Devil May Cry (2025) - Where Is The Humanity?
Devil May Cry is a 2025 animated series based on the video game franchise of the same name. The TV series was written by Indian-American film producer Adi Shankar and animated by the South Korean studio Mir. Adi Shankar claims he was approached to write the script by Capcom (game developer) in response to a Devil May Cry cosplay he had worn. Dante's long-time English voice actor was not asked to reprise his role. He was replaced by the game's voice actor for Nero - Dante's nephew.
Opening Song: Rollin' (by Limp Bizkit)
Credits Song: Devils Never Cry (by Evanescence)
* The ending song is an alternate version of a track from Devil May Cry 3.
Spoiler Warning: I am going to give a synopsis of each episode and my opinions at the very end.
Episode 1: Inferno
Vatican Museums are bombed and a sword called "Force Edge" is stolen. Dr. Fisher, a scientist working for the interdimensional security firm DARKCOM, believes that the attacks were carried out by a demon based on video footage and DNA samples collected at the scene. Dr. Fisher convinces the U.S. government that Hell is real and a portal has opened, allowing smaller demons to enter the human realm.
In response, the president has every demon hunter interrogated under torture. The information broker Enzo Ferino, reveals that an anthropomorphic white rabbit is behind everything. The sword - Force Edge, once belonged to the legendary demon Sparda and is what sustained the barrier between worlds. Two parts of an amulet are needed to activate the sword. The Rabbit has one. The demon hunter Dante has the other.
This one scene with the strawberry ice cream is in reference to the 2007 animated series, which has officially been made canon by the video games.
Episode 2: Our Lady of Sorrows
Vice President William Baines hires mercenaries to track down Dante and procure the amulet. However, the mercenaries are really only a decoy for an elite team of DARKCOM agents led by Lieutenant Mary Ann Arkham. Based on Dante's healing abilities, Mary theorizes that he is a human-demon hybrid. She manages to drug Dante and implant a bomb.
"You only sent me into a trap because a giant rabbit tricked you into doing it? Yeah, that checks out." -Dante
Episode 3: The Deep and Savage Way
DARKCOM is ambushed by Cavaliere (humanoid), Echidna (plant), Plasma (shapeshifter), Agni and Rudra (Oni) demons. During the commotion, DARKCOM agent Anders willingly hands the amulet over to the White Rabbit and Dr. Fisher is killed for attempting to smack the Rabbit with a keyboard. Dante breaks free, grabbing a sword (called Rebellion) he finds laying by the roadside to pursue the Rabbit. However, the bomb Mary implanted in him explodes, allowing the Rabbit to take Dante hostage.
By this point I had already guessed that the Rabbit wasn't a demon, but an ordinary man in a furry suit. His appearance is unlike the other demons and he uses human made weaponry exclusively.
Episode 4: All Hope Abandon
Baine and his plane are hijacked, but Baine remains calm because he believes that God has bigger plans for him and that Dante may redeem himself before God by working for the government. Agni and Rudra engage Dante in battle while taunting him about how demons killed his mother and brother. The plane explodes in the battle.
Elsewhere, Mary's team follows a tracker to the White Rabbit's location at an abandoned apartment complex, but Cavaliere and Echidna slaughter the agents. Mary is saved by demon refugees residing in the building, who explain that they fled the demon world with the help of the Rabbit in exchange for becoming his test subjects. Mary knows it is unwise to trust a demon, but leaves the demon family in peace.
Demons in this series are either weak little angels (human in appearance) or dumb brutes (monstrous in appearance).
Episode 5: Descent
Mary kills Plasma and Echidna, then has DARKCOM reinforcements evacuate the demon refugees as she doesn't believe they will be a threat to humans. Baine disagrees and orders DARKCOM to neutralize them. The demons bomb DARKCOM in response.
Meanwhile, Dante initiates his Devil Trigger (demonic form) to fly around rescuing the hostages blasted out of the plane. On the ground, Mary ponders why the Rabbit hasn't already broken down the barriers between worlds and deduces that it must be because the Rabbit needs Dante's blood - the son of Sparda. And until Dante learned to initiate his demon form it wouldn't have been any good.
Episode 6: The First Circle
Mary reminisces about her childhood and the time a demon disguised as a homeless man assaulted her family. The police didn't believe her father's story, causing him to become distant and obsessed with the occult. He performed experiments on himself in an attempt to prove that demons exist. Mary's father eventually transformed into one and cannibalized her mother before perishing in a house fire.
The heterochromia on Mary's parents is wrong. It should also be her dad who had it, not the mom.
In a separate vision, an orphaned boy is moved into an abusive foster home where he is routinely bullied and neglected. One day he finds a portal to Hell and enters it, believing it to be like the one from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. The boy quickly befriends the lower class demons and finds a glowing crystal in a junk heap that can be used to enter the human world. An adult Mary and her DARKCOM squad hunt down the demons emerging from the portal - both lower class and larger hostiles. The boy then proceeds to plot the downfall of DARKCOM while stitching a rabbit costume onto his flesh.
Episode 7: At the Gates of Paradise
Mary locks up Dante to prevent the Rabbit from getting his blood. In an attempt to negotiate for the amulet, she threatens to incinerate Dante, but the Rabbit calls Mary's bluff. Dante is forced to step in to save her after she is paralyzed by a poison-coated blade.
The Rabbit argues that Sparda was a powerful tyrant who erected the barrier between worlds in order to keep demonkind trapped in deplorable conditions. He asks for Dante to "right his fathers wrongs" by tearing down the barrier and allowing all demon kind into the human world, but concedes that doing so would end the human race.
There is a lot of mystery surrounding Sparda - an incredibly powerful figure that is not to be trifled with. The show heavily downplays Sparda's legend, though. In the games demons fight over his gear. Multiple difficulty modes are named after him and a cult reveres him like a god. Most of the underworld hates or fears him and nobody seems to know where he is or if he is still alive.
Once recovered, Mary calls the Rabbit out for claiming to have demonkind's best interests at heart while simultaneously holding several hostage for experimentation. She believes his true motive is revenge against DARKCOM, at which point the Rabbit tears off his fur suit to reveal a mechanical heart fueled by demon blood.
Episode 8: A River of Blood and Fire
With his army defeated, the Rabbit eats an injured demon, causing him to mutate. He then massacres Baines' men and kills Enzo. With the amulet in hand, the Rabbit impales Dante, dissolving the barrier. Demons flood the world and begin hunting down all humans. With a well placed shot, Mary kills the Rabbit, allowing Dante to repair the barrier, ending the invasion. Mary then drugs Dante to turn him in to DARKCOM.
"I can always count on you to sell me out for the slightest bit of personal gain. Hard to find someone that reliable." -Dante
Anders brings the Rabbit's portal device to Baines, who has Anders killed for being a double agent. Baines then uses the device to invade Hell in the belief that it is his God given purpose.
This is the point where the narrative jumps the shark.
Thoughts:
Personally I hate this new series. It either didn't understand or just didn't care about the themes of the video games. The Devil May Cry series has always featured simple yet sincere pro-human stories set in a world with clear cut good and evil morality. The demons have always been portrayed as beasts that care for nothing other than power and domination, but the physically weaker humans come out on top every time because they have the capacity to show empathy, kindness and make sacrifices for the sake of another. It is why Dante, who embraces his human side, wins duels against his brother Vergil, who embraces his demonic side. Dante cares about his brother, misses him and it is why he calls his business Devil May Cry; crying is something unique to humans. A big part of Nero's arc is discovering that he has family - Vergil (dad) and Dante (uncle), after growing up as an orphan and having to deal with the possibility of losing both of them to a demonic blood feud. What made Sparda special is that he fought against his inherently evil nature and embraced humanity to become good (a reverse Lucifer essentially). He selflessly split his power across multiple artifacts in order to keep humanity safe from demonkind. At no point does DMC ever try to say that humans are just as bad as demons, or that the demons are misunderstood. There is certainly a place for those types of stories, but DMC has never been the one to tell them.
Everything from the characters to the music, jokes and tone never felt right. Part of it is because the show is specifically set in America now instead of locations loosely based on modern Europe, so the gothic atmosphere of the video games is gone. None of the human characters act like real people, they're all caricatures. They say and do things so cartoonish that it is hard to take them seriously. The Devil May Cry series is known for its levity, but it also knew how to stay grounded when it mattered and when to rein the zany stuff in. The Netflix series just doesn't have that filter. Dante has also always been a silly, confident person, but in this show he is reactive rather than proactive and made a secondary character to Mary. He basically serves as a punching bag for most of his onscreen time and I got sick of how often he was being captured, drugged, knocked out, etc. The main plot is also basic, trope-filled and written like bad fan-fiction. Large swaths of established lore and character arcs were rewritten to accommodate the show's narrative. There is also a shocking amount of needlessly interjected cursing and politics. Season one for example, literally ends with a holy warrior vice president bombing turban wearing demons as a very Texan president announces to the world that Hell is real. And this all happens with 'American Idiot' by Green Day playing in the background. I basically got Monster Hunter (2020) flashbacks at this point. It is impossible not to wonder if this bit was meant to be a blunt metaphor for the U.S. invading the Middle East. But if that is the case, why are the refugees portrayed as literal demons? And the Middle East is Hell? Personally I don't care for politics and I am certainly not the person to be picking this apart. Whatever message the writer Adi wanted to get across, assuming there was one, this was certainly an ill-advised way of going about it.
In my opinion, the 2007 animated series is a much more faithful adaptation of the source material. Not only is it a more enjoyable show to watch but it also meaningfully expands upon the characters in a way that is consistent with the game lore. I especially liked the way it portrayed demons as being not only strong physically but cunning too, especially the weaker ones. They would manipulate and deceive to get what they wanted using love, greed, fame, fortune, addiction - anything that could tempt a human. It led to some interesting interactions with ordinary people: a poker player who gambles with lives, a singer with a bewitching voice, and a mask that grants wishes, to name a few. Not all the demons were portrayed as outright evil, but there was subtly to it; something the 2025 series sorely lacks. Episode 6 (of the 2025 series) in particular felt like something ripped straight out of a Pixar movie rather than anything related to the Devil May Cry series. Making a large portion of the demon population indistinguishable from humans in both appearance and nature just trivializes the duality of human and demon, especially in their power scale and capabilities. It further downplays the significance of Sparda as a betrayer of his kind and the fact that he paired with a human. If all you want are some mindless action scenes, the 2025 show will fulfill that. However, if you want something with a little more meat to it and don't mind a slower paced story, the 2007 show is the one to watch.
Related Reviews:
Comments
Post a Comment