Devil May Cry is a series of “character action” games known for its relative high ceiling of difficulty, depth of combat, and larger than life cast of characters. Its lead, Dante is a demon hunter, armed with a long sword named “Rebellion”, his trusty handguns “Ebony and Ivory”, and wit more dangerous than the weapons. Dante stylishly saves the world one cataclysmic event at time; building himself a small chosen family made up of other misfits he meets.
Stylish action is the main focus of the games, but the stories told between that action are often times heartwarming and give us a reason for pushing the buttons in the first place. The cast bond over their shared love of stylishly dispatching hordes of demons, and shared penchant for family drama. Sincerity is the word that comes to mind. One chapter will have Dante inch his face towards a spinning blade to shave his old man stubble, the next will have a young girl kill her father in vengeance for the murder of her mother, after that you’ll explosively uppercut a Cerberus for daring to be on your screen.
The games think all of these things are cool, the games want you to think these things are cool and the games are unambiguously correct, these things are indeed cool. But this isn’t about the Devil May Cry games, unfortunately. This is about a gruesome and depraved attempted murder.
Adi Shankar has ripped the heart from Devil May Cry’s chest.
I cannot overstate there has been an extreme misunderstanding of the source material by Creator, Showrunner, Executive Producer, and Writer of Netflix’s Devil May Cry, Adi Shankar. A thick layer of cynicism covers all traces of heart. Irony consumes all sincerity. Adi Shankar’s anime adaptation seems to be trying to philosophically murder Devil May Cry.
The show clearly wants to tell the story of how Dante (Johnny Yong Bosch) became a legendary demon hunter, but that’s far less interesting than Dante being the legendary demon hunter. It’s perfectly fine to even have Dante fail, or look foolish, but that is all Shankar’s Dante is doing. Constantly pointing out how awkward and silly it is that Dante just can’t seem to think of a funny one-liner is a disappointing and repetitive sign of how off-target the show is.
Devil May Cry loses the plot quickly.
In reality, Shankar’s Devil May Cry is about a soldier named Mary Ann Arkham (Scout Taylor-Compton), the anime’s version of the character Lady from Devil May Cry 3. Lieutenant Mary Ann Arkham is tasked by her theocratic government with retrieving secondary character Dante’s necklace because it’s a tiny quantum computer containing half the signal that maintains a barrier separating the Human and Demon worlds. Things heat up quickly as the anime’s antagonist for the season, White Rabbit (Hoon Lee) is also after Dante’s necklace so he can use it to deactivate the quantum barrier to The Demon World, unleashing hordes of demons into the human world and reap a nihilistic vengeance.
Mary and White Rabbit play games of “Cat and Mouse” and “Monkey in the Middle” with the necklace while poor Dante is left to awkwardly quip and play Dance Dance Revolution. Eventually a laser beam is shooting into the sky from the roof of the World Trade Center that’s opening a portal while the bad guy rampages as a newly mutated monster. It has notes of David Ayer’s take on Suicide Squad.
Losing the magic.
Shankar has decided there is no magic in Devil May Cryy, and that the demons are just intrinsically gifted in the science of Quantum Mechanics. It’s entirely superfluous when the game’s explanation for the supernatural works perfectly: they’re demons that use magic. Some demons use elemental magic like the giant Lava-Tarantula-Scorpion Demon “Phantom” from Devil May Cry 1. Other demons can have more esoteric abilities such as the demon horse Geryon from Devil May Cry 3 being able to stop time. Dante can use weapons made from these powerful demons called “Devil Arms”, something unused in the anime. He can also activate his “Devil Trigger” and temporarily transform into a full demon.
The anime doesn’t have Dante turning any demons into weapons, but it does have him use his Devil Trigger a few times. It is amusing to imagine Dante, who can’t even piece together that he’s part demon after instantly healing a point-blank shotgun blast to the chest, using quantum mechanics to transform demons into weapons.
Where’s the SSStyle?.
The main appeal of the games is the fast-paced, combo-based, combat system. The games give you a letter grade starting with “D” at the lowest and “SSS” at the highest. Landing consecutive hits, being creative with weapons and moves, and skillfully dodging damage will raise your grade. At a certain level of skill, your foes are a canvas you paint masterpieces on with buttons. Bosses become beautiful dances of blade, bullet, and robot arm. There’s immense joy in swinging a sword containing a motorcycle engine into evil scythe wielding abomination while industrial metal shouts the silly anime phrase, “PULL MY DEVIL TRIGGER!”
So then, where’s the style?
It’s unfortunate to report that Dante’s inability to quip carries over to his ability to style. Fighting demons on the back of a motorcycle and rescuing hostages from falling airplane wreckage are indeed concepts that fit well within the Devil May Cry canon, but they become tedious when Dante is simply more willing to quip than to show-off. Dante rarely uses anything outside his sword and pistols, and most fights don’t make use of their environment for him to hop around.
Dead air.
The anime doesn’t have Dante dip into his extensive and iconic move list for any of the fights, so most bouts boil down to Dante does some dodges, shoots his guns until the script runs out of bullets, swing his sword, then ultimately lose. He never even uses his sword and guns in tandem, it’s always one or the other, never both at the same time. Sword play is bare bones as well, Dante will stab and swing and clash, but he won’t employ his acrobatics to do so. It makes little sense to adapt a property with such an extensive and deep combat system only to not leverage that in fight choreography.
The only exception is an early fight against mercenary goons in the first episode, which is a very good adaptation of one of the earliest fights in Devil May Cry 3. A grinning Dante launches a 10-ball break at some goons, does kicks off a wall to back flip over a ludicrous amount of bullets, only to appear next to the goons and cheekily ask “Who are we shootin’ at?” He even spin kicks a full assault rifle magazine into the face of a goon while Rage Against the Machine’s “Guerilla Radio” plays. It’s equal parts Jackie Chan and Bugs Bunny, this is what Devil May Cry needs to be doing more of, but refuses to.
Mary Ann does Devil May Cry no favors.
Mary Ann is the biggest problem with the show, but it has nothing to do with Taylor-Compton’s acting. The extreme rage is convincing, but absolutely undercut by a distractingly heavy use of profanity and anti-demon racism. Egregious profanity is how we know Mary Ann is strong, the anti-demon slurs she invents (‘Hellblood’ goes hard, not going to lie) tells us she’s truly dedicated in her mission to “secure a world for our species.” One notable moment is when she is haughtily confronting a demon disguised as a human. She describes the demon as “un-evolved” and tells the audience that demons’ “facial features are too far apart, like they haven’t evolved all the way.” You can guess where this goes.
The show turns the confused and angry yet still hopeful and empathetic Lady into Mary, a theocratic Nazi that eventually builds a concentration camp. It’s in extremely poor taste, and Shankar does not demonstrate that he can competently tackle such complex topics. Topics that are wholly unnecessary in the first place for this franchise, mind you. It is breathtaking in its audacity to ask the audience to have the grace to suffer this identity crisis.
A glimmer of artistic hope.
One episode does try to make sense of all these departures from the source material. The sixth episode, “The First Circle” tells the parallel backstories of Mary Ann Arkham and season villain White Rabbit. Two distinct art styles depict to the two character’s differing world view.
Mary’s family tragedy that ultimately leads her to immolate her own father is shown to us with a monochromatic pallet and a sketchy, cross-hatched style. The sharp angles making reality stark and rigid. The bright orange of flame and profound red of blood accents Mary’s black-and-white philosophy as she leaves behind childhood and soars through the ranks of the anti-demon militia Dark Com.
Meanwhile, White Rabbit’s sepia colored world becomes awash with color after he wanders through a portal into the demon world. The lines are rounded with very few sharp edges and thicker outlines. Life is full of curiosity and wonder. Touching shots of our would-be villain sleeping together with his new found family illuminated in deep blues by cave crystals contrast the violent red architecture and sickly green skies of the oppressive demonic overlords tormenting the less fortunate.
Insert tragic backstory here.
Wordlessly, the two characters grow into adulthood, and we see their parallel journeys intercut with each other to provide contrast and context to their characters. While Mary is playing “Cops and Robbers” with her brother, White Rabbit is tending to his ill chosen-sibling. Both of them are doomed to die. We watch them inch closer and closer to that fateful night when the aesthetics and philosophies finally meet.
White Rabbit and his fellow refugees are fleeing from a monstrous demon and escape through a portal. The portal leads to a warehouse currently inhabited by Lieutenant Mary Ann Arkham and her fellow Dark Com soldiers. Dark Com opens fire and the monstrous demon bursts through the portal. When White Rabbit comes to, he sees the results of the massacre and instantly suffers a mental break.
There is enough great storytelling, artwork, animation, and direction in this particular episode that it warrants a specific mention. It is a shame that so much motivation and context is shoved into a single episode. However, these tragedies do not fit the tone of the games’ more forward looking characters. Many games being adapted right now enjoy the tragic backstory, such as The Last of Us, but Devil May Cry is not that kind of game. Compressing all of this into one episode means it does not fit the rest of the show’s dismissive tone, either.
Dismal.
The Netflix adaptation of Devil May Cry fails to deliver on the style, it goes out of its way to misunderstand its characters, and lacks any of the games’ sincerity. Dante doesn’t shout “woo-hoo!” as he leaps through a truck, he scowls angrily. He doesn’t feel excitement and elation at his own performance in killing demons, he feels anger and hatred.
Lieutenant Mary Ann Arkham feels anger and hatred. White Rabbit feels anger and hatred. Shankar decided that whimsy, joy, and excitement shouldn’t exist in Devil May Cry, and that instead we should be laughing at Dante instead of laughing with Dante. The series possesses a nihilistic need to strip the identity of the franchise in favor of a cynical reconstruction.
Why?
Maybe it was hot the day Shankar wrote it.
Devil May Cry Season 1 is available now on Netflix.
Images courtesy of Netflix.
Ghost of hype yet to come
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