The story starts off terribly, introducing us to the two leads Akira and Ryo but not bothering to give them much depth. Ryo is a mysterious male who is supposedly Akira's childhood friend, though we only have a very brief nonsensical flashback to confirm this, while Akira is a crybaby but seems fairly well meaning and kind.
I think the main issue with the storyline was the pacing. At times it seemed very rushed, whereas there were other times where it seemed very slow and dragged on. The first few episodes relied far too heavily on shock factor, with gory (I say gory but the animation was so bad you couldn't tell what was going on) and sexual or raunchy scenes. These scenes were very poorly animated with the violent fight scenes being difficult to follow, and the raunchy scenes just cringey to watch because that's not what the human body looks like.
As the story continued into the later episodes, there were a few glaring plot holes. The most annoying of these was the way Akira transforms completely in every way possible: appearance, voice, personality and physical ability. He has no resemblance at all to the Akira we see in the first episode, yet the other characters remark that he seems to have changed. This bothered me because surely they should have actually been asking "Who is this random guy? Where has Akira gone?" The same issue arises when other characters "change" yet no one seems particularly concerned. Their physical abilities also become super human and they start to run in a way that's just not physically possible for a human being, yet the other characters say "they got faster."
In the last few episodes, the story finally starts to come together and have some kind of deeper meaning. The relationship between Ryo and Akira is explored, as well as human nature and the state of society. The ending was very dramatic and shocking in the right way, not just shock for the sake of it. But unfortunately, the terrible animation style continues to be off putting.
The opening song has some interesting visuals but doesn't have an actual proper song, whereas the ending is just instrumental music with a black screen with rolling credits. So OP and ED pretty much non existent for this series. There's also a problem in the earlier episodes with some painfully awkward rapping from some of the minor characters. In one of the episodes, a particular rap seems to go on and on endlessly and doesn't seem to serve much of a purpose other than to appeal to American youths I guess?
Devilman Crybaby had an interesting and worthwhile concept, and a very solid well executed ending. But it was unfortunately ruined by sloppy animation, random shock scenes and unnecessary filler to try and appeal to a Western audience. I think this series could have been excellent if done properly. Here's hoping that this isn't the beginning of a trend of Netflix produced anime that had so much potential yet are dumbed down or just outright ruined.
