Ranked #1528

Devil May Cry

Devil May Cry is a strange anime. It does one thing rather nice but utterly fails in another. I have no idea why or how that happened.

Story? Well, you might as well forget it, since you won't get any for about 9 episodes in a row. Yes, it's almost a slice-of-life series about Dante being cool. That's right, it has pretty much less of a story than the series of video games the setting is actually based on! Furthermore, at several points, you get an impression that some general plot will emerge (it eventually does, but already after you lose all hope for it), but in the very next moment you have your expectations shattered without any back thought. You could probably even watch episodes 2—9 out of order and not notice any substantial difference. For that exact reason, you may not worry about spoilers when discussing this anime, it's impossible to spoil either what is already being obvious from the start, or something that doesn't exist. "4" is a generous mark here, much thanks to the universe created by the game series.

Oh yeah, Dante. As I said before, everything in this show is about Dante and the process of him being cool. He's so cool he transcends the meaning of the word "cool", like the epitome of coolness never seen since the cool came to cool town. He acts cool, he dresses cool, he eats only cool food (pizza, strawberry sundae, beer, nothing else), he has cool overpowered weapons, and even his name is cool. Unsurprisingly, every time he's up for the job, he always manages to do it, usually single-handedly — be it a bike race, gambling, or killing a several-stories-tall demon in a matter of seconds without even appearing to have taken effort in the process. Yet he always fails to complete his primary objective, usually because of some righteous reason. How impossibly cool! And even during that, he appears to be bored by stuff happening around him. Sounds like an excellent mascot for boys and girls raised on MTV and related lifestyle values, hmm? ;)

Even Alucard, who is about the closest character to Dante in both the setting and appearance, has deeper reasons for stuff he is doing (not to mention the existance of character development, which was simply thrown out of the window in DMC). Though I'm not sure, but I think the whole DMC TV series is done as a parody on the Hellsing TV series aired a few years ago. Even the episode names suggest some not-really-hidden self-irony (Showtime!, Stylish!, get the idea?).

The other characters are mainly there to support Dante by contrasting with him or showing how terribly they fail in comparison.
There is Morrison, who is old-fashioned, intelligent and an exemplary gentleman, almost fully opposite to Dante.
There is Patty, who is a cute loli girl whose only sensible role in the series is to provide brief sequences of comic relief, despite the screenplay writer struggling to show her significance. The writer inevitably fails — so hard that I want to pity them.
There is Lady, who is almost as cool as Dante, but still not so; which, however, doesn't prevent her from having more success at making money. But hey, if Dante doesn't do it, it must not be very cool, right?
Also, there is Trish, who is between Lady and Dante on the scale on coolness but is seen much rarely than either.
Lastly, there is that typical small fry demon who looks like a character significant for the plot, although you wouldn't want him to be. Well, he still is. You have to be a man and brace yourself. Or, if you're a woman, become a man and brace yourself too.

I can't say much about picture and sound. They both seem to be fitting and high quality in general, but as for animation, some scenes could have definitely be animated better (better as in actually animated — you'll see what I mean after you watch a few episodes), and the music lacks variety somewhat (almost all of it is mere variations on the three dominant themes). Oh, and if you decide to watch it, get the HD version if possible — it's worth it, if anything.

All in all, DMC is that kind of stuff you would want to watch when you have nothing else to, and you don't want to concern yourself with anything deep at the moment, either. And don't expect anything beyond that, otherwise you'll be disappointed in no time at all. Just get your beverage of choice, a pack of suitable snacks, and turn on your TV/software player. Alternatively, go play Quake 3 deathmatch, which has about the same amount of plot with ten times the amount of action and thrill. read more

If you’ve never heard of Devil May Cry before and are looking for a good action anime, this is not it. If you’re a fan of the video games and want to see more stylish ass-kickery, prepare to be disappointed.

Story: Dante is running his business, performing mundane tasks for clients like demon-slaying, saving the world, the usual. Almost every episode starts and concludes one of Dante’s assigned cases, involving nasty monsters that inevitably end up dead. There is some cheap drama that focuses on a young girl whom Dante saved and a loser demon who wants to become a god, but you’re not seriously here for the plot are you?

Art: The art style is able to create a dark, gothic atmosphere where Dante spills plenty of demon blood. However, it is not enough to keep you tense at all since fight scenes are way too short. Battles involve more talking than fighting and tend to be settled with one stroke (by guess who). There is a significant lack of spectacularly choreographed fight sequences as seen in the games, which will no doubt be a major letdown. Animation quality is only mediocre for when there is actually action. If you're hoping Dante will pull devil trigger, unleash some insane combos, or wield his other devil arms, guess what? He won't!
Oh and yes, Trish and Lady are in this, but they’re drawn rather unattractively. No eye candy here.

Sound: Some heavy rock, some gothic choir tracks, all very forgettable. Seems even the lowliest of demons can speak Japanese. Voice acting and sound effects are acceptable, but nothing noteworthy.

Characters: Here it is, the reason you may be considering this anime: to see Dante kick plenty of ass. And here is also the show’s main failure: Dante is simply overpowered. Yes we know he’s super cool and skilled, but he faces absolutely no challenging adversaries at all. This entire anime is a series of totally one sided fights like I've never seen. Dante spends some time cracking jokes, his opponent says something stupid like “I stand a chance!”, and then Dante proceeds with delivering the pain. Except not in a spectacular, SSSmoking SSSick fashion. More like finishing it with one bullet from Ebony/Ivory or a couple swings of Rebellion. For fans of the games, this is a major kick to the balls and won’t leave you satisfied at all.
Oh, and apparently Dante loves eating strawberry sundaes on sunny afternoons, while getting bossed around by a precocious little girl. Who would've thought.

Enjoyment: I loved the video games for their dramatic fight sequences, challenging bosses, cheesy humor and impossible physics. What the anime tries to duplicate, it does so without success. Dante is not so much kicking ass in this show as he is absentmindedly swatting flies. Your time would be better spent trying/ replaying the DMC video games. Except DMC2, let’s just forget that ever existed.

5/10
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Overall the Devil May Cry anime was pretty good. It's 12 episodes long. The animation and sound are good and it has action and humor. Many of the episodes look like one shots but everything is linked in the end. It won't confuse people who have not played the game and it won't bore those who have.

My criticism is that some of the action scenes are little cut. Dante starts fighting and a few seconds later fast forward, he's at home after winning the battle.

Another thing isn't really a critic as much as an observation, but I noticed after watching some game videos that anime Dante is more serious then game Dante. Sure he still loves pizza and strawberry sundaes, and he's still cocky and confident, and a little cheesy; but game Dante is cheesier, louder and more cheerful. I'm not saying anime Dante is an emo, far from it, he's just quiet, practically never smiles and he takes a lot of naps. While game Dante would say "This party's getting crazy! :D" and proceed to beat up the bad guys while eating pizza, I honestly can't imagine anime Dante saying such a line. Fighting while eating pizza and being cocky yes, but he would instead say with a serious face "it gets R rated from here."

As for what's new in the anime. You'll get some more information about Dante's past and certain characters who have appeared in different games will finally meet. You'll also see Dante in his day to day life. My favorites are episodes 5, 9 and 12. read more

This 12-episode anime was produced by Mad House, who had a hand in shows like Death Note, Hellsing, Chobits, etc.

So what went so @#%& WRONG?! Come on, people, you have 3 games, 2 books, and 2 manga volumes worth of background to draw on and you give us Dante playing... death poker?? Are you @#%& kidding me??

The series has one story per episode for the first 10 episodes, and only develops a coherent plot in 11 and 12. The stories are boring, the action is practically nonexistent, and Dante is more of a cameo than the main character.

Who the hell is the target audience here?? DMC demons do not haunt the world like ghosts and manipulate people from the sidelines. They drop down from portals and immediately get in your face with claws and lasers! But there's barely 10 seconds of action per episode, and crappy action at that.

Most of it involved Dante shooting something in the head. If anything interesting does happen, it happens offscreen and is never explained.
How do you get that from a gaming franchise built on outlandishly stylish fighting?? By the way, Dante hardly talks and has no attitude. Yeah, out of DMC1 and DMC3 they picked DMC2 zombie-Dante. And whose idea was it to make Dante babysit an annoying little girl?? Ugh...


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Basically, Devil May Cry is about a half demon half human who takes on a job as a Demon Hunter. If you love shiny guns, motorcycles, blood and shiny swords, this may be the anime for you.

Story: (6/10)
The story isn't really bad. It has the right materials which are pretty substantial. In other words, the background of the story was great! It's very interesting; European setting, demons, Demon Hunter and so on. But then, the materials weren't used properly. So the story flow became really dull. The story development wasn't really visible. It was only until the 11th episode that the climax was drawn. And as soon as you're finally enjoying the climax, you suddenly get lost because the series has already ended. Personally, I think that the series was simply too rushed. I believe this would have been a better series if the story was more developed.

Art: (9/10)
The drawings are good. The proportions are great. But what I love most about this anime are the shiny guns, Dante's sword, some motorcycle scenes and the bloody scenes. Graphics' really good. The art complemented with the story and the atmosphere it was trying to give off.

Sound: (5/10)
Sorry to say, I did not notice the sound at all. I only heard the gunshots and the dubs. Maybe it was part of the main idea of the story. But I think that more sounds would help define the atmosphere. That aside, I did NOT enjoy the OP and ED at all.

Character: (6/10)
The characters are interesting, but they were not developed well. The same comment as the story. They good materials but were not used well. For one thing, Dante's father and mother could have been given some light, but they weren't.The other two female characters, Lady and the girl that could use thunder could have also been given some emphasis. Simply put, there were not enough interesting flashbacks for the viewers to sympathize are empathize with.

Enjoyment: (8/10)
Well, it was funny and action packed. Again, you'll really enjoy this if you love guns and blood.

Overall: (7/10)
Though the story and characters were underdeveloped, the anime's decently enjoyable. read more

Story (6) - Well, to avaluate devil may cry in this aspect is a bit hard..if we look at the anime it has almost no relation between episodes, and thats a negative point. Well, there are some connections, but the way the story goes is not directly connected, it is like each episode has is own story. By the story of all anime i give a 3. But i think each episode story is well made, so i give a 8 as an average of each episode story.
(3+8)/2=5,5=6. If you like anime with good story, from the first episode to the last one, this is not your kind of anime. I personally dont mind, and im opening for different kind of stories.

Art (7) - Art is good, but nothing special in my opinion. Sometime it could be better, but is fine anyways, this is neither the strongest point neather the weakest.

Sound (10) - When i watched Dmc the first thing that got my attention was the opening..i liked it. Besides, character voices are good, the ending is also something great, background music is also nice. I have nothing negative to say about this aspect, so 10.

Character (8) - Dante is great, and his personality is well made. Some other suportt characters are also nice, but there are some that are not good at all. I think besides dante and 1 or 2 more, the rest is not anything special.

Enjoyment (9) - I will only say this. i watched the first episode, and became interested in watching, and this is always a good aspect. I saw all the episodes really fast, and believe me, that is rare for me, because if it is nothing special i take more time to see all the episodes.

Overall (8) - I agree when people says that devil may cry is nothing special, i already saw much better, but i cant say it is horrible, because it isnt. Its a fine and entretaining show, not the best, but good enough to be worth of watching. read more

Can you name a single video game that was turned into a movie that wasn't an extremely terrible film that failed in all regards? Now can you name a good videogame that was turned into an anime that wasn't terrible? Alright...you can probably name a whole bunch, alot from the choose-your-own-adventure genres. However Devil May Cry is more like a terrible video game movie. If you've ever played, or seen someone play, Devil May Cry then you know the style of the game quite well. The quality and feel of the anime is nothing like that of the original videogame.

Story: Lame. That single, bland word perfectly describes the storyline of this anime. I wonder sometimes what the storywriters were thinking when they sat down to write this anime. They clearly didn't put any heart or soul into this, and I hope that they had other projects that they deemed more important than this. The real storyline begins in about episode 4-5. When you have 12 episodes to tell a story in, and you spend the first third of the anime doing self contained episodes you know that you're off to a terrible start. Even the story that they decide to throw in is terrible and quickly forgettable.

Art: Some people praise the art, I however find it terrible to anything it tries to do. The art is very clunky, the people seem to be squares and triangles and circles thrown together, the fluidity of the people is nonexistant. Anyone who's seen the game knows what Dante looks like, and in the anime version he loses everything that makes him so cool in the game. I got a very generic feeling from the art, it didn't seem that they were taking any risks, they were just doing the same old things over and over and the art seemed really stale.

Sound: The sound is good, the effects are good, the music is good. I believe with almost absolute certainty that they took a lot of the music from the game itself and I found it was the single thing that I was connecting with as I watched with.

Character: On the outside Dante is a badass. A pizza-eating, Strawberry Sundae drinking badass. And on the inside? Well...he's a badass. And he's lazy. He will beat up anyone, especially demons, because they piss him off. And while he's exorcising the demons and doing whatever it is he does he doesn't seem to care at all. Cause nothing is more badass than killing bad guys while not seeming to care about it at all. Now....as the writers sat down they must have thought "hmm...how exactly do we make a better anime when the main character is a rude, pizza-eating badass?" and some guy went "OH! MY! GOD! We add....a CUTE LITTLE GIRL! Who talks a lot and is a central part of the storyline so basically Dante is forced to stick beside her...people will LOVE IT!" However...it doesn't work because it's been done a thousand times before, and it was original 10 years ago....and it was fresh then too. But now it's not. They also throw in characters from the games, but it feels forced and is quite annoying for anyone who's played the games.

Enjoyment: Honestly, after episode 4 I stopped paying attention at all. I really, really didn't care after episode 6. After episode 8 I could barely sit through each episode. So I can honestly say that I didn't enjoy this anime at all. At all.

I wouldn't really recommend this to anyone who enjoys the game series. It's such a huge disappointment if you're expecting it to be the game. However some people might really enjoy this anime, however I've never met anyone who enjoyed it. The only good point is that it's only 12 episodes, so even if you hate it it's only 4 hours of your life....that you'll never get back. read more

Story - The overall story left me wanting a bit more depth. It is borderline slice-of-life action, A wired combination and it doesn't work all that well in my opinion. There seems to be no plot going on throughout the first few episodes however the plot slowly develops a very tiny bit per episode until it reaches its climax in episode 11/12. the overall story had me a little bored however the last few episodes were some of the best anime I have ever seen. They were tense on the edge action and it is a great reward for sticking through the slow storyline.

Art - The art is amazing. Defiantly something that should be admired. the art really adds to the level of depth and helps indulge the watcher in Dante's world.

Sound - Although a little repetitive at times the sound fits the anime quite well. The OP is amazing, It also has a very small role in the anime which really made me smile - I don't want to reveal too much but its usage in the last episode is amazing. The ED is almost engrish, the words change frequently which was a bit strange but the overall feel of the ED was a nice way to wind down after an action packed anime.

Enjoyment - I didn't enjoy quite a few of the episodes however the last two episodes really redeemed the show. There are ups and downs and, as I have said before, everything comes together in the last few episodes.

Overall - Overall I liked this anime, the last episodes are amazing whilst the middle episodes (3-9) are quite boring however worth watching to see the very high tension ending. read more

At the time of my writing this review, I have attempted to watch past the first episode of the Devil May Cry anime four times. After I completerd the first episode I decided to leave it for a while, hoping that one day I would be in the mood for a stylish but brainless anime. Months later... I have realised this will not happen.

The story - or lack thereof - is disgusting. Fair enough, the DMC series never was known for its plot lines, but there is a huge difference between playing and watching (which is highlighted particularly by this anime). I actually had to force myself to finish the first episode. There was a basic 'transport this girl to this place' thing going on... punctuated by a bunch of demons popping up and almost killing someone, before Dante appeared out of nowhere and killed them EVERY SINGLE TIME. There was no character development either... just a stereotypically cool Dante doing all the stylish stuff we could make him do in the games. The sound was predictable and boring - Dante listens to hard rock because he's awesome; we get it.

The one thing this anime does have going for it is the art. It is relatively well-presented and ultra-stylish. That really doesn't make up for how remarkably poor every other aspect of it is.

In all honesty, I wish that I had discovered this anime somewhere in the middle of puberty, when I might actually have been content to kill brain cells by watching a guy shoot monsters over and over and over again. This is the only anime that I have abandoned to date. Steer clear. read more

I finished watching the whole series last night. DMC was simply awesome!

I was looking for an anime that is shonen or seinen with a genre of action and with top priority on cool graphics - so I picked Devil May Cry with a lot of hesitations.

I also thought I would never watched this kind of anime because I was tired with so detailed-like graphics and animation TV series I used to watch back then. But then again I thought, I'll give it a try. Man, I was wrong! I was hooked up right after I watched the first episode.

I'll break down my thoughts on the anime without giving spoilers (hopefully). :)

Art:

When I watched the first episode, I said, "WOW!". The graphics left me in awe with nicely drawn characters and backgrounds. Colors used were also great - with Dante in red dress and white-grey hair of which I thought before was boring if this is his "uniform" but then again, I was wrong if you’re caught up with the story.

I give the art as 10/10.

Sound:

The OP soundtrack was superb and in sync with (flashes of) characters in their little scene. I did not read that entire lyrics of the ED soundtrack but the melody was nice.

Sound effects were also superb.

Overall, sound is top-notch and I give it 10/10.

Story:

I like how the anime story was somewhat divided per episode but each ep was connected in reaching to the climax. I really like the last episode. It left me smiling after watching it. I like to watch more of this anime!

I also like the fact that they employ humor in the story for the main character; though humors here are little as this anime focus on serious action.

Why it's not 10? Maybe because it's a short series and I would like watch more about the main character's development as he is in the anime.

It's 9/10 for me.

Character:

I say the main characters were cool with cool moves and were nicely drawn. I even found Dante sexy. Now, don’t get me wrong. :D His moves were cool and sexy especially with his guns and sword. The lead female characters were also pretty cool and sexy.

I give them 10/10.

Enjoyment:

The entire series is a total enjoyment for me. Pretty cool characters and their moves with top notch graphics to go with. Story is not so intricate for me but it also gives mysteries which were unfolded in the climax.

I totally enjoyed this anime, so it’s 10/10. 2 thumbs up!

I highly recommend this to those who look for action anime with very nice graphics, cool characters, superb sound, and story in one package.

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