Devil May Cry is another anime based on a classic game franchise, but I can’t judge this one in terms of its merits as an adaptation, since I’ve not played any of the games.
And so I’ll focus on the anime itself.
Devil May Cry: The Animated Series (Debiru Mei Kurai) 2007
In terms of plot, our hero Dante runs a demon-hunting business, ‘Devil May Cry’, while struggling to get out of debt in order to afford more strawberry sundaes 🙂
I enjoyed Devil May Cry without being thrilled by every moment; there was some great action and memorable creature designs, especially in the first two eps, along with a few stories that stood out above the others.
One thing that I found perhaps more interesting looking back, was the way that the villain works to link together what appears to be ‘only’ an episodic format. And while he might be typical for his archetype, he’s probably not so typical as the Big Bad. (I guess that’s a little vague but I wanted to make an attempt to avoid spoilers).
To continue on with things I enjoyed, Dante stands out in part due to his character contractions, rather than only due to the very satisfying high-contrast colours he’s given. Lady and J.D were other favourites from a cast that has nice mix of recurring and new characters.
In terms of favourite episodes, ‘Rock Queen’ heavily features music and even record-collecting as plot points, so that was pretty ace. Some of the characters even got a happy ending too! I also really enjoyed the ‘Death Poker’ episode, as it was a little different to the more typical hack-and-slash of many from other plots.
Speaking of which, there’s plenty of demon-fodder in Devil May Cry, blood too, and some gore, though most (but not all) of it is focused on the monsters. Still, pretty obviously not the kinda anime for the young ones.
To quickly finish on something that bugged me, while Patty started off in brat-mode, she became far more tolerable as the series went on, but it’s a shame that in the end, Dante seemed to value her most as a bloody cleaner.
3 Stars
The Review Heap 
I love this anime, mostly for the nostalgia of the video games, but it’s also one of the better video game anime adaption things I’ve seen. I like to re-watch it circa Halloween Spoop Season haha.
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It feels like a pretty high-budget, well-put together show – I remember a lot of folks talking about it when it came out, but I can’t recall why I missed it. Glad I’ve finally seen it 🙂
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My only experience of Devil May Cry was Marvel Vs. Capcom 3. Hahaha! I did hear about this anime, but I wasn’t sure how good it would be or not.
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Classic game 🙂
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MvC3? That was good, but I preferred the first two.
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Stellar series, yeah.
I remember how deeply into fighting games I was when a teen – reminds me of a simpler time (wow, that’s a ‘old’ thing to say). Fighting games and JRPGs were my bread and butter, lol
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Of course.
Hahaha! I hear you right there when it comes to fighting games and JRPGs, especially the former for me even going back to my elementary school years. My younger self geeked out seeing the arcade cabinet of the first game and thought: “WAIT! I can play as Wolverine AND Megaman in the same game? This is awesome!!” especially since I was a big Marvel fan (mainly the 90s X-Men cartoon), liked a lot of Capcom games, and that crossover concept instantly attracted me. When they announced the 3rd game, I remember a bunch of people online including myself making wishlists for different characters to show up on each side.
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That was a pretty cool show, huh? (90s X-Men).
And the wishlists thing reminds me of watching people guess and hope for new characters in Smash nowadays – nice to know that some things stay the same 🙂
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Very much so. I liked that more than the live action movies and the cartoon was surprisingly accurate to the comics as much as it could be. Also, that theme song still holds up to this day!
I’m not surprised about Smash especially with the most recent game and how they’ve been including way more non-Nintendo characters in the franchise. There was so much hype when they announced MvC3 back in the day. I didn’t play Infinite and it looked disappointing with the smaller roster and going back to the 2-tag system. Which Marvel and Capcom characters did you want to play as that weren’t in the games? I did get my wish with some of them, but I would’ve really liked to have seen debuts of Nightcrawler, Bishop, Loki, and Blade on the Marvel side to name a few. For Capcom, I would’ve liked to have played as Kyosuke from Rival Schools/Project Justice, Elena from Street Fighter III, Donovan from Night Warriors: Darkstalkers’ Revenge and someone from Power Stone (one of the most underrated fighting games) there.
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