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The story has nothing to tell.

The main character is the spawn of the devil, but has a good heart. His body is made up of prosthetics. The more he kills monsters the more his body transforms into that of a human. He is blind but he can see wickedness in people and things. The more human he becomes the more "wicked" he becomes. The transition from emotionless to humane is quite jarring, with awkward and inappropriate reactions, awkward laughs, nonsensical actions.

It is visually sub-par compared to the studio's usual standards. The kid that is travelling around with the MC has occasionally over-detailed "meme"/gif tier ... reactions but usually the characters lack detail and look quite similar to one another. The fighting scenes are rather static, and the best you will get is in the first episode.

Inconsistencies: writers can't decide whether Hiro is new in the team or not. The children pilots are supposed to have no idea about what romance, sex and everything affiliated are, but they are quite self conscious about their bodies and sex.

Low value script. Quite a lot of pointing out the obvious, e.g. in a deserted village "it's like a small city or something" followed by more 0 value assertions of a similar fashion that take too long. Too much talk about kissing to prove that they don't get what that is and what romantic relationships are. Of course, actions prove the opposite. A lot of ... repeated discussions, "I'm gonna do my best" blah blah kind of stuff, many of which could have been avoided because it is apparent based on the their characters, expressions, actions, simple logic etc.

Cringe fest. Male mecha pilots drive female mecha pilots using handles sticking out of the side of their asses. Being "piloted" gives the girls reactions as if they were having sex. Pointless sexualization and distasteful fanservice. If there is a point to it, it's still too blatant, in your face, unsubtle and overly repeated for me to appreciate it. Pointless beach episode. It's also filled with clichees whenever it comes to relationships and human interaction. It wouldn't be a problem if these clichees would add something to the story, but they don't. The gist of the over-sexualization is that the girls are put in a weak position, and boys need to start caring about them as people. The extra sexual tension is also meant to be a catalyst for the intrigue. This "metaphor" that forcefully facilitates something which would have otherwise come naturally is not a quality, despite the fact that many people get giddy about noticing said "metaphor".

Mech fights are not visually spectacular, most of the focus is on showing the method in which monsters are being defeated. You get to see how the mechs get in the correct position to fight the enemy after dodging a bit in some low value mech vs projectile scenes and then the main mech pummels through the monster. An actual fight of reaction time, beauty, skill, teamwork with proper choreography would be much more fun but is something we don't get.

Mech(Franxx) designs are meant to emulate the personalities/looks of the female characters they represent but are too overly detailed and similar in style with each other. You end up recognizing them based off of color scheme, take that away and it's hard to distinguish them. Of course this is aside from the one that is fat and has a gun, an almost moe-blob mech. Monster designs however are fairly interesting.

What does it do good after all? The main female character is a complete troll, tease and has no restraints whatsoever, so that's fun. She's also a half-monster with superhuman agility and power and she gets in a lot of really well animated, highly dynamic scenes. Character animations and expressions overall are really good and so are the backgrounds.

It looks beautiful, the OST is remarkable in and of itself and these two things you can easily verify yourself with a quick google. However, the story is a complete mess. I'd argue it's still a fine anime if you like action, ultraviolence and sex, or just want to enjoy some top tier directing.

The main character becomes a human-monster and he does change because of that, but his "what have I become?" moment is really tame and rather expeditiously dealt with. We don't know how he gets past it, but there's really no time because when his inner demons pop up the plot requires him ... to fight some more and brush over the problem. Being a "crybaby" may be linked to this. He's so empathetic that he cries the tears that others don't dare to, but this characteristic seems to only show up when it's dramatically convenient, rather than him actually being that considerate. Else he'd be torn by what is happening and take an active role in the story, rather than just reactive. Similarly, he can help others beat the devils that took over them, but there's no rhyme nor reason for why they can do that, he just tells them "you will become a devilman" (i.e. a man that controls the devil) and they do.

Humans are monsters and they go on massive witch hunts for devils once they become public knowledge. Everything devolves into random killing and world war for, really, no real reason, but it serves the plot and the forced drama. Some characters that were friendly for some time and seemed to fight against discrimination suddenly turn coats and go crazy too. It breaks the suspension of disbelief and that's when you don't care anymore, however in the case you don't notice the flaws this anime will appear to be the best and most dramatic thing you've ever seen.

There are some good parts, some good micro-stories that get played well and are consistent, mainly concerning humans who turn into devils and can't control their impulses and eat their friends only to wallow in pain and want to die later on.

There seems to be a group of organized smart demons that control things from the shadows but their origins are left unclear and rather quickly forgotten, this part lacks closure.

Ryo, the childhood friend who gets the main character in this whole mess is shrouded in mystery and acts completely inconsistently too. He's the main force that drives the plot so that makes things even worse.

SPOILER IN THIS PARAGRAPH
There's also some side story about some high school (or whatever grade they are in) colleagues trying to best each other and the "gambatte" (do your best, be the best) attitude is not a problem until it interferes with the death of an important character that in their last moment only have the thought of "passing the baton" to the main character (they are track both runners). I mean, when I die, I sure as hell won't think about who gets to inherit the code I've written.

So yeah, without getting into the actual ending, I'd say that the themes barely get explored, are contrived for the purpose of providing forced drama, and the characters are inconsistent too because they are subservient to this purpose as well.

Is Devilman Crybaby bad?
If you want something that doesn't insult one's intelligence, yeah, it's pretty bad. Still, there are parts which are genuinely awesome, but they are harder to notice, mostly micro-stories that hold some truth and feeling.
If you can get past the stupidity of the plot this anime is actually really worth it thanks to how amazing it is on an aesthetics level. This also means that you need to pay attention to the screen, watching this anime on a 2nd screen while doing something else is a complete waste of time and will ruin your experience.

I'm rather torn about what rating to give this anime, on one hand I want to give it a 10 for the amazing work the animators, director and sound people have done on it, on the other hand I want to give it a 1 for the plot. I expect that once the hype dies this anime will be rather polarizing. I hope that this review can shed better light on it.

Story is all over the place. It feels like it's a condensed version of something bigger to the point where things happen with very little explanation.

Characters are dumb. Villainous villains are evil (but in fact they want to reunite a girl with her family from which she was stolen by the good guys or something, I know, it makes no sense but that's how it is). Main girl is acting like a puppy towards his owner, the MC. The plot twist is that main character is more OP than I thought.

The animation is actually pretty good.

In the end, I'm not sure why this exists, maybe ... the people who read the 5 volumes of source material would appreciate it for the animation?



Sadly I need to enter a longer review, and since there's not much else to say about this OVA the only thing left is:
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Warau salesman is mostly the materialization of people's decisions when confronting their less moral drives. The character of each 10 minute story always gives in to the salesman's temptation and always gets punished.

I think it is fair that the salesman doesn't warn them about any possible consequences. No one can pass responsibility over their own actions.

However, many of the punishments they receive, or rather, the consequences of their actions, have nothing in common with what they were doing wrong. So quite a few end up disappointingly.

Still, the main problem of this anime lies in the fact that the moment you see the characters fall ... into their own desire's trap there's no reason to be interested in any way about the action. It becomes just a tedious wait for the inevitable ending.

There's no problem with being formulaic, or episodic, but when the formula itself deprives the viewer from any pleasure it's hard to not view this anime as a waste of resources.

Chinese xianxia. The point is for MC to reach enlightenment and become very strong.

What's great about this anime is the really down to earth but still uplifting comedy and perspective towards life. For example the MC is the one that bullies at some point some secondary characters, multiple times, for the fun of it and the out of convenience and it's all in a very lighthearted manner. The anime won't tell you what to think about this event, it's neither bad nor good, just funny and convenient, but usually one can also find a moral.

The main character is overpowered in the sense that he never ... loses, but in every episode he needs to find a path to become better or work towards his goal. Most of the times he needs to interact with his fellow clan members, teachers or other clan members in a more complex fashion than just quid pro quo or being opponents. I'd say this anime is a great picture of humanity while also tackling the inherent inequalities of life as well as various ways to live your life.

One significant issue is that some parts are really rushed or left unexplained, or the writer had some glorious idea that he couldn't quite accomplish in writing.

The animation is not on par with what is being done now, or 10 years ago. It's not ugly but definitely not nice, it's passable. Art style is fine, but the manga looks way better.

It's probably one of the most honest anime out there.

Gangsta is an anime that comes with an interesting setting. A few clans fight for power using mostly illegal human mutants. However even the setting is barely explored and the story barely starts, then the show ends and you're left with many fans raging about it and calling it worst disappointment ever. Fear not, I'm here to prove why you shouldn't have expected much from it in the first place.

Most of the emphasis of this show is put on the rule of cool. The action looks great and the atmosphere is filled with testosterone, even when it comes to the women, well, some of ... them. The choice this anime makes however is to have very few information scarcely scattered between action. The way the characters and setting are provided with details is by first teasing some information in episode x, the presenting half of it in episode x+1, and then gradually adding more and more to it in the following episodes. This rule has been consistent from episode one until the last and is extremely inefficient. It was predictable that it won't have any chance to have a good ending. Instead the teasing continued until the end and viewers felt cheated.

However the way it ends is not the only way we can talk about quality in a show. There are some clear ques of why the writing for this one is rather poor:

1. the setting is complex and confusing. There's a vast number of characters but none are properly presented aside from the two main characters. The clans will play a big role in the plot but having such poorly defined characters will end up leading to a confusing plot where you don't know why X character does Y thing, and if you did it would probably make little sense.

2. information is being obfuscated. Some is teased but never given. Some is teased and gradually and inefficiently given away.

3. there's too many things happening at the same time. Pacing ends up being unbearably slow. Plot becomes confusing.

4. there's too many flashbacks and they are inefficient. This also ends up hurting the pacing.

All in all, the main reasons for why this anime is bad and probably the source material as well are not just the fact that the anime ends in a horrible place, but because the writing quality is poor.

Kaze no Tani no Nausicaä comes up with a very interesting setting that doesn't get enough development.

Instead the main character is thrown into a journey in which she fights for humanitarian and environmental goals. The morality behind this anime is quite heavy handed and the characters are really basic, making this a rather dull watch in modern times, although at the time the sheer novelty (for the average viewership) of the setting might have been enough. This movie ages poorly because of that.

The animation in this quite good. It's a mix of a lot of hard work along with dated artwork (which is by no ... means a bad thing) and style.

Although it probably has historical importance, it fails to match today's standards. However discovering the setting and enjoying the animation makes this well worth the watch.

D-frag is a school comedy that does what every other school comedy does and doesn't shine much in any way. However it's still mostly entertaining.

Visually the show looks quite dated and bland. There's very little effort put into it both in terms of artwork as well as animation, but nonetheless it's passable.

There is no real story, it's just 2-3 episode arcs in which the main characters face off others or each other for whatever reason in various games that they invent on the spot.

The comedy is as generic as it gets, using the same old ways most of the manga and anime have ... set up: using characters with ridiculous stereotypes and then making fun of them. Of course this can only work once or twice, so in order to not be repetitive anime like this one need to constantly add more characters and more stereotypes in the mix, which is what it does. However, every now and then the jokes do get actually good, as in they make sense without having to rely on ridiculous traits.

There's many episodes in which the show makes fun of one of the character's breast size. I found that really immature and the fact that the joke is repeated many times makes that even worse.

Of course there's some better parts and some worse parts to this anime but no matter what it's still enjoyable and that makes this one at least worth to check out, it may suit your taste.

5/10

Grimgar feeds off of the RPG-anime trend and tries to give it a serious approach. The result is a very slow paced and boring anime about 6 stereotypical characters grinding money, because life is hard, people die when they are killed and food costs money.

The setting is a generic RPG world filled with trolls, kobolds and whatnot and the interactions the main characters have are only between them and other monster hunters. The world building in this anime is practically non existent.

The characters are all stereotypical and flat with most of the script being ridiculously generic (and silly). There's no growth whatsoever either. In fact ... in the novel the writer introduced them and called them by their archetypes, when the characters didn't know each other so their names were unknown to the main protagonist, Haruhiro. When the writer himself thinks it...

The plot advances at a snail's pace, and that's understandable given the fact that the source material has in 3 volumes a plot that could just as well be the plot for only 5 episodes. In order to fill out most of the spare time you get to see the characters acting according to stereotypes that they are: starting ridiculous quarrels that make no sense, being shy and having your needs guessed for 10 minutes, being cold and having everyone try to be your friend for 15 minutes, etc. Of course all of this comes tightly packed with explanations of what is obvious in the shape of Haruhiro's internal discourse.

However, there's good stuff to this anime, namely the fights and the design. While the animation can have occasional dips, the fights look gorgeous and last quite a bit when they do happen. The design is also particularly appealing, but I urge you to check this yourself. You won't take long to get convinced.

Fanservice has its okay moments and its awful moments. Having appealing design for the characters and not extremely provocative fanservice will probably please most of those who accept fanservice. However it's very often that the timing of fanservice is downright awful. For example 2 characters titillating while mourning the death of someone close.

In the end this anime can deliver if you're a diehard RPG-anime fan thanks to its visuals and the *new* approach of making it hard for the characters to live well and not having them be overpowered from the start. If you're not such a fan, the snail pacing, genericness of the characters and silliness of the script will probably get to you quite fast.