Devil May Cry, the Anime review
Disclaimer: Massive spoilers ahead, not for just this anime, but just about anything with Devil May Cry attached to it. You have been warned.
Ladies and Gentleman, Vain Ziler reporting in! Today we will be looking at Devil May Cry, the anime! Set within the continuity of the game series, Devil May Cry continues Dante’s adventures after the first game, with the demon hunter running his mercenary shop known as ‘Devil May Cry’. For the most part, he’ll take any job that’s handed to him, so long as it pays well, however he makes it a priority to take on missions in which demons are involved. To help him find work, Dante employs a manager known as Morrison, who’s a rather calm and collected foil to Dante’s wild and brash nature. But everything changes when Dante is charged with guarding a little girl named Patty Lowell.
Story: This 12 episode anime follows the ‘monster of the week’, formula. Usually Morrison, or Lady and Trish from the original games will come to Dante, asking for his assistance on a mission and he’ll go out and dish out a beating on some baddies. It rarely ever gets deeper than that, with the exceptions being episode 8 which reflects a bit on Dante’s past, and the last 2 episodes which amount to a two part finale.
Characters: The cast of Devil May Cry aren’t exactly what I’d call the deepest; just about everyone from Morrison to Lady conveys one or two personality traits and sticks to them. This is primarily because not a whole of time is given to develop any characters beyond Dante, and to a lesser extent, Patty. We’re not even given any real background on most of the characters; Dante and Lady explain to Patty that they’ve worked together in the past, Trish says all of two sentences about her and Dante, which is really only her complaining about how he hasn’t changed his eating and health habits, and we learn nothing about Morrison other than the fact that he, for some reason, has connections with people who need help killing demons and that he used to repair T.V.’s. On the flip side, all of episode 1 is dedicated to setting up Patty’s history and her as a character, with small changes and further background information popping up from time to time. Dante makes small comments here and there about his beliefs and past, and he only gets 2 episodes to really delve into him as a character. This isn’t a big issue if you’ve played the games, because you already know most of these characters, but if you’re walking into this anime with fresh eyes, you’re going to have no reason to get attached to or care about most of the characters.
Presentation: The animation in Devil May Cry is a mixed bag. The style itself is contrasts dark and bright themes perfectly, but the actual coloring of the animation is so glossy that it looks like someone buffed the show with car wax. Some may like this kind of art, but personally I find it distracting. The action scenes, which should be one of the main draws to a Devil May Cry anime are abysmally boring; not a single time throughout the entire series, does ANYONE ever pose a threat to Dante. Most fights are over in a single sword slice or a couple bursts from Ebony and Ivory. In fact, the only fight that had any real tension, and that was the most fun to watch, was the fight between Lady and Trish in a church in the episode that they first meet. That’s unacceptable.
On a lighter note, I love the voice acting. While some may find Patty’s voice shrill and annoying, which yea, it is, it’s still very fitting for her character. The soundtrack is also fantastic, getting you pumped for the action, despite the action failing to deliver.
Important Notes: Devil May Cry is not an anime you can go into blindly. This is something that was made with pre-established fans in mind, and even then there’s parts of it that wont make sense. Sure, if you’ve played the games, you’ll have an idea about the characters and story. But unless you’re among the few that were hardcore enough fans to have read the books, like I have, you’ll find yourself completely dumbfounded by episode 8. Which, I should probably explain real quick, so yea, spoilers ahead, all ye who enter.
Back in the day, Capcom commissioned books to be made, in order to fill the story gaps between Devil May Cry’s 1, and 2. The first book, simply titled Devil May Cry, takes place before the first game and tells the story of Tony Red grave, a mercenary with inhuman strength and reflexes. He’s the most respected and feared mercenary among a guild of mercenaries that work in a rather dark town. But things begin to get weird for Tony when he and his only real friend, Grue, encounter demons while on a mission, which begins to trigger memories for Tony that were long since buried. Not only that, but a new mercenary shows up to town, dawning only a sword and cloaking himself in bandages, the man is known only as Gilver. And with Gilver around, even more demon occurrences begin to arise.
This book, and the second book (which is set after Devil May Cry 1) were considered cannon during their release. In fact, they were pretty much cannon up until Devil May Cry 3, and the manga series. Why is this important? Because the books, primarily the first one, gave something that the games had a hard time doing, giving Dante depth. Again, spoilers, but Tony Redgrave was Dante with memory loss, and when his memory comes back to him is when the town, and the people he’s come to know and love are destroyed and pillaged by demons, with the book ending in a climatic fight between Dante and Gilver, who is revealed to be his brother, Vergil, who also lost his memory, but before he was under total mind control and stuck in his Neo Angelo state in DMC 1. We got to see Dante really interact with people, and grow and mature as a person. Not only that, we got to see one of the most interesting things about Dante, the origin of his guns, Ebony and Ivory. One of the main plot points the first book brings up is due to Tony’s unnatural strength and reflexes, he’s pushing every gun he uses far past their breaking point. He brings them to the local gunsmith, an old woman named Goldstein, who regards Tony like a grandson. Towards the end of the book, she finally finishes work on guns that are able to withstand Tony, and engraved them with his name, as well as their names, Ebony and Ivory.
Again, why did I bring this up? Look at the guns in the Devil May Cry anime. They have ‘Tony Redgrave’ engraved on each barrel. Also, episode 8, which is all about Dante’s childhood, has everyone referring to Dante as ‘Tony’. This was done on purpose, as if to suggest that in some small way, the books are still cannon, or at the very least, still play a role in how the Devil May Cry universe is shaped. I’d recommend giving the books a read, but that’s another review for another time.
Score: With that tangent out of the way, I give Devil May Cry the anime, a C- on the rating scale. The series can be enjoyable, but only if you’re already well versed in the DMC universe. If you’re an anime fan blindly walking into this, you’ll have no idea what is going on, and will never grow any kind of attachment to the characters due to the fact that everyone feels like cardboard. So I can only suggest this series to the more hardcore Devil May Cry fan, which this anime will do a decent job of expanding on the adventures of Dante, without ever growing Dante or anyone for that matter as characters.
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