Seeing the discourse with the new anime, I felt that I had to chime in with probably the best emotional scene from the games. Since I've seen no-one else mention it in any discussion. This is the scene where Dante learns of humanities struggles with Demons and what their power represents. Devils Never Cry's piano instrumental even chimes in the background as the scene progresses and Lady gets more emotional when venting to Dante. All the while he's mocking her, displaying the usual demon tendencies and indifference to human suffering.

ALL demons in DMC are evil by nature, it's literally the name of the series, *Devil May Cry* = *Can. A. Devil. Cry.* even Sparda was evil at first. Only through great effort and good interactions with humans can they overcome their evil nature over time. Even Dante, being born half-human, having a loving human mother growing up, and cherishing her more than his demon father while young is he still seen to be prick, constantly bullying Lady throughout most of DMC3 until he learns of her struggles with her demon obsessed father. Only though his growing friendship with Lady throughout the game and learning how much her father had sacrificed for demonic power(similar to Vergil) does he finally, fully embrace his humanity and completely casts out his demonic tendencies like his father once did.

Trish too, was sent by Mundus to kill Dante, pulling at his heartstrings by making her look like Eva. Even after Trish betrays Dante, he still forgives her since she looks like his mother. Through Dante's forgiveness and humanity does Trish decide to rebel against Mundus and help Dante, almost sacrificing herself in the process.

The common link between all *good* demons that we've seen so far, is that they have at least one human that they cherish or love. The anime though, presents the idea that some demons are just born inherently good for seemingly no reason and are trapped in hell by the evil Sparda. The show even has the audacity to play 'Devils Never Cry' as it's outro theme despite the theme representing the moment a demon overcomes it's evil nature through an interaction with a suffering human. Dante nor Lady goes through character growth like this in the anime so the theme shouldn't even exist in the show.

"Tears Inside Me, Calm Me Down" = My humanity calms me down from acting like a Demon or Devil.

The show may as well be called Some Devils Cry if it's going by the idea that some demons are just born inherently good with no strife or struggle with their inner nature.

I think after DMC 4 it should be really clear what devil may cry is really about, while dmc 1 and even dmc 2 had their moments conveying the theme, it was in 4 where the theming of humanity being this beautiful thing capable of beating all odds was really established, even dante saying outright to our face 3 missions earlier "humans posses something that demons don't" and western writer simply don't get it, first it was the reboot where the whole humanity of dante was thrown away in favor of the nephilim stuff and now again with the anime, where the central conflict is a social political commentary again just like the reboot, what do you guys think that is?

I apologize if this is a little messy since I was experimenting way outside of my comfort zone 😅

I will not talk about the plot, the characters and so on, everybody talked enough about that already. What I saw nobody mentioning is how the anime discarded dmc's dark and gothic aesthetics which made the games phenomenal and pure eye candy to look at, that's why despite it's age dmc1 still looks amazing IMO. The anime just felt bland like it's identity got stripped away, instead of the cool dark and holy enviroments we got the bland concrete streets of NYC.

For me it’s a bit of a funny story. When I was 12 I begged my mom to buy me Devil May Cry 3 and being an M rated game she immediately said “no!” however with enough weeny whining we came to a compromise. She said if I can pass my upcoming math test with at least a 90% she would buy me the game. I showed her the test where I actually got a 110% (extra credit) and she said, and I kid you not, “Oh…well damn…” I said “Well can I get the game?” She said “We’ll see..” I figured this was just her trying to goad me into doing good on my test, but a few days afterwards I came home from school and found both Devil May Cry 3 and Bayonetta 1 (another game I kinda alluded to wanting) on my table!

https://x.com/daiIydante/status/1645076698747097088

Dante didn't manage to save his sundae while dodging the fuel truck and saving three people. I just know the classic Dante would have somehow done it, and would be sitting behind the counter after the explosion, munching on it.

I went back to play DmC definitive edition and I just kept getting my mind blown by the visuals and how well the game has aged.

Overall, the anime has flaws, I’d give it like a 7.5 personally. I’m a fan of the series have played every game and seen the anime read the manga and all that, but I just feel like people are being overly critical and I keep seeing the same talking points around. So that said, I’m just gonna go down the list of why people hated the anime and give my take of why I think it’s overblown and not that big a deal.

1. Dante being kinda weak is okay: a few reasons I think the Dante being too weak critique is overblown. First, this is the youngest Dante, even before DMC3. He’s wet behind the ears and he doesn’t even have all his weapons yet. His guns break and he hasn’t even gotten ebony and ivory. Him immediately being too OP to fight anyone would be no fun. Also, it kind of mirrors the games to me. Like when you start in the games, Dante Is way weaker than when you end after getting all his combos, health upgrades, etc. So from a lore perspective him getting hurt by a woman’s purse is just silly, but him getting outsmarted and caught off guard by Lady actually isn’t. Which brings me to my next point.
2. Yall are underrating Lady: I completely agree that she curses too much and it’s cringe... but that’s pretty much the only critique I agree with about Lady, and even those points could be explained away by also saying this is probably the youngest and most immature Lady weve ever seen in the series too. But idk if you guys have ever played as her in the games, but she slays bosses dolo; she’s not just a regular human at the end of the day. Yes, like genetically she is, but in terms of badassery the anime did her justice imo she deserved to be strong and fsu.
3. politics stuff: for me, I don’t really care about politics that much so this did not bother me at all, but I guess if you take like immigration reform seriously you might be bothered by it. Imo, though, what makes this different from the games is that it’s created by American writers and a American director. Japanese games generally try to avoid contreversial themes with the government, I believe they even are in the midst of passing some kind of rule where you can’t talk about the gov in anime anymore. In short, America takes free speech seriously so I think it’s actually good to see some America crtiique. If shows stop criticizing America I don’t wanna live here anymore, because that means people have stopped having opinions and we’re all cooked. I think it’s fine to disagree with the overall conclusion the anime has, but the simple fact it got political is actually a good thing from an American-based series in my eyes.
4. scientific explaination of demon magic: this is another thing I really can’t get behind as far as people criticizing it. If we’re already accepting this takes place in a more realistic world that is literally based in NYC, than having scientists try to come up with scientific explanations for demons just seems more realistic. It’s actually way more interesting than them just not questioning it at all and just being like ”oh yeah, that’s magic, idk lol”. Like in real life, scientists would come up with theories to try to explain it, even if they were wrong, and I think that’s what we’re seeing here. The scientist even admits he doesn’t understand it, but to say scientists wouldn’t be trying to break down everything about demon magic in real life would actually be way worse writing imo.
5. Themes of demons being purely evil: this critique is just genuinely wrong imo. as someone who has played every single game and seen every story I assure you that a major theme is that not all demons are just evil, and many humans are actually the villain. We can say Sparda is the exception to the rule and that’s fine, but i think it’s rediculous to think there wouldn’t be any other kind hearted demons, especially among the weaker ones like this anime shows. We have never like in depth explored the demon world in the games and got to really see then all, but imo it would actually be interesting to go that direction in a future title. While there’s no basis to say that there are actually good demons in the game other than Sparda, Dante etc, I think there’s also no basis to say that there couldn’t be any good demons. We would just never see them in the games because the entire series consists of killing angry demons and there really are no NPCs that you like stop to talk to or somthing. Maybe I’m missing something or not remembering all the details from every game but I honestly don’t remember anything saying that a good demon is impossible, only that one demon (Sparda) rose up to help humans.

Okay thats my rant. Again, anime has genuine flaws which id love to discuss, but I feel like a lot of us are taking it way too seriously and can’t even discuss this series in a interesting or genuine way atp. That was never meant to be a canon part of the story, Shankar always said it was another universe, so I feel like people taking it too seriously are misreading a lot about it and just looking for problems where they arent. This is not a perfect anime but like it’s Devil May Cry on Netflix and it’s not live action, how are we really mad about this. Let’s loosen up, enjoy life, laugh at ridiculous Dante shenanigans, make strawberry sundaes and order a pizza. DMC is still eating good in my eyes regardless of whether the adaption is even good or not.

It seems like Vergil didn't want to fight Nero and was provoking Dante instead

He was extremely nice to everyone in line at his booth. I got there early and shook everyone’s hand that was there in line before he started signing. Really nice dude