Devilman Crybaby: Mixed Feelings

The latest adaptation of Go Nagai's classic manga, Devilman, has been out for some time now, and people are already calling it anime of the year.

Me? I have mixed feelings about it. Let's talk about them.

Crybaby has many good points, and I feel it does some interesting things with the source material. I get why people like it. At the same time, I hold the manga to be the superior product. In fact, I'll go as far as to say that some of the changes the anime made to the source material were for the worse.

Perhaps the best example of this to me is the character of Ryo.

Since we are talking about Ryo it should go without saying this post will contain spoilers. If you don't want to be spoiled turn back now.

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Good?

Okay.

Ryo in the anime is confident, calculating, and pretty much a sociopath. You know he is up to something shady from the start. I even checked with my non-manga reading friends just to be sure it wasn't my perception playing tricks on me. While you don't expect him to literally be the devil, you're not that surprised when he stabs Akira in the back.

The anime takes this colder Ryo and runs with it. His big realization at the end is that he has emotions. He feels. He loves. All along, he has loved Akira, and now he has lost him due to his actions.

This take on him makes him a less sympathetic character.

If Crybaby Ryo is cold, then manga Ryo is, without a doubt, hot. In stark contrast with his anime version, the manga version of Ryo is just full of emotion.

When the reader first meets him, he looks confident just like the Crybaby version. However, as the volume goes on, it becomes painfully clear that Ryo is steps away from losing his mind. He is completely out of his depth with the whole demon thing and barely keeping it together, a far cry from the almost Kira-esque Crybaby version.

In short, manga Ryo is a very human guy.

This overflow of emotion has a natural effect on the conclusion of his character arc. Manga Ryo knows emotions. He does not need an epic fight to realize he loves Akira. He understands his love of Akira from the beginning, and he understands it even more once he realizes who he truly is.

Zenon gets a pretty good moment in the manga where he spells out to Ryo that he ruined the whole plan because he let himself love this one person too much, and Ryo knows he's right, but he's also so damn torn about his feelings for Akira.

In contrast to the Crybaby version, what Ryo realizes at the end of the manga is his own hypocrisy.

Like Crybaby version, manga Ryo gets a monologue at the end. However, it's a very different one. Like I said, this Ryo does not need to realize he loves Akira.

Ryo explains how he grew fond of demons, how god decided to destroy them, and how he fought to protect them much like Akira fought to protect humans. However, when Ryo woke up after hibernation and found humans had populated the Earth, Ryo began to hate them.

Like I said, Ryo is a character guided by his passions.

Ryo decided to destroy the humans just like god decided to destroy the demons, and that's something he only realizes at the end, after all his beloved demons are dead, the humans area dead, the devilmen are dead, and the love of his life is dead.

Ryo realizes that somewhere along the way, he became what he hated and lost everything. It ties into the large themes of Devilman, everyone can become a monster.

In many ways, the story of Devilman is the story of Ryo.

At the end of it all, we have to be able to empathize with him a little in order to truly appreciate his tragedy as a tragedy. Because this is not just Akira's tragedy. It's Ryo's tragedy as well. It's his pain and suffering too.

I could not bring myself to care about Crybaby Ryo crying.

I did care about manga Ryo crying.