The Spring 2025 Anime Preview Guide

Devil May Cry

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A giant white rabbit's attack on the Vatican reveals a truth kept hidden: demons are real, and they want something from humanity. As the White House scrambles to figure out what that is and what to do about it, demon hunter Dante is already on the job...and it's a good thing he is, because one the things the demons may want is held by Dante himself.

Devil May Cry is based on the Devil May Cry video game franchise by Hideki Kamiya, Noboru Sugimura, and CAPCOM. The animated series is streaming on Netflix.

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Richard Eisenbeis
Rating:

How long have I been a fan of Devil May Cry? Long enough that I'm still upset that Devil May Cry 2 wasn't called “Devil Never Cry.” So getting another animated Devil May Cry show isn't something I'll ever object to.

Would have I preferred it fit into the games' canon like the 2007 anime? Sure. But there is more than enough love shown towards the games' lore that I'm happy with what's on screen. Even in a 100% canon work, I would never expect several cameos of oft-forgotten Devil May Cry 2 heroine Lucia or the return of the White Rabbit from the Devil May Cry 3 manga. I mean, even things like having Johnny Yong Bosch (who plays Nero in the games) play young Dante in this show instead of Dante's longtime voice actor Reuben Langdon make sense given the characters' ages and bloodlines.

So, let's be clear, this show is a love letter to the games—especially when it comes to the style. Here we have a young Dante—one who's as likely to fail at being cool as he is to succeed. And better still, even when he fails, he's got some serious charm that makes even the failure endearing. The action is as fun, flashy, and blood-filled as the early games and the direction makes it a blast to watch. Honestly, as soon as I wrap up work today, I'm going to sit down and watch the rest of it—that's how much I enjoyed this one.

I'm not sure if Devil May Cry newbies will feel the same—the episode does have to spend a good chunk of time explaining the nature of demons and hell in your typical expository boardroom scene—but I have to believe that Dante's charms and the series' over-the-top action will be enough to bring more than a few people into the fold. If nothing else, give it an episode or two—that'll be more than enough for you to decide if it's your cup of tea.

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Caitlin Moore
Rating:

Despite it just now getting a Netflix anime, Devil May Cry came out over 20 years ago in 2001. It does its best to capture the essence of that era, my high school years: an irreverent, wisecracking protagonist who plays DDR, a nu-punk soundtrack, and a president and vice president based on George W. Bush and Dick Cheney. Video game graphics were getting good enough to start really emphasizing style. It was a time where edginess and irony ruled the roost as boy bands and pop princesses were pushed aside by bands whose music involved a lot of harsh guitar and screaming.

I am not nostalgic for this time. I've found Linkin Park grating to the ears since the first time I heard “Nookie,” so the use of “Rollin'” for the theme song doesn't impress me. Having lived through the Bush years, seeing analogs of them on my TV just leaves me weary. I've never played Devil May Cry in my life. Suffice it to say, the episode didn't do much for me.

It is 100%, pure-strain style over substance. The experience was akin to watching a Marvel movie, with all the wisecracking, the pseudo-scientific jabber about demon DNA and portals, and action scenes that I struggled to follow. Did I struggle because they were clunky or because I was fairly unengaged? I don't know, and I don't really care to find out. It wasn't actively unpleasant to watch or anything, but I felt like I was being held at arms' length by the narrative at every turn. There was no sincerity or heart, just blood, pistols, one-liners, and an ugly baby. The early 00's, everyone!

But credit where credit is due—Studio Mir knows their stuff. Even if the action sequences were overstuffed, the animation was consistently clean and sharp. Their character animation is the highlight, as the people emote with every inch of their bodies and nobody ever just stands around flapping their lips. As uncharmed as I was by the script, the voice cast is strong. Hearing from Johnny Yong Bosch is always a treat and animated Batman fans may want to give some time to hear Kevin Conroy's final role. But unless you're especially nostalgic for the Bush years, this is probably skippable.

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James Beckett
Rating:

I must apologize to my incredibly patient editors for the delay in submitting this preview for Netflix's Devil May Cry. I would have gotten the writeup in hours earlier, but I was forced by the overwhelming force of this show's unfiltered mid-2000s edge to climb on top of my car, tear off my shirt, and spend the entire afternoon furiously swinging it above my head while hooting and hollering to along to old my old nü-metal albums. Then, when I found out that this show dropped with its own, professionally edited Evanescence AMV, it was completely over. I was then morally and professionally obligated to kick down the doors of every neighbor on my street while blasting "My Immortal" from the old JVC boombox that had been collecting dust in my crawlspace.

While we're on the subject: I know you're reading this, Frank from Three Houses Down, and no, I will absolutely not be paying for the busted frame or the cracked planks of that nice new front deck that you and Alice had installed last summer. Those were the sacrifices that Dante and Amy Lee demanded, and only a sell-out would give a shit about petty civil suits.

Anyways, back to Devil May Cry. If you couldn't tell, Producer Adi Shankar, and the insidiously talented crew at Studio Mir have conspired to craft a twisted amalgamation of PS2-era ultraviolence and the concentrated mosh-pit stank of every turn-of-the-millenium metal festival, and I fall squarely within the target audience for them to pander to. I knew this show was going to rip from the minute that we opened on a bloody prologue featuring the psychotic anthropomorphic rabbit demon from the DMC 3 manga, and then I realized that Johhny Yong- Bosch had graduated from playing DMC 4's Nero to voicing the great pizza-chomping, demon- blasting bastard himself. I'm sorry, but all of my critic's credentials go straight out of the window when a show has the good sense to cast the best of the Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers as Dante. It also helps that this first episode is chock full of delightful action set pieces that feel ripped straight out of the games our hero hails from.

I was a little worried at first, I will admit, when the opening sequence featuring that bunny dude from the manga was just as underlit as every other Netflix production seems to be these days, but the premiere quickly course-corrects. The vibrant colors, lush backgrounds, and excellent character designs all contribute to a Devil May Cry adaptation that is just as stylish as any franchise entry would demand. It remains to be seen if the busy-seeming plot and over-the-top tone of the story will be sustainable over an entire season, but I'm one of those guys that openly admits to liking the flawed-but-fun DmC: Devil May Cry that Ninja Theory developed. The very broad and blunt social commentary that this show is going for feels like a tip of the hat to that incredibly divisive moment in the franchise, which means that Netflix's Devil May Cry may truly have something for every kind of DMC fan, new or old. This strikes me like the kind of project that could somehow deliver a legitimately great Lucia cameo before all is said and done. If that doesn't speak to my confidence in it, I don't know what will.

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Rebecca Silverman
Rating:

Sometimes it's hard to pull yourself out of the current moment, even when watching a show based on a video game from 2001 (or rather, from a franchise that started then). What that means is that the scenes of the vice president ordering federal agents to capture unsuspecting people who were just doing their jobs was hard to take. Yes, it's fiction, and yes, the VP and president are clearly meant to be Bush/Cheney references, but in light of today's world, it merits a mention, because I probably won't be the only person made uncomfortable by the scene.

That aside, Devil May Cry is completely off the wall, sometimes in a fun way. Most of the fun comes from Dante, the protagonist. Is he snarky in the exact same way countless Marvel characters are? Absolutely. But that doesn't make him playing a dance pad game or trying to come up with a witty quip after taking out bad guys entertaining, and he backs it up with impressive acrobatics and a touch of “aw, shucks” attitude. He's also incredibly hard to faze, which is probably a good thing, since he's faced with a shape-shifting demon who takes the forms of both a baby and Dante's dead twin brother in an attempt to unnerve him.

It also makes up for some of the purportedly stylish gore this episode indulges in. As I've mentioned before, that's not something I enjoy, but even I have to admit that this makes a good case for it. Did we need to see the white rabbit through the gap left when he severed a guy's head? No, but at least they made it look impossibly cool. There's just a sense that someone was having fun with the visuals, trying to make them as impressive as possible while still retaining the feel of a video game. Having never played any games in this series, I can't tell if they're succeeding, but looking at the screen never gets dull.

Devil May Cry is one of those first episodes that I appreciate more than like. I don't see myself watching any more, but I didn't hate what I did see. Fans of action films are likely to get more out of this and stand to have a good time, because it really does know how to play up that angle.