DMC Theory: Anime Shows Dante Is Depressed! - Bit-Bolt

[Foxtrot94]

Is it really inflexible?

No, of course it's not. In fact, DMC3 Dante is the one among the originals that went through the most character development so if anything, it provided elements for the anime to build upon.

BUUUUUT of course they failed hard when it comes to work off of what DMC3 established. As @DragonMaster2010 said, they set up opportunities but didn't exploit them. For example? Let's start with my biggest disappointment. Hey, remember how DMC3 showed how Dante cared about his bro and mourned him, despite the fact that he had to put him down? Let's introduce Baul and Modeus, two brothers in pretty much the same situation as Dante and Vergil years prior, and let's have Dante feel no involvement or empathy whatsoever.
Remember how DMC3 showed how Dante grew to develop that emapthy, for those with a tragic family past, like his own? Let's have him not giving a damn whenever this is brought up like in the biker episode. Heck, the whole deal with Patty for that matter, you could argue.
Remember Vergil, the only villain who kicked Dante's ass in direct confrontation, driven by his torment for being a halfbreed, whose personality traits were revealed through subtle details in his actions and his interactions with Dante, which made him the most popular and memorable villain in the series? Screw that, let's have a villain who is completely one dimensional (like Mundus, yes, but with none of his imposiveness) and totally unrespectable, with minimal interactions with Dante.
Most of all, the most glaring WTF that you can notice, remember how in every DMC game, except 2, Dante is such a fun loving character, with carefree attitude and cocky behavior? You know, the very traits that made him such an enduring, fun, and loved character? Forget that, let's turn him into a Terminator-cold guy. This one is perhaps also the most stupid and unforgivable mistake. Cause they did the same in DMC2, and they knew everybody hated that. I don't know what was going on in their mind when they thought doing that again would be a good idea.

I could go on but you get the point. There were some parts they got right-ish, like that episode about the kind demon, but they were so few and overwhelmed by what they got wrong, in my opinion. They did have the basis, from both DMC3 and 1, to make some good stories about Dante in the anime, they just failed to do it, scrapping almost everything that made DMC3's story good or that made Dante's character in 1 and 3.

Dante suffering from depression? MAYBE that was what they were going for, but the anime is set after DMC1, and that game absolutely doesn't build up any kind of depression. By the end of it, Dante is still the carefree and fun loving guy that we know, and he and Trish go cheesying to the next mission. Wanna make him depressed? Then do some buildup for it. But I don't think that was the idea and it would have been a fail anyway, cause DMC4 was being developed, and Dante there is the complete opposite of depressed.

 

[Veloran]

Hell, Beryll from the DCM2 novel is the supporting character we never got but absolutely deserve. You want to talk about depression? Then screw Dante's depression...nothing can tower over how insurmountably-depressed I am that Beryl isn't canon.

But Beryl was just Lady-lite with a Berserk Brand, and the second novel is one of the worst pieces of fiction in the entire franchise.

But I don't think that was the idea and it would have been a fail anyway, cause DMC4 was being developed, and Dante there is the complete opposite of depressed.

I think the insinuation was that's just how Dante normally is, when he's not on some adventure. There are some shades of it in DMC4 (He's notably pretty cold at the beginning before meeting Nero), but overall the points that we see him in the games are highlights of his life.

 

[TWOxACROSS]

I think the insinuation was that's just how Dante normally is, when he's not on some adventure. There are some shades of it in DMC4 (He's notably pretty cold at the beginning before meeting Nero), but overall the points that we see him in the games are highlights of his life.

That's sorta the overarching point - nobody gives a crap about the mundanity of his life if he's going to be like that. To be more specific, people don't consume the mundane. For that matter, whenever there is some trouble that could be considered a highlight, there's no tension because we know he's going to make it, and the action isn't even entertaining (a complete disappointment given it's goddamn MADHOUSE). The anime is a failure on pretty much every part; characterization, story, pacing, choreography. It had a good idea, showing day-to-day work, and even the concepts for each episode and the overarching plot had potential, but nothing interesting was done, and it just middles the entire time.

People like DMC because we get to see a character like Dante, who is supposed to be brash and cool, do awesome stunts while fighting demons, and we got neither of those things. The premise was there, but...

 

[absolitude]

depression

 

[Veloran]

That's sorta the overarching point - nobody gives a crap about the mundanity of his life if he's going to be like that. To be more specific, people don't consume the mundane.

I disagree, personally I found it to be an okay departure from what we normally see. It sort of highlights how normal the world Dante lives in is, and how he's an outlier in that sense.

 

[V's patron]

I still think the theory makes sense and feels plausible. It's probably more likely to happen than the whole DMC4 is a fever dream of VERGIL(it did grow on me eventually).

@absolitude maybe he's stress eating??

@WolfOD64 I don't think DMC3 made him inflexible as it didn't really give you a whole ton of new info (the manga as well) he's still a blank slate for you to mold as you see fit.

I do get the personality complaints but that's the writers flanderizing his personality. So I don't see it as the game's fault per say more the writers that came after.

It's like I'm a fan of Green arrow but not always fond of his show because the writers are more interested in writing their own batman fanfic. Do I blame the character and see him as unfixable or do I hold the show runner accountable?

I agree with @Foxtrot94 till the need for DMC1 to have set up Dante's depression. I thought it was something better left offscreen and the anime itself could have made it a priority.

To piggyback off @TWOxACROSS's excellent points, storytelling is about a meaningful struggle. It's not that focusing on Dante's day to day life or making him depressed was the problem, it's just there was no real struggle, arc or conflict to really care about. So it just feels not worth watching if your not a DMC fan (and even then I couldn't really recommend it :thumbsdown

 

[TWOxACROSS]

I disagree, personally I found it to be an okay departure from what we normally see. It sort of highlights how normal the world Dante lives in is, and how he's an outlier in that sense.

Quite the opposite, actually, given all of the demons and strange things that happen throughout the show, which culminates into what could be considered another DMC3-level event that threatens the city. Ultimately, we see the world isn't nearly as normal but still doesn't tell us anything we didn't already grasp from the games before all hell breaks loose.

Alternatively, surprise surprise, people have normal lives in this world, and a paranormal mercenary is an outlier~

Now, I'll give this animation a lot of ****, but I do have to concede that it had a handful of really cool moments. Too bad those handful of moments make up like 10% (being generous) of the entire series :/

 

[DragonMaster2010]

depression

sadness

 

[WolfOD64]

Stop hitting the nail on the head Wolfy, you're gonna drive it right through the other side of the board.

I'm just relieved that there are other multi-celled organisms on this forum that agree with me. My exploits on DevilsLair have made me wary about being vocal about these problems in the anime, since people there seemed to absolutely fellate the show to degrees I could never understand, and would defend it in ways you wouldn't believe.

remember how DMC3 showed how Dante cared about his bro and mourned him, despite the fact that he had to put him down? Let's introduce Baul and Modeus, two brothers in pretty much the same situation as Dante and Vergil years prior, and let's have Dante feel no involvement or empathy whatsoever.

LITERALLY.

I'm constantly bewildered how few people point this out. This was a rare opportunity to bring back references to the events in 3, and see how an older, more experienced Dante from over a decade later would contemplate those events in retrospect. Having lived that kind of relationship when he was 19, one would think that he would LEAP at the chance of preventing another pair of demons engaging in the same bitter struggle. But, no. He plays the most platonic and morally-detached role imaginable, and even taunts them both for engaging in it.

And moreover, how is it that we were introduced to two demons from Sparda's era, literally acting as his former students, and we still got next to no information about him or the Demon War with Mundus? That would've been a GREAT opportunity for a flashback depicting that time, maybe showcasing what Sparda was like in his prime...

But, no: just an insultingly-easily resolved conclusion with next to no impact on future episodes or games, just like every other minute of this poorly-written garbage. Onto the next episode.

But Beryl was just Lady-lite with a Berserk Brand, and the second novel is one of the worst pieces of fiction in the entire franchise.

The DMC2 novel had the Herculean task of formulating and interesting story whilst incorporating the vague-as-all-hell source material from the game it was based on, being written and released around the same time. It's not Tennyson and certainly not as coherent as the first novel, but it's still miles better than the nonsensical, in cohesive narrative wonder found in DMC, and to a lesser extent, 4. It's not one of the worst by a long shot---especially when something as poorly-made and impressively bad as the Animated Series exists, which does so on a significantly-larger budget and input from the game's producers than the novels did despite being objectively worse in quality.

As for Beryl, she was written when the novels were published back in 2003, two entire YEARS before DMC3 was a poorly-developed scenario in Bingo Morihashi's empty, talentless skull---and yet, she has more fleshed-out and far less vague backstory than Lady, doesn't attack him impulsively like a dumbass when they first meet, has more frequent, interesting and believable interactions with him than Lady EVER did in DMC3, and actually departs on a good note that doesn't warrant her presence being shoe-horned into future installments for no good reason in the way Lady inexplicably is for the anime and DMC4.

"Lady-lite"? Try "improvement."

For that matter, whenever there is some trouble that could be considered a highlight, there's no tension because we know he's going to make it, and the action isn't even entertaining (a complete disappointment given it's goddamn MADHOUSE).

^Literally this. The show still could have depicted Dante's more casual lifestyle outside of his mercenary work without making it dull, predictable, and afraid to exercise his personality outside of the procedural "eat pizza/read magazine/wait for plot to insinuate" thing he did between demon hunts.

Also, in addition to having MADHOUSE, the character designs and animation direction was by Yashiaki Kawajiri---the anime mogul behind Ninja Scroll, Wicked City, The HBO Spawn series and Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust.

So much talent wasted on an anime so poorly constructed and lackluster. I've seen barebones anime adaptations of games like F-Zero and Sengoku Basara that play it extremely safe and don't offer all that many surprises, and STILL remain superior on simple grounds that they don't insult the audience's intelligence to such impressive levels.

I disagree, personally I found it to be an okay departure from what we normally see. It sort of highlights how normal the world Dante lives in is, and how he's an outlier in that sense.

How did it show any of that? The most interaction with the outside world we saw Dante get was when he went to that diner to--you guessed it---eat strawberry sundaes. It was one of the few instances we saw him step outside of his office during casual hours, and all it really shows us is that he still dresses like a cosplayer even in a suburban setting without anyone questioning it, and doesn't interact with people at all.

And what does he do when he's in his office? Sleep, read magazines, complain about debt. Yeah, as spell-bindingly fascinating as that is, I don't think it gave us a whole lot of insight on Dante's personality, outside of awareness of the writers' outright fear of expanding upon it outside of everything we were shown in DMC3.

Like, Jesus Christ, show him doing something else---this is the same guy that keeps files and tabs on all of the demons he hunts, and does detective work. Why is 99% of his idle activities what college students do in their dorms between classes?

Case in point:

storytelling is about a meaningful struggle. It's not that focusing on Dante's day to day life or making him depressed was the problem, it's just there was no real struggle, arc or conflict to really care about. So it just feels not worth watching if your not a DMC fan (and even then I couldn't really recommend it :thumbsdown

I don't think DMC3 made him inflexible as it didn't really give you a whole ton of new info (the manga as well) he's still a blank slate for you to mold as you see fit.

DMC3's long-term problem was that, as you pointed out, the series' writers have never "molded" the character into anything beyond how he appears in that game, as if they're cowering in terror that they'll receive the same backlash from when they removed those elements from his character in DMC2. And since they've never evolved Dante's character since 3, despite two chances to do so in the form of the anime and the next game, they just resorted to the incredibly-lazy decision to just keep recycling those traits OVER and OVER again until the audience is literally comatose.

I do get the personality complaints but that's the writers flanderizing his personality. So I don't see it as the game's fault per say more the writers that came after.

Not "writers"...writer. The man responsible for the bulk of these poor decisions is one Bingo Morihashi, who's been the primary scenario writer for the anime as well as DMC3 and 4. If Dante's personality not evolving isn't partially his fault, than there's no one else to blame.

Quite the opposite, actually, given all of the demons and strange things that happen throughout the show, which culminates into what could be considered another DMC3-level event that threatens the city. Ultimately, we see the world isn't nearly as normal but still doesn't tell us anything we didn't already grasp from the games before all hell breaks loose.

It told us even less, if you can even believe that. Something that's always bothered me and a handful of other fans is the lack of clarification on the relationship between human society and the presence of demons.

We know that the world Dante inhabits is an alternate version where 2000 years prior, Sparda defeated the demon horde, etc. But how did the human race respond to that event in the years to come? I'm assuming the humans in Dante's era don't believe in demons, despite them occupying the shadows and underworld around them...and yet, there's a statue of Sparda in the park, proving his existence. Does anyone question who he was? What was his role in history, according to the human race? Is it history, or just fantastical tidbits of legend to them? And what are their reactions to an entire city-state like Fortuna taking something they view as myth, and worshiping to the point of establishing their own Order of warriors? What does the rest of the world think they're hunting, if not demons?

For all its faults, DmC tried to remedy this potential issue by separating the human world and Limbo with a veil of awareness. It presented even more problems in the plot, but at least the writers tried. To this day, Capcom's official writers have NEVER bothered to explain the role of demons in the human world, or whether or not regular people are aware of them.

It just comes off as lazy and outright refusal of world-building. You have all these characters with the potential of being interesting, occupying a world and mythos that's more vague and non-existent than Vergil's motives as a villain.

depression

If you peer closely into his azure stare , you can just barely make out the crippling anguish that those inconsiderate humans put five strawberries on his sundae instead of the usual six.

Surely these are the things that make a Devil cry.

 

[absolitude]

If you peer closely into his azure stare , you can just barely make out the crippling anguish that those inconsiderate humans put five strawberries on his sundae instead of the usual six.

Surely these are the things that make a Devil cry.

lol, i actually intended to make an analysis of the pic alone, empty eyes, lazy aura, straight nice hair, good looks but moodless, alone doing his own thing, depressed? no, that's cool in a japanese characterization way..

it's often that i created a character based on that kind of cool thx to japanese influence.. weird thing is i can't remember which japanese character that were actually have those traits

anyway, this is anime --and a series at that, there's no need to analyse the characterization, to my knowledge, when intended, an anime characterization will be shoved right to your face frontally and nicely without the need to analyse or with hidden undelivered message to it..

 

[WolfOD64]

an anime characterization will be shoved right to your face frontally and nicely without the need to analyse or with hidden undelivered message to it..

I was kidding, dude. There's nothing to analyze here.

I mean, plenty of anime characters, particulary bishonen ones, are drawn to facilitate these moody, existentially-contepmplative, uber-serious looks to the point of weeping hilarity. I mean, look at half of Tetsuya Nomura's characters, and how terminally depressed they look.

 

[absolitude]

I was kidding, dude. There's nothing to analyze here.

I mean, plenty of anime characters, particulary bishonen ones, are drawn to facilitate these moody, existentially-contepmplative, uber-serious looks to the point of weeping hilarity. I mean, look at half of Tetsuya Nomura's characters, and how terminally depressed they look.

i know you're kidding, but i did intended to analyse the pic also for the sake of the kidding..

ah yes, nomura did that often, squall particularly, but it's shoved to our face that they are troubled and why they are troubled.. for dante's case in the anime, like many stated here, there's nothing to support that depression..

 

[V's patron]

@absolitude @WolfOD64 emoticons are your friends, makes intent easier to find :wink:

 

[Foxtrot94]

People like DMC because we get to see a character like Dante, who is supposed to be brash and cool, do awesome stunts while fighting demons, and we got neither of those things.

Indeed. Like, no kidding, when I first got to know an anime existed, that's exactly what I expected to see. Dante's awesome factor while kicking demons' asses in a taunting and humiliating way.

 

[Wuodan]

Wowie, didn't know this many people hated the anime. Not like I'm particularly fond of it; but never thought it would cause such backlash among the community.

I don't think Dante is depressed in anime, to me, he looks more like feeling empty most of the time. Of course you guys would say "He's just this way because Bingo thought it would look cool." But that's not the case to me. I always thought after the events of DMC1, Dante should be feeling like he has nowhere to go and basically no purpose in life. He defeated his father's life-long rival, killed his own brother unknowingly and got his feelings all over the place by a woman who is identically his mother.

Trauma after trauma and yet he's only left with his shop. His demon hunting business is the only thing that makes him feel alive. At the preview of Ep.2, we listen to Dante's inner voice saying;
"The only jobs I get are those that don't pay anything. My debt just keeps growing. And now I have to look after some brat on top of it all. On nights like tonight, I like to open up the throttle on my motorcycle and blow off some steam. And if I should cross paths with some devil along the way...well, that would just make it perfect."
Sounds like a man that got tired of his everyday situation.

I agree on the issues like strawberry sundae nonsense and his behavior with Baul&Modeus(although I'd object on that) but saying anime had no character development besides trying to show Dante silent&cool is a bit too much. He is a man that had a lot of things happened at once and couldn't get over those, yet he was still caring towards Patty and those he met along the way, still out for some old demon-hunting fun and still there to willingly protect mankind, save them without a reason even while he despises them.

Yeah, most things about anime is about average and wasted potential; but I still value it as a fan. I appreciate the chance to see his everyday life and the cliched averageness of this portrayal doesn't wear me off. I accept that Dante and while I would prefer a better animated series, I wouldn't prefer him to be in any other way.

Also when I first watched the anime I wasn't very good at English (was a midschooler) so I watched it with a fan translation, which I think portrayed things somewhat better to the child mind of mine. I might be a little biased because of that.

 

[TWOxACROSS]

It told us even less, if you can even believe that. Something that's always bothered me and a handful of other fans is the lack of clarification on the relationship between human society and the presence of demons.

The real headscratcher is that by the end of the anime Dante's city has now gone through two demonic invasions. It would seem to have been rebuilt after Temen-ni-gru's rising and the ensuing deaths of many individuals at the hands of roving demons that appeared with it. For all intents and purposes, no one in the anime should really be all that surprised at the demons that show up with when Sid acquires phenomenal cosmic power.

Even if you consider that maaaaaaaybe Dante moved to a new city to set up shop, the appearance of an ancient tower, erupting straight outta the ground amidst a well-populated area, with a gigantic fish monster flying around it, would have become international news. It would have been a complete paradigm shift for the entire world to have witnessed such an event.

Speaking of paradigm shifts, for as much as Final Fantasy XIII and its successors are maligned, XIII-2 did an interesting thing with its story where the existence of the paradoxical temporal anomalies that were brought about by deific interference at the end of the first game, is just accepted as a part of life. It's not necessarily something that only Serah and Noel can witness because they're the heroes, it's something that is as well-known and unpredictable as a natural disaster, and science was even developed to study it. When it comes to Devil May Cry though, they played it right in the first game, where it was all isolated to a tiny island. However, when it came to everything afterwards, the events were too wide-scale to be swept under the rug and ignored by the populace. Perhaps we can assume that after the Temen-ni-gru people accepted the existence of demons, and then by the time of Fortuna there was an actual relief response after the game ended, and even the possibility that the city turned into what we saw given the events of Temen-ni-gru's appearance, and yet, if the anime is supposed to be canon, you've got a bunch of ignorant humans who haven't paid any attention to what has happened in the past couple of decades. Those who fail to learn from history, and all that...

It's so strange to see Devil May Cry's world be so explicitly static and unchanging, and yet hit all the same beats and plot points with damn-near formulaic precision. In the case of the anime, they played it so safe nothing happened.

 

[Veloran]

Quite the opposite, actually, given all of the demons and strange things that happen throughout the show, which culminates into what could be considered another DMC3-level event that threatens the city. Ultimately, we see the world isn't nearly as normal but still doesn't tell us anything we didn't already grasp from the games before all hell breaks loose.

But it's just the presence of Demons and Dante, overall the universe and how people behave is a down to earth... Earth.

The DMC2 novel had the Herculean task of formulating and interesting story whilst incorporating the vague-as-all-hell source material from the game it was based on, being written and released around the same time.

But the book had practically nothing at all to do with DMC2. Even calling it a "DMC2 novel" is a stretch because the plot is entirely it's own thing.

but it's still miles better than the nonsensical, in cohesive narrative wonder found in DMC, and to a lesser extent, 4. It's not one of the worst by a long shot---especially when something as poorly-made and impressively bad as the Animated Series exists, which does so on a significantly-larger budget and input from the game's producers than the novels did despite being objectively worse in quality.

You're joking, surely.

I'll remind you that this is a book where Dante fights a literal army of Trishs in an alternate universe and the main villain is a cartoonishly (Like even for DMC) absurd Asian business man who somehow obtained Sparda (The sword) off-camera and somehow used it to clone Sparda (The guy) and dissected the clone so he could Frankenstein himself up with it's body parts thus somehow giving himself all of Sparda's skills and abilities.

Devil May Cry doesn't really expect people to take it seriously, but the second book is so incredibly off the wall nonsensical that I have to legitimately question your sanity in thinking that it could be of an objectively superior quality to even the worst fanfiction, let alone the animated series.

As for Beryl, she was written when the novels were published back in 2003, two entire YEARS before DMC3 was a poorly-developed scenario in Bingo Morihashi's empty, talentless skull---and yet, she has more fleshed-out and far less vague backstory than Lady, doesn't attack him impulsively like a dumbass when they first meet, has more frequent, interesting and believable interactions with him than Lady EVER did in DMC3, and actually departs on a good note that doesn't warrant her presence being shoe-horned into future installments for no good reason in the way Lady inexplicably is for the anime and DMC4.

I get it, you hate DMC3.

That doesn't change the fact that Beryl is an incredibly lame proto-Lady without the slightest bit of charm or personality.

How did it show any of that? The most interaction with the outside world we saw Dante get was when he went to that diner to--you guessed it---eat strawberry sundaes. It was one of the few instances we saw him step outside of his office during casual hours, and all it really shows us is that he still dresses like a cosplayer even in a suburban setting without anyone questioning it, and doesn't interact with people at all.

You're pretty drastically underselling how much he interacts or gets around in the show. The way you're painting it, he literally spent 90% of the show sitting in his office doing nothing without contact with anybody else. He sure does spend a fair amount of time there - Because that's where he lives and the show is a slice of life that usually begins and ends there with some sort of job in the middle.

Even if you consider that maaaaaaaybe Dante moved to a new city to set up shop, the appearance of an ancient tower, erupting straight outta the ground amidst a well-populated area, with a gigantic fish monster flying around it, would have become international news. It would have been a complete paradigm shift for the entire world to have witnessed such an event.

Well, the government(s) knows. Maybe it's some sort of coverup.

I mean, Demons sort of warp reality just by being around. Earlier in the series, especially with the first book, it was kind of made out that Humans can barely comprehend Demons, and in places where the Demon realm really breaks through the energy was enough to nearly knock out a young Dante. The idea is sort of carried through into DMC4, where areas that are saturated by the Demon Gates just starts twisting into an extension of the Demonic realm. Couple that kind of stuff with the insane casualty rate of Humans during outbreaks (In DMC3 everybody around the tower was slaughtered within minutes, same at the end of the anime), and you have a recipe for a lot of unexplainable mass deaths with nobody but raving lunatics as the witnesses.

Anyway, I wouldn't put the onus for a failure to really delve into such things just on Devil May Cry and Capcom. Bayonetta, for example, does the same thing.

Wowie, didn't know this many people hated the anime. Not like I'm particularly fond of it; but never thought it would cause such backlash among the community.

I don't think Dante is depressed in anime, to me, he looks more like feeling empty most of the time. Of course you guys would say "He's just this way because Bingo thought it would look cool." But that's not the case to me. I always thought after the events of DMC1, Dante should be feeling like he has nowhere to go and basically no purpose in life. He defeated his father's life-long rival, killed his own brother unknowingly and got his feelings all over the place by a woman who is identically his mother.

Trauma after trauma and yet he's only left with his shop. His demon hunting business is the only thing that makes him feel alive. At the preview of Ep.2, we listen to Dante's inner voice saying;
"The only jobs I get are those that don't pay anything. My debt just keeps growing. And now I have to look after some brat on top of it all. On nights like tonight, I like to open up the throttle on my motorcycle and blow off some steam. And if I should cross paths with some devil along the way...well, that would just make it perfect."
Sounds like a man that got tired of his everyday situation.

I agree on the issues like strawberry sundae nonsense and his behavior with Baul&Modeus(although I'd object on that) but saying anime had no character development besides trying to show Dante silent&cool is a bit too much. He is a man that had a lot of things happened at once and couldn't get over those, yet he was still caring towards Patty and those he met along the way, still out for some old demon-hunting fun and still there to willingly protect mankind, save them without a reason even while he despises them.

Yeah, most things about anime is about average and wasted potential; but I still value it as a fan. I appreciate the chance to see his everyday life and the cliched averageness of this portrayal doesn't wear me off. I accept that Dante and while I would prefer a better animated series, I wouldn't prefer him to be in any other way.

Also when I first watched the anime I wasn't very good at English (was a midschooler) so I watched it with a fan translation, which I think portrayed things somewhat better to the child mind of mine. I might be a little biased because of that.

That's agreeable. It's not like a 10/10 series or anything, it has quite a few faults, but the anime also does a few things right and personally I found it to be fairly enjoyable. As for what you said about the "depression", I also agree that it's not so much that as maybe a sort of lethargy or something.

 

[AgentRedgrave]

Honestly, I never thought to much of the anime, other then "Dante's downtime".

 

[Triggerpigking]

It's been quite a while since I watched the series so i've forgotten a lot about it, but i'd say it was defineitly a mixed bag with a lot of great ideas though I overall enjoyed it, I would love to see a sequel honestly as there's a lot more that can be done with the concept since in the games we never see dante outside of big events in his life.

About dante being depressed? I'm not sure if that's what they were going for, but the ED is defineitly a weird contrast to the rest of the show, I do think they were atleast slightly implying how lonely he is though, as that is something we see in the other games in the rare moments he takes stuff seriously,
and imo after the events of 1 and 3 it makes perfect sense, Dante not being atleast a little ****ed up in the head would be weird by this point.

However I do agree especially with foxtrot that they missed a lot of opportunity and that if they were going for that it was too subtle, there was a lot of missed opportunity to show more depth especially with the two brothers episode, i'm wondering if perhaps this series writers were paying attention to what eachother were doing since the ED does still seem weirdly out of place as does some of the dialogue he pointed out in the vid if it was only intended as a fun little anime with no depth.

I'ts defineitly something i'd love them to explore more though in future games, especially the idea that he's addicted to killing demons by this point.
We need a good writer for dmc5 after the mostly crap story of dmc4(though dante's scenes were cool in that, just lacking in any depth barring one or two scenes).

 

[WolfOD64]

But the book had practically nothing at all to do with DMC2. Even calling it a "DMC2 novel" is a stretch because the plot is entirely it's own thing.

You're joking, surely.

I'll remind you that this is a book where Dante fights a literal army of Trishs in an alternate universe and the main villain is a cartoonishly (Like even for DMC) absurd Asian business man who somehow obtained Sparda (The sword) off-camera and somehow used it to clone Sparda (The guy) and dissected the clone so he could Frankenstein himself up with it's body parts thus somehow giving himself all of Sparda's skills and abilities.

Again, most of this forgivable on the low grounds of production value the novels were afforded. It's like the DMC1 Comic made in the U.S. that contradicts a load of things from the original game, just as much as this novel contradicted DMC2. It had good art, but was more often than not yanked down by how nonsensical some of the plot revisions were.

The difference is that this comic, like the novel, was a spin-off product licensed to the DMC brand for a quick buck, without half the planning, production time, budget, or official input from people who were working on the series at the time like the anime did.

I never said the second novel was some kind of masterpiece, but it does the very basic elements of storytelling right. It has characters that interact with each other frequently and pose relevance to the story without being relegated to insignificance in five minutes flat. It has a beginning, middle, and end. Its dialogue goes somewhere upon ignition and leads down coherent road of exposition without being contradicted two seconds later to accomodate some flashy fight scene for Dante to orchestrate for ****s and giggles.

Even with a core plot as random and mediocre as it has, it fulfills the basic rules of prose in ways that the anime inexplicably and spectacularly failed. And given the official backing and mountainous production value the anime got in comparison, it's borderline inexcusable.

I get it, you hate DMC3.

"You got that right."​

That doesn't change the fact that Beryl is an incredibly lame proto-Lady without the slightest bit of charm or personality.

If everything Lady does in the series constitutes as "charm and personality", then the standards set for characteristics demonstrated by characters in this series is lower than the Earth's mantle.

If anything, Beryl was like a merge of Trish and Lucia. She had the same interactions with Dante that Trish had with him in the first game, and was saddled with a fate she didn't want in the same fashion as Lucia. She wasn't terribly well-fleshed out given the hasty nature of the novel's plot, but that didn't make her anything less interesting, or her role in the story any smaller.

Plus, even if she didn't sit well with you, her story arc patched itself up and allowed her to depart in good faith. We have two female characters in the actual canon of DMC who haven't undergone two whole seconds of development, and have no purpose in being shoehorned back into the series repeatedly outside of transparent fan-service and an almost-commendable insistence from the writers to keep Dante from having a definitive and consistent love interest.

You're pretty drastically underselling how much he interacts or gets around in the show. The way you're painting it, he literally spent 90% of the show sitting in his office doing nothing without contact with anybody else. He sure does spend a fair amount of time there - Because that's where he lives and the show is a slice of life that usually begins and ends there with some sort of job in the middle.

I believe the point brought up by others from before isn't that the show made a point of derailing the plot for the bulk of these episodes to show Dante's lifestyle between missions---it's slice of life, as you've said, and given the right narrative implementation they could've very well been good additions to the show.

But it's not an issue of how much time he spends engaging day-to-day activities outside of missions. It's the activities themselves.

Simply put, they're not interesting. They don't add anything to the plot, bring up anything used in later episodes, and tell us absolutely nothing new about Dante's character that wasn't already established in prior games. One of the reasons I and many other people view the show as a colossal showcase of wasted potential is that it had the opportunity to shed light on aspects of Dante and the other characters that weren't touched upon in the games. And instead of developing the characters, giving insight on what they're like as people or the long-term effects of working together, or establishing anything new about them that didn't have a place in the actual games....they just recycled every barebones trait they retain as bishonen archetypes in the game. Nothing of intrigue or relevance is brought up in between the already-lackluster mess passing off as missions for each episode, and by the time the "final scheme" is revealed and the show ends, the overall experience comes off as pointless and a waste of time.

Most of us would've liked to see the writers use the runtime and lack of gameplay-related restraints to build up on the DMC canon, and instead, we just watched the characters act more like uninteresting mannequins and further pound their inability to act or behave outside the shallow and one-dimensional cliches established for them within the context of the games.

It's a slice-of-life where the slices are unlively and devoid of intrigue. It's an action series where the action is sparse and tension is non-existent. It's a venture outside the games that never once ventures outside anything established in the games.

The show fails. Don't blame me for being one of the voices for pointing out why.

Well, the government(s) knows. Maybe it's some sort of coverup.

How in God's name does a government of any nation cover-up the world-changing emergence of a thousand-story tower from the ground, a doomsday monster exploding into fits of supernatural energy on top of a skyscraper, and an isolated city-state that condones nationwide demon worship?

There's covering things up, and then there's trying to cover up Godzilla destroying Tokyo by claiming the demolished skyscrapers and giant Kaiju-sized footprints are just "rennovations to the city."