie.

Unfortunately, there are two major downsides. First is the animation. I know, I was just gushing about the animation, right? Sadly it suffers from a major flaw I've seen in several high-profile Chinese animations.

It stutters.

Yes, the animation, great as it is, stutters. For the entire series. Every episode. All the time. Clearly the rendering or encoding is suffering from a major defect but apparently nobody bothered to fix this problem. It's extremely jarring during some of the most important scenes of the anime. This is a dealbreaker.

The second problem with the anime is product placement. Earlier reviews wouldn't have seen this because it didn't start until episode 12. Between episode 12 and episode 15 product placement literally becomes part of the story. There's a minute and a half which are entirely devoted to a weird-looking floating tea leaf. Meanwhile, the main characters are buying or selling "refreshing all-natural green tea."

It's jarring, annoying, and frankly, it's sad that it's so blatant. Luckily, after three episodes the animation team wizened up and switched to a commercial format. Given that the episodes are already very short, adding commercials into the main story would've been the death knell for this series.

Overall this anime has a lot of promise which is overshadowed by some poor choices from the animation team. I personally hope these issues are remedied for the next installment because Doulou Dalu deserves better treatment from this studio. The studio's animators can clearly put out top-quality work if they put their mind to it.

Story 1/10
Art 3/10
Sound 3/10
Character 4/10
Enjoyment 5/10

Overall 4/10


Story: I don't know what to say about the many story failures, so instead here's an example: there's a scene where people are lining up to hug a 20 foot tall demon like he's the pope. They were shooting him 10 seconds ago. This is a joke, right? Nope!
...
The story is skewed heavily in favor of human emotionalism rather than, you know, actual plot. What little plot exists was ripped mostly from the original Devilman series. They also tried to toss in elements from the Devilman mangas, OVAs, and even the live action movie. As a result characters will appear from nowhere and then die in spectacular fashion without us ever knowing who they were and why they existed.

Finally, apparently rappers are very important to the storyline. Yeah, I don't understand either.

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Art: They spent all of their budget on backdrops and still images. Meanwhile, the characters are walking caricatures. The main character inexplicably ends up looking like Mugen from Samurai Champloo. Oh, and the 1987 Devilman OVA is animated better. Enough said.

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Sound: The sound was passable at the beginning, but once the fighting starts, the studio skimped on unique samples and ambient sound. The black sabbath in particular was dry and uninspired. Heck, even the theme song was mediocre. The sound quality reminds me of an amateur web series.

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Character: The characters were surprisingly dynamic and heartfelt. Unfortunately the progression and emotion was undermined by absolutely horrendous pacing. There's too much content to fit in only 10 episodes. It's unfortunate since characterization was a strong point for this anime.

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Enjoyment: Devilman Crybaby compresses so much emotional baggage into 30 minutes that it feels like a montage of angst. If you start to enjoy a scene then the anime will almost unerringly rip you away with a timeskip. Worst of all, nearly all of the original story's symbolism has been stripped out and replaced with sex. I suppose if you like bloody sex a.k.a. guro then this anime is for you.

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Ruling: If you want to actually enjoy the Devilman series - please, look elsewhere.

Ay yi yi, what a mess. A good mess - but a mess nonetheless.

Story 5/10
Art 9/10
Sound 8/10
Character 5/10
Enjoyment 7/10

The art and sound are decent enough. The storyline was very confusing! It reminded me of Eureka 7, and it should, since it's by the same studio. Like Eureka 7 I only figured out what the heck was going on after sleeping on it. Frankly, I think a lot of viewers will leave this anime feeling unsatisfied because the ending seems like one big Deus Ex Machina. It's not, but it sure feels that way. It is not AT ALL obvious how the big bad is defeated ... (or even if it does get defeated), neither is it clear what happened to several of the main characters. Even once I figured it out it still wasn't interesting. They tried to come up with something unique but just made it confusing instead. I knew something was wrong when during episode 23 I found myself hoping it was almost over.

The whole anime has decent art but the ending has above-average production values, evoking the animation prowess of Naruto, OPM, and Bleach, among others. The Xamdou are particularly well-animated, though it appears they only ever rendered the main character's transformation once. This won't bother you sailor moon fans out there, but everyone else will notice the copy-paste transformation.

Unfortunately, the characters are just awful. Don't get me wrong - they're very animated, lively, and they have strong personalities. The reason I didn't like the characterization is because much of the plot is pushed forward simply based on the fact someone didn't open their damn mouth and say something. In fact, several main characters' personalities and life situations are based around dealing with this, which makes this anime's fundamental disconnect with the viewer all the more ironic. That the titular Xamdou seem to give nearly everyone a depressive complex doesn't help at all. It's like "oh, there's a problem, *mumble mumble*" and then something blows up because they didn't get off their ass.

Overall, the anime is extremely well-done and fun to watch. Just don't expect a feeling of satisfaction when it's over.

Romeo and Juliet IN SPACE!!!

But seriously, that's what it is. Expect a lot of heart-wrenching twists and unexpected subplots.

Story: 10/10
The story is excellent and lacks any obvious plot holes. More importantly, the anime studio actually saw it through to the end, which means the ending is proper and finished. None of that "Come back next season!" crap. We get a real resolution with a few thematically unimportant questions left unanswered. Perfect for a sequel if they decide to make one.

What really impressed me was the anime's lack of attempts to "make sense" of the use of quantum physics. Aptly quoted at one point: "What's that ... magic circle-looking thing?" "It's a quantum barrier, and it might as well BE magic." This is a novel use of real concepts which keeps the story in the forefront rather than trying to flesh out concepts that the average viewer won't understand anyway. What happened to said barrier later on made me laugh, because it made sense in retrospect, which is startlingly unusual in fiction.

Art: 10/10
The art team did an excellent job here. The scenery properly conveys the current "sense" the story is trying to convey, whether that be togetherness, despair, awkwardness, fear, etc. The character's reactions seem like all-too-real renditions of what an actual person might say or do when faced with the environment they're cast into.

More importantly, the titular Zegapain are stunningly designed and rendered, evoking the memories of past Mecha anime while still putting a futuristic spin on things. The attacks used by both sides feel more "real" than your usual fare because the concepts involved in the art direction just seem to "make sense."

Sound: 10.5/10
Without question, the sound was one of my favorite parts of the series. The sound team chose to put in funky sounds in all the right places, really helping the viewer get involved in the setting. Real life isn't a series of explosions and exposition! The sound team made sure that even a couple of seagull cries didn't go unnoticed. Not much else to say except that you should hear it yourself.

Character: 7/10
While the story was great, I was less enthused about the characters themselves, at least early on in the series. Very little they did seemed to make a whole lot of sense. Up until episode 6, the main character did a particularly poor job of conveying his state of mind, which was a bit bothersome. Once we get past that phase it makes sense WHY everyone was acting that way. Still, this makes the early episodes harder to watch than they should be because the viewer is absolutely clueless about the story's real setting until episode 7.

Further, one important plot twist was obvious many episodes before it was revealed, which made me wonder why they even left the viewer in the dark for so long. If it was going to be so obvious then why try to keep the characters mysterious?

Enjoyment: 10/10
Excellent anime. Excellent! So much was done right. Even when I was frustrated early on in the series, it was still enjoyable to watch.

Overall: 9.5/10
If the early characterization had made more sense, it would be easier for me to give this a 10. Aside from that, so much was done right in this anime.

My average score is 9.5/10, and that's exactly what I'd give it. 9.0 is a little too low. This is the kind of anime I hope to see more of!