‘Devilman: Crybaby’ On Netflix Might Just Be The Grossest Show On TV

What’s the grossest thing on TV right now? You might say it’s The Americans, which includes a scene where a human corpse is snapped into place so it can fit into a suitcase. Or maybe it’s American Horror Story, which has pushed Ryan Murphy’s penchant for edgy sex and gore to its own literally-clownish ends. Maybe Game of Thrones, a show that notoriously depicted a man crushing another man’s skull with his bare hands? Wrong! The grossest show out right now is Devilman: Crybaby, an anime series that hit Netflix last week and, among other things, features an orgy-turned-massacre, several vehicular homicides, stampeding, and literal disembowelment. Fun!

Devilman: Crybaby‘s central character is actually the one least-equipped to deal with the horrors of the show: Akira Fudo, a timid boy best known at his school for crying whenever anyone else is sad. Akira lives with Miki, a superstar athlete and student with a heart of gold. Akira is visited by Ryo, a childhood friend with a bowl cut, pristine white coat, decidedly less empathy, endless funds, and a strong interest in demons. (Also, a machine gun.) Ryo takes Akira to a debauched Satanic party which quickly degenerates from party drugs and casual sex to screaming teens and demons rending flesh. In the process, Akira is possessed by Amon, one of the strongest demons, and becomes Devilman, a demon body with a human heart ready to fight off the rest of the armies of hell. Seems simple enough, right?

That’s the way it goes in the original Devilman anime from the 1970s, in which Amon actually does possess Akira, and is turned to humanity by the love of Akira’s childhood friend Miki. That series is mostly monster-of-the-week episodes, ending with Akira victorious over the armies of hell. (It should go without saying that this is not the way Crybaby ends.) Instead, Crybaby takes more after Go Nagai’s original manga, which is far more grotesque and surreal. The original Devilman anime makes brief appearances in Crybaby as a sort of fantasy on TV, and a version of its theme song appears as a child’s ringtone.

Crybaby was made to celebrate 50 years of Nagai’s career, which underlines that way that the entire Devilman franchise seems bizarre, outdated, and disturbing by today’s standards. Women grow gaping maws out of their breasts. One demon literally has vagina dentata. And there’s a wet dream joke that puts the entire careers of Judd Apatow and Seth Rogen to shame. On the other hand, Crybaby effortlessly translates a decades-old story into the 21st century, using social media to explore humans’ panicked reactions to demon and incorporating extended rap sequences into most of the episodes, performed by Japanese rapper Ken the 390.

Nagai says that Devilman is an ultimately anti-war story, which is easy to square with the mass violence but harder to line up with the glee the series seems to take in sequences like Devilman ripping other demons apart. (To be fair, I take a lot of glee in this too; it looks great.) Eventually, the series morphs into a grim meditation on humanity’s tendency toward paranoia and willingness to turn on others at a moment’s notice, a political message that gets a bit muddled in between cool fight scenes. Still, faced with the absurdity of demons fusing their corpses together and high school track races where students collapse onto all fours to claw themselves forward like animals, expecting thematic stability is maybe besides the point.

Because above all, Devilman: Crybaby is visually enthralling, even when you put aside what’s being depicted. The series was directed by Masaaki Yuasa, perhaps best known in America for directing “Food Chain,” one of the weirdest, most surreal episodes of Adventure Time. That episode features transitions between stages of life, deadpan, borderline-morbid comic timing, and lots of animals devouring each other—all hallmarks of Devilman: Crybaby, but in a softer fashion. If you can stomach Crybaby, it’s worth watching an episode or two, if only to watch the interplay of Yuasa’s flat lines and bold colors, and the way they cohere into composed shots of humans who appear alternately faceless and frighteningly real, just before they get sliced in two by a talon. For Devilman, meat is murder, but it’s art, too.

Eric Thurm’s writing also appears in GQ, Esquire, Real Life, and eventually in a book about board games he is writing for the NYU Press and Los Angeles Review of Books. He is also the founder, producer, and host of Drunk Education, a comedic-academic event series that has absolutely nothing to do with TED.

Watch Devilman: Crybaby on Netflix