The series is written by Yōsuke Kuroda, produced by Sunrise, and directed by Gorō Taniguchi, with music composed by Kōtarō Nakagawa.

A manga adaptation of s-CRY-ed, drawn by Yasunari Toda, was serialized in Akita Shoten's Weekly Shōnen Champion.

s-CRY-ed has been popular in Japan, often appearing on polls taken by Japanese magazines, and once took third place in the Anime Grand Prix awards.

The series takes place several years after "The Great Uprising", a powerful geological events which occurred in Kanagawa Prefecture near Tokyo, dividing the city in two parts: The "Lost Ground" and the "Mainland".

Alongside this disaster, many people in the Lost Ground began to develop a power known as "Alter", granting them the ability to create weapons with supernatural properties.

Both Kazuma and Ryuho are believed to have died following this event when, in actually, the former goes into hiding in an underground fighting circuit whilst the latter ends up suffering from amnesia.

Meanwhile, Ryuho manages to recover his lost memories whilst protecting Natives from HOLY agents, ultimately leading to him becoming an ally of Kazuma.

The Mainland sends one of its best agents, Kyouji Mujo, to the Lost Ground in an attempt to exploit the power of the parallel universe for economic gain.

However, Mujo develops delusions of grandeur after becoming the de facto head of the Lost Ground government and absorbing the Crystal entity from "the other side" to add to his already formidable Alter power.

Both he and Crystal are defeated by the separate efforts of Kazuma and Ryuho respectively, as both increase their Alter powers by taking energy from the parallel world.

In an epilogue, taking place years later, they remain the protectors of the Lost Ground and defend it from Mainland invaders; meanwhile, an older Kanami awaits their return.

With the storyline beginning in the early 21st century, Taniguchi said the cast would already have adapted to the new times allowing s-CRY-ed to take more themes from Infinite Ryvius.

Combined as "s-CRY-ed" the Sunrise studio staff wanted it to express the idea of how people react or interact when they are in their most natural state.

They had devised the word when the project was in its early phases of production, and while it was meant to be a temporary name, the staff ended up using it as the title.

[9] Starting in 2003, they released the show in North America as six individual Region 1 volumes, followed by a complete six-disc box set in November 2004.

[17][18][19] Following the 2012 closure of Bandai Entertainment, Sunrise announced at Otakon 2013, that Sentai Filmworks had rescued s-CRY-ed, along with a handful of other former BEI titles.

[24] For the first twenty-five episodes the opening and ending theme songs are "Reckless Fire" by Yasuaki Ide and "Drastic My Soul" by Mikio Sakai, respectively.

[37] A manga of the series written by Yōsuke Kuroda and illustrated by Yasunari Toda was published in the magazine Weekly Shōnen Champion between October 4, 2001, and June 20, 2002.

[39][40] Additionally, a light novel series was written by Kazuho Hyodo and illustrated by Hisashi Hirai and published by Dengeki Bunko.

DVD Verdict's Mac McEntire said that while the first volume lacked depth, its action scenes made the series as well as its characters appealing despite their tendency to shout their attacks.

[51] While agreeing with Reid about the plot (to the point of comparing Kazuma to Han Solo from the Star Wars franchise due to their anti-heroic traits), Anime News Network's Zac Bertschy disliked the English dub.

[1] Bryan Morton of Mania Beyond Entertainment found the morality of some characters, such as Ryuho, who has several reasons for his cold personality such as his quest for revenge, interesting.

[53] Danielle D'Ornellas of Animefringe noted how many characters the anime covered, including both the protagonists and the antagonists, forcing viewers to pick which side they should root for.

[55] Justin Rich of Mania noted how similar both Kazuma and Ryuho became across the series with the exception of their upbringings and commented they still keep clashing every time they meet.

Thompson found it similar to Jojo's Bizarre Adventure based on the "enjoyably weird, exaggerated" art which is also one of the series' main appeal.