Carlos
A powerful demon
Okay, I get why you were ****ed off and bitter in the ranting thread, but I really wished you saved that bitterness for this kind of post. Right there.As far as the prostitute thing, for some reason in the novel even Sanctus suggests that Vergil hooked up with a prostitute and that was how Nero was born, it wasn't just the kids making fun of Nero in the orphanage because "everyone knows everyone and no one could identify Nero's mom".
That part about "not being treated well" still baffles me, though. This is a place that worships Sparda "just like a god". They have statues and iconography of Sparda. They all wear the same clothes and it seems everyone belongs to the Order of the Sword, even if they don't belong to the Holy Knights of the Order. This suggests they're indoctrinated at an early age, the religion is in all aspects of their life (it's like Yevon in FFX). In the novel it even says that Kyrie's and Credo's parents adopted Nero because he resembled Sparda with his white hair, so people knew what he looked like in his human form, it wasn't some type of well-kept secret. This does mean he should be treated well, but for some nonsensical reason, everyone else disregards the fact that this random boy is a spitting image of their Lord and Savior, and instead the children make fun of him and he's treated awfully outside of his adoptive parents.
It's like if people saw a child that looked exactly like Jesus Christ, and decided instead to throw stones at him because of "dubious parentage" instead of acknowledging his appearance as a miracle because he doesn't have identifiable parentage. Do they really think their God is beholden to earthly limitations when making inexplicable things happen?
That right there is part of why people disregarded the novel. The translation that you quoted came from a source that put their opinion everywhere instead of simply translating the product as accurately as possible.
Let's be honest here.
When the only translation for something people want to know more about opens its page with
"Warning: Reading this novel may be hazardous to your mind, body and soul.
Devil's Lair will not take responsibility for any trauma you may suffer. "
That does not help.
When the summary has sh!t like
That does not help.
- "My god… can you ever imagine Vergil impregnating a human woman?!"
- "I mean just think about it, really. Majestic beetle-looking cool demon with a kick ass giant sword… and a handgun. That… is… so… awesome…! *Shoots you if you agree*."
- "Since when does Nero read??"
- "He came into the scene to save Kyrie and a bunch of orphans she brought for a walk in the forest (LOL?)"
- "He figured that perhaps this arm is now how it originally should have been, just like how a caterpillar transforms into a pupa and then a butterfly. (Yeah he made this analogy, not me!) He thought that perhaps he had simply reached that time in his life to be who he really was.
… Okay…?? LOL."
- "The novel wrote it this way: "the cry of a soul that only one of the same blood origin can detect". (WTF LOOOL)"
- "(Goddamn Capcom, they really wanna make it official that Vergil's dead.) This, my friend, is how Capcom/Bingo wants us to welcome Nero into the Sparda family. *Spazzes out*"
- ""Can you hear it, the cry of a soul?" (LMAO)"
- "*GASP* It's Nero soul…! Best. Idea. Ever. (Sorry for those of you who believe the handsome blue spirit is Vergil. Apparently it's not working out)"
- "As part of their tradition, the new Pope was to rest in the private room at the top floor of Fortuna castle (which was believed to have been Sparda's) in order to 'inherit' his 'noble soul', whatever that means."
- "As sucky as this story is, there's still a piece of good news – Nero isn't convinced so neither should we! Yippee yay! =D"
- "Yamato was known as the sword that "separates/divides humans from demons", whatever the hell that means."
- "he kept his own consciousness pretty much by his sheer will to live and protect the one(s) he loves (LOL?)."
- "How did he know they share the same blood? He just could feel it. LOL."
- "why does he still have these three devil arms if Trish hadn't taken them away? Talk about plot holes."
- ""Perhaps it was Sparda's whim of the moment... Just like his son." He thought. Wow... seriously... =/"
- "During Dante's battle against the Savior, he took care of a bunch of Angelos simply by performing Pandora's Omen move and they vanished instantly. So… convenient…"
- "Dante actually said (to himself) that in terms of brute power, Nero might just be stronger than him. Bullshit."
- "[...] if by any chance they meant "the soul with a passion to hunt demons for the good of humankind", we should be prepared to quit this series."
- "If you ask me, this has nothing to do with anything but Lady still deducted some money for this 'reason' anyway. Bitch is bitch.
The ironic part, though, is that the novel keeps defending her and explains that Lady is indeed fussy about money but that is not because she is money minded. Reason is, unlike Dante and Trish, she really needs the money as she has no demonic powers and is fully reliant on her weapons to fight, and those things ain't cheap. Yes that does make sense, but it doesn't justify why she'd charge Dante/Trish for helping them save the people, especially when the novel goes on to say that she works a demon hunter not for money but because she hates demons with a passion. If that's the case, you wouldn't bloody charge your buddies for helping out as a demon hunter! What a bullshit of an excuse."- "Lady asked to join Dante and Trish in their new mission, she suggested they have a competition - the one who kills the most demons gets to take all the money she brought to the office today. That is the dumbest thing ever. How on earth can Lady ever beat a demon and a half demon?"
People latched onto that as "proof" for why the novel sucked, because even the person delivering it to them in ENG thought it was stupid, bullshit, ridiculous, plot-hole ridden. I'm not saying that people aren't adults that can't make their own decisions on whether or not to like something, but for the people that already didn't like the concept of the novel to begin with, they agreed with CaT because there was no impartiality to the translation. It was negative from the beginning.
With respect to the game as for getting proof Nero was Vergil's kid, it did a poor job portraying that Nero was connected to the Sparda lineage outside of physical looks. He had the strength feat of pushing the sword off of the Sparda statue and, if you count it, fighting toe to toe with Dante, but a) Dante was just "playing [him] from the beginning", and b) considering the stuff Lady could pull off even though it should be physically impossible for a normal human (see: surviving a fatal stab to her thigh that should have paralyzed her or bled her out), Nero could've just been "upper level human" instead of "1/4 demon".
There's also a bizarre leap in "Dante has no awakened DT, but can shrug off multiple stab wounds and still walk around with scythes embedded into him, and his DT is a full-body transformation like one his father presumably had" and "Nero has no awakened DT, gets stabbed once, is on death's door until he gets his DT and heals, then gets stabbed again on another occasion and is so drained of energy he needs the Yamato to even wake up and function normally, plus the DT is a ghost instead of full-body transformation". Nero is weak af in 4, and all that happened was a half-demon blood got cut in half again. If he had a son, that kid wouldn't even have a DT, probably, and his regeneration wouldn't even handle a papercut.
SOFT EDIT: I mean, if they wanted the game to at least suggest it outside of Sanctus saying so, they could've had the characters act like it. Not even Nero cares that Nero is Vergil's son. And yeah, Nero being Vergil's son is "obvious" now, but that makes it even worse. How could it not be obvious to the characters? Trish was infiltrating the Order, saw this white-haired punk, looked him dead in the eye, and didn't think "He's from the Sparda bloodline" and didn't relay that information to Dante? She got called out as "not anticipating" it. How? Nero wasn't some Dude McGuy with a dime-a-dozen features she could pass off as coming from someone else. White hair, blue eyes, pale skin, long coat. The character design screams "Dante clone" and Trish is blind somehow?
In terms of execution, Nero is like a terrible fanfiction OC. He exists, but with no regard as to how this affected the past games he would've already existed in. He was at least already born in DMC3. But the Vergil of that time, with having "fathering a child with a human woman" fresh in his personal timeline, would
a) still have "underestimate humans" as a character flaw deep enough for Arkham to exploit
b) casually kill a bunch of humans by raising a tower in a residential area, and if the tower's rise didn't kill them, the surge of demonic energy turning them into demons sure would have
c) "Why didn't you kill her? Perhaps because she's your daughter? Did some pesky 'fatherly love' get in the way?" "To further your study of the black arts, you sacrificed your loving wife to become a devil as well. Knowing this, I thought you'd be more useful to me, but I was wrong."
d) in case point c isn't clear, Vergil fully expects someone committed to the attainment of power to be able to kill their own flesh and blood. Fully knows that Arkham killed his wife, does not give one iota of a f#ck, called him out on not being ruthless enough.
e) somehow hold up through whatever Mundus put him through that ultimately broke or suppressed him, and undergoes this process without ever revealing he had a son.
Honestly, point e is the biggest problem IMO. Mundus captures Vergil, Vergil is defeated and brainwashed. Whether from torture or memory wipe, the specifics don't matter here. But Mundus hates the Sparda bloodline, would have killed them all when the kids were 8. No one thinks he would have gotten every last bit of information on if there was any of Sparda's blood left alive aside from Vergil? Like, he just found a Sparda. And Spardas are like roaches: you've seen one, there's probably more you don't know about. So he "broke" Vergil enough to take away his free will, but not enough to learn that Nero exists? Unless Vergil gave himself amnesia, or even he didn't know that he had a child, there’s no way Mundus wouldn't know about it. He had like, 9 years or so to find that out before Dante defeated him on Mallet.
Even keeping Nero's existence away from Arkham seems like a stretch. Arkham knows sh!t about Sparda it doesn't make sense to know, like who he impregnated and how many children he had, and treats it like a "legend"/"story". Highly unlikely that this is public knowledge or recorded in a book. He knew that Eva died 11 years before the manga in an inexplicable occurrence with a burned down house and signs of a struggle. He knew about the legend involving the priestess and knew that Lady would carry the same blood (either through him or his wife, depending on the source). But he wouldn't know that the guy he's talking to had a kid? His inexplicable "power of research" could've sussed out Vergil having Nero before Vergil even thought of having Nero.
In addition, pretty sure people should remember the various interviews where it seemed even the directors had no idea about the timeline. "Dante is 19 years old in DMC3" (Itsuno), "Nero is as old as Dante was in DMC3" (Kobayashi), "Lady appeared in 3, and now she’s about ten years older than she was in that one, but she’s grown up very nicely, as you’ll see." (Kobayashi). At least one of those things needed to be retconned after the fact (Tatsuya Yoshikawa saying in the 3142 artbook that 4Dante was "around 40 years old"), and even then it doesn't jive with the novel (Vergil visiting Fortuna "16-17 years" before DMC4, which would have placed his visit after he became Nelo Angelo in the timeline when he's obviously not, or Dante would be early 30s in 4 instead of "Almost 40" or "approaching 40").
And there was the problem with subtitles in the SE, increasing skepticism. "Fortuna, a few decades ago" in the ENG subtitles, versus German subs “Fortuna, over 10 years ago…” and the Japanese had
“十数年前 , フォルトゥナ" = “jyuusuunen mae, Forutuna” = “Fortuna, over a decade ago” = “Fortuna, 10 years give or take a few months”, or more liberally, “10 plus a couple more years”, whereas ‘a few decades’ would have been rendered in JP as ‘suujyuunen’ (数十年) rather than ‘jyuusuunen’, making Vergil's visit too recent for Nero's age.
I don't know how you got all this information and structured it exactly this way. It sounds like you know a lot about the series than you let on.
