#you shouldnt have asked me about ryo jdekckc

[modern-oedipus]

Read your Devilman post. Its so good to see you introduced to the wonder that is Ryo. In this house we love and adore Ryo.

This post contains major spoilers for Devilman Crybaby.

I have honestly fallen in love with the way his story was represented throughout the series. In fact, I haven’t even noticed it was his story being told right before my eyes until the last episode. I thought this was about Akira, Miki, Mico or the boys. I thought this was about survivial— or I thought this was just a show that fancies violence and wanted to draw as many gore scenes as possible without putting too much thought into the plot. How wrong I was.

(On a side note, I had known absolutely nothing about this series until I clicked on the first episode, aside from the fact that it had lgbt+ representation. I had zero spoilers. I had no idea of the genre or the ending. I just started watching it without so much thought. Maybe that’s why I’m shocked that it turned out good— because a show has to outsmart me for me to be mesmerized, and I was outsmarted at Ryo’s reveal. I will give full credits to Devilman Crybaby for this reveal.)

I’m not gonna lie, I did realize that some of Ryo’s moves were not making sense as I watched the episodes. All I heard before starting the series was that “the blonde guy liked Akira”, so I couldn’t pinpoint why exactly would Ryo put Akira into an extreme risk by letting him be consumed by the strongest devil in the world. I thought that couldn’t be “love”, and that this wasn’t what I expected at all. As the storyline progressed, I started to think that Ryo might have been a devil/devilman in disguise, because he didn’t show any feelings— or he showed a strong lack of empathy to the fucked up events. But that wouldn’t make sense either, because if Ryo had devil powers, he would have saved Akira— or himself— when they needed back-up help from others.

I thought Ryo died in that explosion, then I didn’t even time to think about it because I was progressing what happened to Miki. Oh but then everything made sense. Then we learnt that everything happened to Ryo, either as a punishment or reward, for the second time, so that the God could make him understand things. (At this point in series, maybe they/them pronouns are better for Ryo. Anyway, Ryo referred himself as “watashi”, which can be interpreted gender-neutral. My first language doesn’t even have gender-specific pronouns so I never noticed which pronoun I was using for him until I typed this. Anyway.)

I still think... It was kind of a happy ending for Ryo. From what I understand, the world is put in an endless cycle of time loop— that has occurred twice by now, if you count the number of moons that are pinpointed. Ryo watches the foundation and destruction of devils and humans over and over again. But he finally sheds tears. He finally understands something. To me, it looks like what “God” wanted him to understand.

To be honest, I’m an atheist, so I thought that the “God” they were talking about (such as Miki’s father praying to God) was just a religious belief (hence not fact-proven, so I overlooked it). I didn’t expect God to be an actually existing thing that fucked Ryo’s life up over and over again with those big bright lights. I wasn’t disappointed at the proofs of God in the anime, though, in fact I was impressed; because then Ryo’s story made sense. I just accepted Devilman Crybaby as a mythical story of Satan’s journey and listen ;; I love him so much and I want a sequel where the world starts over and Ryo is proceeding to learn life and universe with his newly-found feelings. I want him to be able to look at the sky and see the rabbit, I— I love him so much, good god.