Why Does Everyone HATE The Netflix Devil May Cry Anime?

New video game anime alert, digital soldiers, get your pitchforks and torches and then gently set them down on your desk and take to reddit, okay? War is upon us once again, obviously. If there's one fanbase that's been eating good over the last eight years or so, it's been Capcom's. From their core franchises like Resident Evil and Street Fighter, to the more niche ones like Monster Hunter, Ace Attorney, Okami Onimusha, and the Marvel VS series, Capcom has been delivering quality on a consistent schedule. Does that mean they haven't been their toes heavily into live service BS and microtransactions? No, definitely not. But hey, we've got games. And with games, and money, and japan, you gotta expand for those otaku who have the need to feed. That means toys, manga, and anime. Something Capcom in particular have always been really good about, even if their products aren't always localized, okay? Looking at you, Monster Hunter and your 41 books that don't have english translations. At this point, nothing is off the table for Capcom. They re-released Marvel VS Capcom 2, Rival Schools is gonna be in their newest collection, and even back in 2019 they decided to drop a new title in a franchise that had been mostly dormant for 11 years. That was Devil May Cry 5. Devil May Cry is by far one of the most interesting games in Capcom's repertoire. When you look at it's development and evolution in particular, it went from a half-baked Resident Evil game to a new series to Capcom's flagship action-adventure game. It had all the hallmarks for success. We're talking over-the-top characters doing over-the-top things in over-the-top situations, and it proceeded to pave the way for the future of the genre. Which led to more cult classics like Bayonetta. Centered around Demon Hunter for hire Dante, Devil May Cry instantly captured the hearts and minds of 2001's Chunibyo and Molgoths alike, and never let go. I mean, look at this guy, white hair, red leather trench coat, two guns, he can turn into a demon, he's the embodiment of super cool. He's like if sonic and shadow had a human baby. Don't look that up on google. That said, DMC and Dante himself are a little more nuanced than Sonic, and behind the posturing and aesthetics meant to bring people in the series, there is a heart to the story which has always brought people back to the sequels in order to experience more. That's probably why this Devil May Cry anime isn't the first one to come out, and the previous anime isn't even the series' first jump into alternative media. DMC has multiple manga, light novels, and even CD audio dramas, all canon from what i understand too. And to put that into perspective, i haven't had to deal with audio dramas since our giant Kenshin video. But i think from that you can correlate just how important DMC is to its hardcore fanbase. So with all that said, how is the new anime? Well you've come to the right place because you won't get an answer googling that. The series has ripped the fans right down the middle. So welcome to the Devil May Cry anime. Let's pop off. Hey everyone, Mike here. You're probably wondering why i'm laying on the floor. I'm actually supposed to be outside on my bike for this ad, but i hurt my back taking out the trash. Instead, i'm just laying here looking fresh af in my fabletics gear. I've been doing this a lot this week, but it's been allowing me to get some solid b-roll of my fabletics outfits. I've also gained about 10 pounds this winter because i live in an igloo and electricity is expensive, but fabletics is so stretchy and comfortable i can't even notice. Guys, i'm gonna be real with you. Fabletics is the future of clothing. It's warm when it needs to be and cold when it needs to be. Also, its static-proof design helps me so i don't get cat hair all over myself. It doesn't even stick, which being on the floor, that helps a lot. So here's our deal. Use the link in the description or pinned comment or go to and please sign up to be a VIP. Doing that will let you net 80% off your first order, which is insane, especially in this economy. You can even get three t-shirts for $19 and that's probably going to be the best offer you could possibly get right now considering the quality. Fabletics is basically all i wear now and they've been super duper good to us, so please consider helping us out by helping them out. You won't regret it and you can't beat the deal. Thanks fabletics, back to the video. So i'd like to preface this video by admitting that i'm not a dmc super fan, just a filthy casual, okay? I beat the first two games and i own the fifth, but i've kind of just followed along from the outside for the most part. I did however do a lot of prep for this video to do it justice for casuals and hardcore nerds alike, so you know, let's all have a good time. When dmc dropped in 2001 i was 10 and i'd just moved and my new neighbors were huge playstation people, amongst other things. Seriously, if they weren't blaring limp biscuit or disturbed they were just railing out games, okay? These people lost more video games in the five years i've lived next to them than most people own in a lifetime. Or the older siblings sold them for drugs. Hard to say, but having parents whose main interest in me was being authoritarian sheltering protocolists, i naturally spent every second that i could next door. So we played dmc a lot, completion a lot, and when dmc2 came out we did the same thing and never once admitted to each other that that game sucked. Those guys moved away, i went back to my nintendo nerd existence and just didn't have access to dmc for a long time other than getting destroyed by a-holes in marvel vs capcom 3. But when i heard the new anime was coming out i only had one thought, this is gonna be fun. First, we always cover new video game anime, and second, it wasn't castlevania again. And guess what, i was right. Dmc was a lot of fun and, super cool, don't forget it. Frankly, i think it opened perfectly, you don't really know what's going on, there's some kind of bank heist which gets interrupted by a very psychotic looking rabbit which was my first wtf moment, but then said rabbit mercilessly slaughters these mercs and i mean, wow, the animation is actually really something. Also, hyper violence is my favorite so i was instantly looking forward to what this entire series was gonna bring me. And right after the opening carnage, the op drops and it is ******* rolling by limp biscuit. At that point i was pretty much dead. Whoever made this anime knew exactly what they were making, and it turns out it was the same people who made castlevania. But the second i heard those first bars to rolling i knew that this anime was for me, and not because i like buttrock. Actually, i am an official anti buttrock activist, you should join my 12 step program to take control of your life. Instead, it was because the director had clearly lived the same dmc experience i had in 2001. And there was more hilarious buttrock to be found throughout, but also a bunch of the score was done by powerglove, an amazing electronic band from australia that i've been a fan of for a long time, i even own some of their records. So whether or not you liked dmc, there was a lot of care put into this adaptation. From the visuals, to the score, this was clearly not a cynical cash grab. The production crew definitely cared about what they were making, even if it didn't land for you specifically. And they wanted you to know this right out of the gate. With a small montage of characters right after Dante goes bullet time and saves a bunch of people in a diner from getting blown to bits by an oil truck, even i knew who most of those characters were. That said, not being a lore enthusiast at the time, i was a little lost as to when this was all taking place. The psycho rabbit is trying to open a massive portal between hell and earth, which would mean the decimation of humanity. In order to do that, he needs the sword of sparta, a magical amulet, and the blood of sparta as well. Why? Cause sparta was a super cool demon who turned on his own kind and locked the gateway between hell and earth. But sparta is long gone at this point, so what's a murderous rabbit to do? Well, conveniently, sparta had two kids with a woman who must've spent way too much time on deviantart, and not only do they have the blood of sparta, but each are also carrying one half of that very special amulet. Problem is, one of them is Dante, and the other, Virgil, is MIA and presumed dead. So at this point, Dante doesn't know he's a half demon, he just assumed he could do matrix shit because he was super cool, and he hunts demons killed his mom, and presumably his brother when he was a kid. So that's one half of the story, Dante needs to kill the rabbit and maintain the lock on the door to hell so bigger demons can't get through. But the B story, which is kind of the A story, actually revolves around Lady, or mary, but i'm gonna be referring to her as lady. Lady works as a tactical demon hunter for Darkom, some black ops government disposal unit run by the vice president of the united states. This was a choice, regardless, she's basically a super soldier anti-demon zealot with all the piss in her veins. Her and Dante are headed to a collision course after the vice president abducts Enzo, Dante's contractor and professional rat fink, who was responsible for setting up the white rabbit job that ended up with the sword of sparta being stolen. Turns out the white rabbit psycho bunny was also after Dante for his blood, and now the government is after Dante, which means Lady is after Dante. Lady is an interesting multilevel character, but you can kind of expect that from the creators of the Castlevania series. She's always been a bit of a tomboy and was obsessed with horror films and being a pretend demon slayer when she was a kid. Unfortunately, one day her and her family were attacked by an actual demon which blew her dad's mind so hard he dedicated his entire life to researching hell and obtaining the power to stop the demons, which makes the once doting father an obsessive non-entity to the rest of his family. Until he turns himself into a demon and eats lady's mom in front of her, it was pretty cool. She's now a bit of an angry person, and that anger has led her to make a few mistakes, we'll get into that, but this is the whole setup. What proceeds from there is a rock'em sock'em trip to the finale with lots of demons and people getting blown to smithereens, the classic back and forth irreverent dialogue harkening to the original castlevania series, and excellently choreographed animation gluing it all together. It's really enjoyable and has little downtime to bore you unlike, well, castlevania. What about the lore? Well that's where things get a little sticky for hardcore fans. The original devil may cry anime is canon as far as i can tell, same thing with the manga and everything else, this anime is decidedly not. That's not to say it's completely egregious, i mean it's no worse than castlevania. The series takes place in and around the idea of devil may cry 3, which is a prequel to the rest of the games. This is the youngest version of Dante we really get to see outside of flashbacks and manga, however the majority of the content is taken from the prequel's prequel manga code one dante, which is something most people have never read and it's candidity is kind of suspect. The white rabbit isn't an original character, but is instead adapted from that story which heavily features Arkham, lady's dad in the games. Instead of the white rabbit, who is relegated to a side character in that story, Arkham is the main villain there. His origin is mostly the same as in the anime, but instead of becoming a demon eating lady's mother and burning to death, he sacrifices lady's mom to get super cool black magic. When this happens he splits into multiple personalities and becomes the perp who wants to open the gates to hell. Arkham is the main villain of DMC3, a game set before Dante even created his demon hunter agency devil may cry. It's a game that heavily features Dante's brother Virgil, who is seen as being pretty neglected in this anime, considering the fight with Virgil was the climax of DMC3. Also, lady has the blood of the priestess sparta killed to shut the door to hell which isn't in the anime, it doesn't really matter for our purposes. Despite not knowing the story of DMC3 to a tee, I do think the anime did a good job adapting the core essentials minus Virgil. Instead of Arkham being the big bad, the government agency Darkom stands in for him, and lady gets a more interesting part than just being a girl obsessed with killing her dad and all demon kind. The anime takes characters not really featured in the games like Enzo and elevates them as well as creating a wider world revolving around hell and demons in general. They stay true to certain lore points, like Dante destroying his guns constantly before receiving ebony and ivory, which is a whole thing in the wider lore, and even him not knowing about his devil trigger until most of the way through the prequel. Choosing the enigmatic white rabbit as the main villain for this short series was a pretty neat idea seeing as he was barely even in the manga, and all in all I think it was a pretty inoffensive way to adapt the lore. It's also clearly setting itself up for a sequel that'll likely have more revelations closer to the canon lore of DMC3, at least that's what I assume. But that all said, the ending was a little strange. Lady and Dante are supposed to open up Devil May Cry, but that clearly isn't happening yet, which also makes me think this story arc isn't actually over. Kind of like what we got with Castlevania Nocturne, but the question is, why are so many people pissed? Well, a very common complaint is that Dante was done dirty. You see, Dante is like an onion, he's got layers, blah blah blah. And sure, that's true, there's an emotional tinge to the games, the man has a tragic past and is dealing with trauma, that's a real thing, but 95% of his existence is just being over the top cool, okay? Choosing to make 95% of his existence in the show exactly that is only staying true to the source, it's not like they didn't make him undeniably a good person despite his grandiose overtones, he rescues people he doesn't have to multiple times at his own expense, he takes responsibility for his role in the calamity as the son of sparta, he has empathy, and he's also particularly young at this point. Not that he wasn't in DMC3, but still. So instead, what I really think pissed people off the most was the message. Somehow, within this medley of hyper violence and snark, the series manages to pull off a point. I mean, it's the castlevania team, they have an agenda, they always do. Stick with me cause I'm gonna make this make sense to even the sweatiest button mashers, okay? The white rabbit is shown to be an absolute monster, he kills indiscriminately and even does experiments on demons that would make mengelas nipples hard. It's all gory fun and games until episode 6 which slams the brakes and takes a pretty brave 90 degree turn into a more subdued backstory of lady and the white rabbit. There's barely any dialogue in this episode, I thought it was really neat. We get an intimate look into the parallels of lady and a young boy in the foster system. The former had her life destroyed when her father became obsessed with obtaining power in order to protect his family from demon kind, and in doing so he completely shut out his wife and daughter, ironically destroying their once happy family in the process. In the other scenario, the boy in foster care is abused by the other kids in the which comes in the form of Alice in Wonderland. This is a parallel to Lady and her way of escaping through horror movies. But on a particularly bad day, the boy accidentally comes across a portal to hell, a land where the air is so toxic it tends to kill lesser demons before they are able to get to adulthood. He's rescued by a community of those lesser demons and is welcomed into their society with open arms. It's clearly the first time in his life that he's ever felt at home and loved by someone. Meanwhile, Lady makes a friend who takes her mind off of her crumbling home life while they play demon hunter together. Eventually the boy in hell is working to create a portal back to earth in order to help his new family find a place where they can be healthy and safe, but unfortunately he isn't able to do so before the youngest of his new friends dies to the deadly air. At the funeral he throws his escapism, Alice in Wonderland, into the fire, this shows his transition, his full commitment to his goal of emancipating the lesser demons, the end of his childhood, the end of innocence. After Lady's parents die in the climax of her father's psychosis, she too throws away everything and enters the military. Lady lives out her dream of hate fueled carnage spurred on by the fervently religious vice president and darkum while the boy works to better the life of his new family after creating a device that allows transition between earth and hell. Unfortunately the two eventually meet, unable to go against orders and her own hate fueled bias, Lady and Darkum completely slaughter the innocent demons, leaving the boy barely alive and completely alone. Now entirely convinced that humans are just as evil as the greater demons, he dons his new persona as this psychotic white rabbit, a malicious frankenstein entity bent on merging hell and earth to punish both sides. I think most of you guys understand that this is just good storytelling, of course it's taking a little bit of liberty with the games and the lore, but it was very well done. And if that's the case you're probably wondering, what's wrong with that? Well, both the president and the vice president are clearly republican stereotypes, it seems like this takes place in the 80s so we're probably looking at reagan and bush. The lesser demons are obviously refugees at best, illegal immigrants at worst, and darkum becomes an obvious parallel to the gestapo. We get an obvious view as how bigotry is indiscriminate, how what you are is more important than who you are in the eyes of hateful ignorant people, governments, and their attack dogs. How fear of the other based on the actions of few can open up loopholes for indiscriminate execution or expulsion of innocent people. I've spent years working in both the gaming and anime industry now, and i can say that a large part of both fandoms hate that shit. They piss and moan and cry about it when the messaging is so obvious even they can't miss it. Games aren't political, anime isn't political, keep politics out of it, DEI woke. I hate to break it to these specific individuals, but a core principle of DMC is good demons fighting for humanity while, especially in DMC3 and DMC4, humans can be just as evil as the worst demons. That is a political statement, the anime just made it a little bit more unmissable. Some people tend not to realize it, but stories have lessons because writers have a point to make, artists have a vision to share, and guess what? Writers and artists tend to be open minded thoughtful people, obviously not all of them, but i think the majority by far. They've usually gone through hardships dedicating themselves to a career that every parent warns against because there's quote no money in it. They're used to struggling and being rejected, underpaid, and underappreciated, which tends to create an understanding and a sympathy towards groups who are marginalized and treated cruelly. So they write about it, because it's powerful, especially in a world where most people are subjected to some form of oppression. Whether it's something as simple as housing, health insurance, or wages, to something complicated like having to escape authoritarian regimes and take refuge in another country that despises you. Whether you like this political messaging or not, if you consider yourself a gamer or an otaku, you've been supporting those ideas and the communication and proliferation of those ideas your entire life. That's why people make fun of you when you cry about it. That's not to say that disliking this anime means you're one of those people, there's plenty of valid criticisms that don't involve the messaging. Hardcore fans want specific things, that's fine, i personally had that issue with Castlevania a lot, i get it. But i appreciate the messaging because it's important, and becomes more important day by day, doesn't it? As for me, i really, really liked DMC, it was super fun, action packed, violent, irreverent, everything i want from an anime, in shows for adults in general. But fans of this channel knew that i would like this anime, that's partially why i got so many requests for it. With that said, i highly recommend it, i even recommend it over Castlevania, i legitimately think it was better in just about every way. Partially because i think the production team has grown, they've learned certain lessons with Castlevania, they learned how to focus on what people wanted while maintaining a firm stance on right and wrong with solid nuance. How to have a message but not get bogged down by it. I'm excited to see what they're going to do next. If you're excited about what we're doing next, first you should subscribe and check out the patreon, but i've got some good news just for you. We're going to be diving into some classic OVAs, an anime so obscure and ridiculous they have literally never been reviewed or even rated on the internet, so i hope you'll join us on that journey. Of course we're going to be covering more new and notable shows as they come out, and making the larger videos that we're known for. I'm mike, this is bonsai pop, thank you so much for watching, thank you to our patrons and to fabletics for helping us, and hopefully i'll see you next time.