DVD Review- Devil May Cry: Volume 3
Rating: 
There are two ways to make me like an anime. One is to give it a good story and complex characters. The other is to make it as bloody and violent as possible, and maybe add a bunch of sex. I went into Devil May Cry expecting the second option, but instead I got…well, not the first option either.
I admit, I knew almost nothing about DMC when I started watching volume three of the anime series. I was aware the show was based on a series of popular video games and that the main character was named Dante and was some sort of demon-slayer (and that he shows up in a lot of yaoi fanart on the Internet). Demon-slaying + animation by Madhouse; can you blame me for my assumptions?
Despite my ignorance, I quickly figured things out after only watching the series’ last four episodes (volume three). Many years before the story opens, humans and demons fought a war that ended with the demons being expelled from the human world. Humanity only won thanks to Sparta, a demon general who sided with the humans. Today, demons are (mostly) contained in the demon realm, where the traitor general is reviled, while Sparta is revered by mankind as a hero.
This doesn’t make things easy for Dante, Sparta’s son. Dante lives in the human world and is the proprietor of an ‘odd-job’ shop (you know, the sort of business that would never survive in the real world but which abounds in anime) called Devil May Cry. Most of Dante’s business comes from people who are being plagued by various sorts of demons; it seems some of the sneaky buggers can slip across the border into the human world. Luckily Dante’s heritage leaves him well-equipped to take down even the toughest demons. And he’s lemon-scented to boot!
This sort of character sounds like a loner, but somewhere along the way Dante has picked up an entourage; he works with a man named Morrison, and an orphan girl, Patty, likes to hang around Devil May Cry for some reason. Two female bounty hunters also show up a lot. One is a demon who works against other demons, while the other, Lady, is someone Dante apparently owes a lot of money.
Episode eight concerns a famous, mysterious gambler. No one knows who ‘King’ or even what he/she looks like, but there’s a rumor that King is a demon who kills his/her poker game opponents when they lose. Dante is hired by a woman whose husband is a gambling addict and whose next poker game is with King. Dante joins the game to figure out King’s identity. He sucks at poker, but he’s good at killing demons, so when King reveals himself (in a totally shocking…no wait, you’ll see it coming from a mile away), he comes out on top.
In the next episode, two demon brothers who trained under Sparta arrive in the human world with very different agendas. This episode introduces (or re-introduces, I’m guessing) a behind-the-scenes player from the demon realm who is manipulating everyone to his benefit.
The series’ last two episodes deal with a woman who wants Dante to hang onto her family heirloom, a pendant that attracts demons. What she fails to mention is that demons are attracted to the pendant because it contains the power to awaken a demon with incredible strength who was sealed away by Sparta years before. A demon named… Abigail.
Yes, Abigail.
Anyway, the woman has a connection to Patty, and Dante takes on the demon, and there is lots of killing. But not enough to save the series in my eyes.
One problem with Devil May Cry is that Madhouse couldn’t go all out as it did with Ninja Scroll or Highlander: The Search for Vengeance, probably because of television censorship. DMC is quite stylish and quite violent, but you get the feeling the Madhouse animators were being reined in. They’re usually a pretty creative bunch, but there’s not much you can do with guns and swords that hasn’t been done before, and alternative weapons are woefully absent.
I could forgive the lack of violence if DMC had an interesting story, but that’s another problem with the series- it’s not terribly engaging. There must be a ‘stylish demon slayer anime’ paint-by-numbers kit somewhere, cobbled together from a couple dozen 1980’s anime films (most of them, oddly enough, made by Madhouse), and that’s how the creators of DMC wrote the story. Human-demon war? Check. Child of a supernatural creature? Check. Hot human woman? Check. Hot demon woman? Check. Annoying kid? Oh, God, check.
While I may have missed out on a ton of character development from earlier in the show, somehow I doubt it. DMC’s characters are as flat as if they were 2-D drawings…wait, they are! The writers seem to think giving Dante a few quirks (for instance, he survives mainly on pizza and ice cream) counts as character development. But they’re wrong. I continually found myself wondering why Morrison and Patty hung around this guy so much, because he is boring. But then, they’re boring too, so maybe they’re comfortable with that.
As much as I’m bashing Devil May Cry, it does have its good points. One, predictably, is the Madhouse’s distinctive character designs, far removed from the huge eyes and tiny mouths of other artists. Madhouse characters, both male and female, look hard and craggy. Patty is the single exception here; she’s 4chan Lolicon bait in her frilly short dresses and headbands. The animation is crisp and fluid (though, in one rather hilarious continuity error in episode eleven, a diner waitress serves Dante a pizza, which has mysteriously morphed into a sundae when he stands up two minutes later).
The music, especially the opening and ending themes, is another highlight of the show. The opening song is orchestral and makes the show seem much cooler than it is. The ending theme is one of those sad, slow love songs that are so popular with action animes (though no one in this show seems to have a lover, or to have lost a lover. Whatever, it’s a nice song).
The voice actors in both the sub and the dub aren’t bad; I was unreasonably thrilled to hear both Akio Otsuka Atsuko Tanaka (Batou and the Major from Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex, respectively) as Morrison and Lady.
In summary, Devil May Cry is a disappointment. It’s a series that wants to be two different things, and succeeds at neither. Fans of the games may be interested in its novelty, but most viewers should just give it a miss.
Details
Publisher: Funnimation
Director: Shin Itagaki
Stars: 2
Running Time: 100 Minutes
MPAA Rating: N/A
MSRP: $29.98
Release Date: 10/07/2008
Buy:
If you enjoyed this post, please consider to leave a comment or subscribe to the feed and get future articles delivered to your feed reader.
Comments
No comments yet.
Leave a comment