...IT'S AWFUL. IT'S FUCKING AWFUL. This is yet another entry in the field of Capcom games that got bad adaptations, and...
Look, we all know that Adi Shankar is notorious for making try-hard edgy bastardisations of beloved properties that do well with the cesspit that is the online western animation community, but bomb hard with fans of the established franchise. This is because (even though he produced a Power/Rangers film that poked fun at this idea) he and the writers he hires are afraid of embracing the inherent silliness in the video games he targets and would rather pander with cheap fanservice instead of doing the source justice, cheese and all. And Devil May Cry is a perfect example of this practice.
First, this show is indeed aimed at adults (like you'd expect a Devil May Cry adaptation to be), but it goes about it in a very juvenile, Zack Snyder-ish way, not unlike Shankar's earlier Castlevania shows. It's just "ooh, have these characters utter random swear words like "fuck" and "shit" and have the action scenes be uberviolent for the sake of it". If you look at the Devil May Cry games (the main ones), the only time the F-bomb was dropped was in 5, and it was entirely justified, and the combat in these games, whilst violent, was over the top and stylised. Not here though. We get gratuitous headshots and decapitations up the wazoo and characters utter R-rated swears for the hell of it. It feels more like the botched 2013 reboot by Keiji Inafune and Ninja Theory rather than the actual Devil May Cry series, and just feels forced to avoid embracing the silliness of the source rather than natural.
And speaking of avoiding the inherent silliness of the source, this show shoots itself in the foot by trying to distance itself from the source: The Demon Sword Sparda was being safeguarded by Dante himself in the games (even being his starter weapon in the original), but here it's being stored in a museum and treated as an ancient artefact of destruction rather than a family heirloom. Why do I bring this up? Because it's an introduction to how they treat the games. The show introduces a scientific origin for the demons rather than treating them as fantastical occurrences, they introduce a paranormal protection organisation that rips off the BPRD who protect the world from demons, and the whole premise is a self-serious overarching chosen one plot where Dante and the BPRD knock-off must get the macguffin because the former is the only one capable of saving the world. To say they missed the point would be an understatement.
Devil May Cry the games can best be summed up as "James Bond meets The X-Files by way of Ryuhei Kitamura's Versus": All you need to know is that there's a guy who goes on adventures saving the world from demonic entities who want nothing more than to wipe our smile off our collective faces; and the games also explore themes of nature and nurture with the whole premise from the word "go" being that Dante is a man who embraced both and has accepted his destiny as the Son of Sparda. It gets more pronounced and deeper in Devil May Cry 3, 4 and 5, but since day one, the series has been pure action adventure escapism with a hidden message about embracing our upbringing and heritage. Yes, it's silly. REALLY silly. But when you hear Dante reply to a wounded Phantom asking if he's the Demon Knight Sparda by saying "No! I'm his son, Dante!" or tell the Griffon "FLOCK OFF, FEATHERFACE! Or you can stick around and find out the hard way!", You can't help but grin like a madman.
The games know what they are and they embrace that. Netflix May Cry on the other hand thinks its shit don't stink, and ditches any pretense of having fun with itself and embracing a deliberately whacky source material in favour of carving its own, unoriginal, self-centred, try-hard path. That's why characters cuss and decapitate violently, why there's a special government branch who Dante works with, why they have demons be people who travelled to our dimension rather than creatures who have been here since millennia ago, and why the story is an overarching clichefest rather than an anthology of stories with hints of a grander narrative: It doesn't want to be fun pulp adventure. It wants to be the next Game of Thrones, and do so whilst pandering to fans in the most shallow way (I.E. an emo girl singing Vergil's theme from Devil May Cry 5 or a cameo by Lucia from 2 or even the final scene of episode 1). And it backfires horribly.
So, is there anything I like about it? Well, Reuben Langdon is replaced with Johnny Yong Bosch here as Dante's new voice (said actor best known for his starring role in the second dub of Akira and voicing DMC4 & 5 lead Nero), and I could see him being a great Dante, just not in this show. The animation is okay, and the continuity doesn't change between scenes like it did in a certain other, more infamous Capcom game adaptation... Yeah, that's about it.
So, apologies if this was rambling, I had to get my thoughts on this out. If you like this, knock yourself out, but to me, I'm sorry but this show is shameless, badly written, self-serious tripe. I'm quite thankful that I stopped after this episode, because I don't want to know how they butchered Lady, nor do I want to see what other cringe-inducing fanservice moments they'll pull to try and convince tourists that this is accurate to the game. This show is complete garbage. Absolute garbage. And will this introduce a slew of tourists to the franchise and cause people like me to differentiate between the games and the show when they talk about the former? You betcha.
Look, we all know that Adi Shankar is notorious for making try-hard edgy bastardisations of beloved properties that do well with the cesspit that is the online western animation community, but bomb hard with fans of the established franchise. This is because (even though he produced a Power/Rangers film that poked fun at this idea) he and the writers he hires are afraid of embracing the inherent silliness in the video games he targets and would rather pander with cheap fanservice instead of doing the source justice, cheese and all. And Devil May Cry is a perfect example of this practice.
First, this show is indeed aimed at adults (like you'd expect a Devil May Cry adaptation to be), but it goes about it in a very juvenile, Zack Snyder-ish way, not unlike Shankar's earlier Castlevania shows. It's just "ooh, have these characters utter random swear words like "fuck" and "shit" and have the action scenes be uberviolent for the sake of it". If you look at the Devil May Cry games (the main ones), the only time the F-bomb was dropped was in 5, and it was entirely justified, and the combat in these games, whilst violent, was over the top and stylised. Not here though. We get gratuitous headshots and decapitations up the wazoo and characters utter R-rated swears for the hell of it. It feels more like the botched 2013 reboot by Keiji Inafune and Ninja Theory rather than the actual Devil May Cry series, and just feels forced to avoid embracing the silliness of the source rather than natural.
And speaking of avoiding the inherent silliness of the source, this show shoots itself in the foot by trying to distance itself from the source: The Demon Sword Sparda was being safeguarded by Dante himself in the games (even being his starter weapon in the original), but here it's being stored in a museum and treated as an ancient artefact of destruction rather than a family heirloom. Why do I bring this up? Because it's an introduction to how they treat the games. The show introduces a scientific origin for the demons rather than treating them as fantastical occurrences, they introduce a paranormal protection organisation that rips off the BPRD who protect the world from demons, and the whole premise is a self-serious overarching chosen one plot where Dante and the BPRD knock-off must get the macguffin because the former is the only one capable of saving the world. To say they missed the point would be an understatement.
Devil May Cry the games can best be summed up as "James Bond meets The X-Files by way of Ryuhei Kitamura's Versus": All you need to know is that there's a guy who goes on adventures saving the world from demonic entities who want nothing more than to wipe our smile off our collective faces; and the games also explore themes of nature and nurture with the whole premise from the word "go" being that Dante is a man who embraced both and has accepted his destiny as the Son of Sparda. It gets more pronounced and deeper in Devil May Cry 3, 4 and 5, but since day one, the series has been pure action adventure escapism with a hidden message about embracing our upbringing and heritage. Yes, it's silly. REALLY silly. But when you hear Dante reply to a wounded Phantom asking if he's the Demon Knight Sparda by saying "No! I'm his son, Dante!" or tell the Griffon "FLOCK OFF, FEATHERFACE! Or you can stick around and find out the hard way!", You can't help but grin like a madman.
The games know what they are and they embrace that. Netflix May Cry on the other hand thinks its shit don't stink, and ditches any pretense of having fun with itself and embracing a deliberately whacky source material in favour of carving its own, unoriginal, self-centred, try-hard path. That's why characters cuss and decapitate violently, why there's a special government branch who Dante works with, why they have demons be people who travelled to our dimension rather than creatures who have been here since millennia ago, and why the story is an overarching clichefest rather than an anthology of stories with hints of a grander narrative: It doesn't want to be fun pulp adventure. It wants to be the next Game of Thrones, and do so whilst pandering to fans in the most shallow way (I.E. an emo girl singing Vergil's theme from Devil May Cry 5 or a cameo by Lucia from 2 or even the final scene of episode 1). And it backfires horribly.
So, is there anything I like about it? Well, Reuben Langdon is replaced with Johnny Yong Bosch here as Dante's new voice (said actor best known for his starring role in the second dub of Akira and voicing DMC4 & 5 lead Nero), and I could see him being a great Dante, just not in this show. The animation is okay, and the continuity doesn't change between scenes like it did in a certain other, more infamous Capcom game adaptation... Yeah, that's about it.
So, apologies if this was rambling, I had to get my thoughts on this out. If you like this, knock yourself out, but to me, I'm sorry but this show is shameless, badly written, self-serious tripe. I'm quite thankful that I stopped after this episode, because I don't want to know how they butchered Lady, nor do I want to see what other cringe-inducing fanservice moments they'll pull to try and convince tourists that this is accurate to the game. This show is complete garbage. Absolute garbage. And will this introduce a slew of tourists to the franchise and cause people like me to differentiate between the games and the show when they talk about the former? You betcha.
