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

[TWOxACROSS]

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

And that's a huge revelation to you? It was pretty obvious that both the demons and Dante operated within the shadows of a contemporary society. DMC4 was the biggest departure, showing a society that openly worshipped Sparda, and it's shown to be a bit of an oddity.

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.

It's because it was the second Devil May Cry novel. It never billed itself as a novelization of DMC2, despite using the game's title design.

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.

He certainly doesn't have a large impact on the world he interacts with, that's for sure. The bigger problem is that it is a slice-of-life show. Who the hell actually wants that as the crux of an over-the-top action franchise? It's fine for an episode or two played for laughs to see a slice of life, but not entire series runtime.

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.

There's absolutely nothing that implies any of that, which is why I'm criticizing it :/ The closest thing we've seen of involvement from the government is some tanks and attack choppers in DMC2, but that's it.

Canonically, Temen-ni-gru's rising and the ensuing chaos is the first, and one of the biggest, demonic events in that world (since Sparda saved humanity, I guess), but no one acts like it, ever, and the one time we actually get to see other people, in the anime, everyone is like "What the heeeeeeeell is that?" as if a decade ago a giant fish wasn't swimming around a tower that sprouted out of the ground and caused the murders of half a city.

There's just no way something like that wasn't televised and broadcast around the world.

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.

Well sure, but we're not talking about Bayonetta, and as the people making the content for Devil May Cry, the onus is really on Capcom and who they hire for the task.

 

[Demi-fiend]

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 might be a few ways, but I won't discuss that here.

 

[Veloran]

Again, most of this forgivable on the low grounds of production value the novels were afforded.

That makes no sense. what does "bad production value" for a novel even mean? Is the writing intended to be directly proportional to how much the writer is paid? In that case where's your source for Goikeda being forced to pay them in order to make the book, because that's the only way I can see that would explain why it's so bad.

I never said the second novel was some kind of masterpiece, but it does the very basic elements of storytelling right.

Only in the sense that there are words on the paper which are (Usually) spelled correctly.

It has characters that interact with each other frequently and pose relevance to the story without being relegated to insignificance in five minutes flat.

Actually it does that quite a bit. Like Enzo, who appears at the beginning but isn't even the one to get Dante involved in the job and then doesn't show up again. Or Ducas, who does nothing but ferry the Beastheads around and serve up some laughs for Chen. Or Shadow and the other DMC1 Demons, who show up for a little while to spout exposition on the alternate universe before being ultimately irrelevant to their own story. Or even Eva, who's mentioned as still being around in the alternate universe, but never actually shows up.

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.

But that happens constantly. Hell the entire trip to the AU was just an excuse for a couple of crazy fight scenes. It even happens for Beryl too, a fight scene with a lot of the utterly worthless Ghost Knights is set up and then instantly ended when she shoots one with a magic macguffin bullet that kills them all which she picked up off screen. Which makes no sense not only in that it came out of nowhere, but also in that it contradicts with Beryl's character, since earlier on she was completely outraged and disgusted with Dante over killing a bunch of them but then had no problem doing it herself.

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.

But both of those things just add up to a pseudo-DMC3 Lady, Beryl even had similar but worse motivations than Lady. Lady hunted demons because her father sacrificed her mother for their power, and Beryl's father sacrificed himself to the power of the Beastheads to try and revive his dead wife. It's like the opposite situation, but with Beryl there was no personal conflict with her antagonist, it was just a vague artifact.

Also, unlike Lady who is pretty consistently portrayed as in a sort of sardonic relationship with Dante, where she just likes messing with him, Beryl continuously flip-flops between idolizing Dante and just wanting him to screw off. In fact she tells him to drop the whole thing early on, despite being the one who called Dante and got him involved in the first place. She even does almost the same thing that Lady did with trying to shoot him, but it makes no sense because she called him in herself so had to have known who he was.

Simply put, they're not interesting.

I think that just went to show that Dante's life is usually pretty boring.

bring up anything used in later episodes,

That's outright false. It's not as though there's zero continuation between episodes, certain things do carry over from one to another. Heck the whole ending plot with the big Demon summoning is something that had been going on behind the scenes since the very start of the show.

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.

Personally I believe it did do that, but it was done with the situations Dante was put in and how he resolved them rather than his explicit reactions and dialog. I mean, look at just the first two episodes.

In the very first, Dante is tasked with protecting a young orphan who's set up as the heir to a vast fortune, making her a target for those that don't want that inheritance claimed. It climaxes with one of the brothers turning into a Demon while saying that the inheritance is all his, before Dante has to put him down. He also gets really angry at the real Patty Lowell, who set up the child to take a fall for her, saying that she's just as bad as a Demon.

In the second, Dante contends with a Demon that killed one older brother, and left the younger wanting vengeance. This one is really explicit in spelling things out, so I'll let Dante tell you his opinion of the situation himself.

"What a load of crap. If you ask me your brother getting killed racing others around is dumb enough, but you're dumber than he is for trying to get revenge for his death."

"What are you trying to do, going this far to follow your brother?"

This is pretty direct commentary on what Dante thinks of himself, his own actions under similar circumstances. In the end, the younger brother thanks Dante for stopping him from going for revenge, and resolves to live for himself from now on.

Most of the series has stuff like this, situations that parallel events relating to Dante's life, and most of the time he does what he can to ensure it turns out better for the other parties than it did for himself. I'm not saying every single one falls into this idea (Like the episode where Lady and Trish first meet is just that), but generally they do.

Also, the series has absolutely stellar music.

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?

It's just a possibility. Maybe such events simply remain unexplainable for the general population, or people do have a vague idea of the supernatural but it's not common enough to act on. There are a lot of possible lines of logic, but I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that you don't really care about any explanation I could provide.

And to reiterate, DMC isn't exactly the only property that has trouble with such things.

And that's a huge revelation to you?

No, but clearly some people are left confused by it.

It's because it was the second Devil May Cry novel. It never billed itself as a novelization of DMC2, despite using the game's title design.

So shouldn't that be, "DMC novel 2", not "DMC2 novel"?

He certainly doesn't have a large impact on the world he interacts with, that's for sure.

On the world no, on individuals yes.

There's absolutely nothing that implies any of that, which is why I'm criticizing it :/ The closest thing we've seen of involvement from the government is some tanks and attack choppers in DMC2, but that's it.

Canonically, Temen-ni-gru's rising and the ensuing chaos is the first, and one of the biggest, demonic events in that world (since Sparda saved humanity, I guess), but no one acts like it, ever, and the one time we actually get to see other people, in the anime, everyone is like "What the heeeeeeeell is that?" as if a decade ago a giant fish wasn't swimming around a tower that sprouted out of the ground and caused the murders of half a city.

There's just no way something like that wasn't televised and broadcast around the world.

Who knows? Maybe people were just slaughtered that badly.

Well sure, but we're not talking about Bayonetta, and as the people making the content for Devil May Cry, the onus is really on Capcom and who they hire for the task.

I'm just saying, it's not like an incredibly uncommon issue or anything.

I've said it before, the next DMC having extensive codec sequences could really help with building the world and characters in a fairly simple and effective way.

 

[TWOxACROSS]

That makes no sense. what does "bad production value" for a novel even mean? Is the writing intended to be directly proportional to how much the writer is paid?

Actually...it can be :x If I'm getting paid to write a story, but they don't pay me for the time I'm putting into it (if that's the route they go for payment) then the quality will suffer - unable to do more passes of what is written to refine or change things, stuff like that. Otherwise, if they don't bother to pay the writer well, they can't put nearly as much focus on it. Regardless of how you pay, you're paying for the writer's time, and if you don't pay them enough well...they gotta pay the bills somehow. Plus, if they don't spring for a competent editor, the quality will suffer because they don't have someone looking out for mistakes in continuity, flow, relevance, and all that, or even spelling and grammar; although with this being translated from another language, spelling and grammar would be more a of a localization problem. That can also be a problem, because after a localization, it still has to be edited to ensure that it's readable and all that, which comes back to having another editor @_@

I think that just went to show that Dante's life is usually pretty boring.

AND WHY DOES ANYONE WANT TO SEE THAT FROM AN ACTION FRANCHISE?! Is that a defense for the anime? That's literally the point of the criticism, that the show is ultimately booooooooooooooooring and adds nothing to the overall franchise. It shouldn't even be called "supplemental material" because it doesn't actually supplement anything :/

That's outright false. It's not as though there's zero continuation between episodes, certain things do carry over from one to another. Heck the whole ending plot with the big Demon summoning is something that had been going on behind the scenes since the very start of the show.

If I remember correctly, we see Sid in like, three or four episodes, mostly as an incidental character until he actually gets power to contend with

This is pretty direct commentary on what Dante thinks of himself, his own actions under similar circumstances. In the end, the younger brother thanks Dante for stopping him from going for revenge, and resolves to live for himself from now on.

Most of the series has stuff like this, situations that parallel events relating to Dante's life, and most of the time he does what he can to ensure it turns out better for the other parties than it did for himself.

Eeeeeeeeeeeeh, that's again part of the problem - Dante is a passive figure (emotionally) in all this, he doesn't change or have any legitimate struggles we're supposed to care about. He's changing the lives of characters we will never see again, but in changing them, nothing changes in him, which makes it all effectively useless. Normally in writing like this, where the hero helps others on a case-by-case basis, it's because the hero is somehow affected by the other characters, where the hero learns more about themselves, or their outlook on life is changed, or we as the audience understand more of the hero through how they interact with the characters in need. We've already gotten to see how Dante interacts with other characters, so it comes as no surprise that he is abrasive yet can heroically talk sense into others

To an extent, it's lazy writing to literally come up with plot points that are things Dante has already dealt with, and it's just bad writing to make up plot points Dante should have been the one to deal with it, not helping some other character.

Like I said, they have good ideas, but terrible execution.

Also, the series has absolutely stellar music.

Sure, but good music does not make a good show.

I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that you don't really care about any explanation I could provide.

Because literally any explanation you could provide is conjecture with no substantial in-universe evidence to support it. Wolfy and I (or at least me) are the kinds of people who have already looked for explanations, and we're sour because we came up with bupkis. Headcanon can give you a better image of something, but it certainly can't rectify how it actually looks.

No, but clearly some people are left confused by it.

So...we gotta cater to people who don't pay attention? I don't know how someone could actually be confused about it when it's spelled out so clearly. If Dante wasn't a mercenary living on the fringe, people would be kicking down his door looking for help with their demonic woes, like he's some second-rate Witcher.

So shouldn't that be, "DMC novel 2", not "DMC2 novel"?

Tomato, tomato. More succinctly, who cares?

On the world no, on individuals yes.

And those individuals are boring at best, useless at worst. Even the character we are supposed to care about the most comes off as a superbly annoying brat. How can I give a **** about Patty when the hero doesn't even act like it half the time, and the other half she is so insufferable that I barely care about her plight?

Who knows? Maybe people were just slaughtered that badly.

Which means what? How does the degree of a person's murder have anything to do with the rest of a modern world's ability to witness what equates to a near-apocalypse?

I'm just saying, it's not like an incredibly uncommon issue or anything.

Of course it's not, but it is totally irrelevant to the anime and franchise we're talking about. It almost sounds like your deflecting, that you're saying "Wull, it's not that bad if other things do it too." That's the larger point, we should be demanding better from these products, if they're gonna take the time to create a world, they shouldn't half-ass it. Or at least, people should stop talking about it like it's infallible or has deeper meaning. It's very easy to fill in the blanks when there are so. Many. Blanks.

I've said it before, the next DMC having extensive codec sequences could really help with building the world and characters in a fairly simple and effective way.

Not sure if you're being serious or not, but no, that kinda thing just doesn't fit DMC. What does fit DMC is the whole gothic horror/paranormal investigation stuff. If they reigned in all the shonen anime garbage just a little they could inject some decent storytelling into it, like DmC was trying to do. It's not impossible to tell a story, you just have to bother focusing on it as something more than a vehicle that gets the audience to the next explosion.

 

[Innsmouth]

 

[DarkSlayerZero]

The AU should've been used for a future title and the anime should've been used for Vergil.

 

[WolfOD64]

Goddamn it, @TWOxACROSS , here I was with a bunch of points of rebuttal prepped, and there you go making every point FOR me. You're hitting the nail on the head before I even get here. That's MY job!

 

[TWOxACROSS]

I am the son of a carpenter.

 

[Veloran]

Actually...it can be :x If I'm getting paid to write a story, but they don't pay me for the time I'm putting into it (if that's the route they go for payment) then the quality will suffer - unable to do more passes of what is written to refine or change things, stuff like that.

So did they actively bill the author and put him into life-crushing debt for the privilege of writing the book? Because it's just that bad. It is literally worse than fanfiction, every single aspect of the plot is badly done on all levels, hardly anything coherently links together, and the prose itself is simply tiring and flat. It feels like an author's first work.

Whatever he was paid - And I'll remind you again that there's no evidence he was compensated poorly - I cannot imagine the insultingly meager amount that would cause him to release a work in such low quality.

AND WHY DOES ANYONE WANT TO SEE THAT FROM AN ACTION FRANCHISE?! Is that a defense for the anime? That's literally the point of the criticism, that the show is ultimately booooooooooooooooring and adds nothing to the overall franchise. It shouldn't even be called "supplemental material" because it doesn't actually supplement anything :/

I disagree that it adds nothing, and moreover after rewatching it really isn't that boring. It has a lot of slower dialog scenes, but the main criticism I'd give it is that the action scenes are generally just badly animated and slow as well.

If I remember correctly, we see Sid in like, three or four episodes, mostly as an incidental character until he actually gets power to contend with

I'm pretty sure that was the point of Sid. He was a conniving little snake that we see pop up from time to time (Like more than half the episodes really), enough to see that he's clearly up to something but without a frame for what, and then it turns out that he was manipulating individual events in order to collect the artifacts needed to summon the power of a greater Demon.

Eeeeeeeeeeeeh, that's again part of the problem - Dante is a passive figure (emotionally) in all this, he doesn't change or have any legitimate struggles we're supposed to care about.

I wouldn't say that, in fact I'm pretty sure he's affected at least a little bit by each episode. Like say in the third, where at first he's all set to kill the demon guy, but after seeing that his feelings are genuine (Similar to his father) he instead helps him out, and at the end we see he's really happy with how it ended up. Frankly I would say that the perception of Dante being really passive the whole way through is down to how ungodly unanimated the animation is.

Overall, I'd say he does go through development in the series, namely in regards to the personal conflict of what he wants to do with his life. He's stuck between trying to move on from everything that's happened to him, and trying to throw his life away through fights that would be completely suicidal for anyone else. For one thing I'm pretty sure this is the entire reason that Dante was so lenient towards Sid and let him go through with his plan, as at the end of Once Upon a Time Sid promises that what he's doing would "be of use" to Dante, but obviously the only thing he does after getting Abigail's power is immediately try to kill him. Ultimately Dante doesn't let it do him in, I suspect because Patty's crying over his near-dead body hit a little too close to home to himself at the time of his mother's death, and also because passing up the opportunity to reunite her with her own mother pricked at his conscience too much.

If your skeptical, consider that the soundtrack practically spells this mindset out directly with it's three main songs. I'll be Your Home is the idea to move on, make a new life and let go of the regrets of the past. Room Despair is the idea of giving in and giving up, dumping himself into some crazy situation that might do him in. Future In My Hands represents being stuck between decisions, should he just pretend to be what everyone sees him as, try and grow into a better person, or let the past take him? The only answer is that it's a choice he has to make himself.

If you're still doubtful, remember that Future In My Hands was considered important enough for the anime to dedicate an entire episode to it, with Dante outright saying that it's his favorite song which he played so much that it broke, and he went to the trouble of framing it.

Edit: As an add-on to this, I was recently rewatching the series and noticed that the preview for said episode elaborates on Dante's feelings a bit more.

I'm not sure when it started, but before I knew it, I was always listening to her songs. Tougher than any man, softer than any woman, she sang of the sadness in human hearts. If I ever get to meet her, I'll probably thank her. Because she made me realize that even I had enough emotional depth to understand songs.

Now, do I think the anime pull this off really well? Not in the least, it's a show with a lot of issues, among them an obtuseness that the whole series seems to love which everybody seems to hate. But I am certain that it's what they were going for, and the framework and beats of it is present throughout the story.

Sure, but good music does not make a good show.

It helps a whole lot.

Because literally any explanation you could provide is conjecture with no substantial in-universe evidence to support it. Wolfy and I (or at least me) are the kinds of people who have already looked for explanations, and we're sour because we came up with bupkis. Headcanon can give you a better image of something, but it certainly can't rectify how it actually looks.

Well then let's say there's just no explanation whatsoever. Is that enough to ruin the series for you?

So...we gotta cater to people who don't pay attention? I don't know how someone could actually be confused about it when it's spelled out so clearly.

I feel the same way about other aspects of the story. Why is it the universe being "normal" is something obvious that never needs to be touched upon (Especially when the characters never normally interact with it in the games, the closest was Fortuna but it was a cult loony bin), but things like characterizations and motivations need to be screamed from the rooftops because nobody can seem to pick up on what's already there?

Tomato, tomato. More succinctly, who cares?

Apparently OD, seeing as part of his argument for the "DMC2 novel" was that it's quality should be excused because it had the "Herculean task" of formulating a story based on DMC2 as source material... Despite the fact that it has practically nothing to do with DMC2 and entirely does it's own thing.

And those individuals are boring at best, useless at worst.

I disagree, I found most of the supporting or one-off cast pretty good, some of them I wouldn't even mind seeing make a cameo in the games, like an older Patty, who was perfectly fine aside from her grating as hell VA.

Which means what? How does the degree of a person's murder have anything to do with the rest of a modern world's ability to witness what equates to a near-apocalypse?

I was saying "slaughtered badly" as in "swiftness with which the population was exterminated", not how brutally they were killed.

Of course it's not, but it is totally irrelevant to the anime and franchise we're talking about. It almost sounds like your deflecting, that you're saying "Wull, it's not that bad if other things do it too." That's the larger point, we should be demanding better from these products, if they're gonna take the time to create a world, they shouldn't half-ass it.

I want it to be better as well, all I'm saying is it ain't a deal-breaker for my enjoyment, and I don't get outraged at every flaw.

It's very easy to fill in the blanks when there are so. Many. Blanks.

Multiple properties are entirely built around "fill in the blank" storytelling where the reader/viewer is given as few details as possible and expected to extrapolate whole swathes of the story from almost nothing.

Not sure if you're being serious or not, but no, that kinda thing just doesn't fit DMC.

Completely serious, a system where you can just ring up other characters and talk to them about events as they happen or what something is and how it relates to the world would be perfect. The codecs in MGR were literally that game's best feature, and since all it is is voicework and some looped character models talking it's easy and cost-effective too.

If they reigned in all the shonen anime garbage just a little they could inject some decent storytelling into it, like DmC was trying to do.

 

[Foxtrot94]

@Veloran
I'm just gonna say that no, "codec conversations" don't fit DMC in the slightest. DMC ain't MGS, it's a high octane action franchise, and the last thing I want out of it is stopping the flow of gameplay, even in between fights, and listen to people talking while I should be playing instead. That would trigger my nightmares of those annoying DmC cutscene interruptions, which proved that that kind of thing shouldn't be in this franchise.

Even in MGR those conversations annoyed me to no end. But there is excusable since it's Metal Gear and Platinum wanted to make it feel like MG so they decided to put them in there, but DMC wouldn't have that excuse.

If it's really so oh my God necessary to flesh out the world more, just do it like they've always done it, with Files. Just, maybe more extensive and detailed.

 

[Veloran]

@Veloran
I'm just gonna say that no, "codec conversations" don't fit DMC in the slightest. DMC ain't MGS, it's a high octane action franchise, and the last thing I want out of it is stopping the flow of gameplay, even in between fights, and listen to people talking while I should be playing instead. That would trigger my nightmares of those annoying DmC cutscene interruptions, which proved that that kind of thing shouldn't be in this franchise.

Even in MGR those conversations annoyed me to no end. But there is excusable since it's Metal Gear and Platinum wanted to make it feel like MG so they decided to put them in there, but DMC wouldn't have that excuse.

If it's really so oh my God necessary to flesh out the world more, just do it like they've always done it, with Files. Just, maybe more extensive and detailed.

I feel like you're confusing codecs with those forced walk-and-talk segments that tend to use a similar UI. Codecs are entirely optional, basically files for what's going on in the game right then, except by having the characters speak to each other instead of relying on text you can get characterization moments in there too.

 

[TWOxACROSS]

So did they actively bill the author and put him into life-crushing debt for the privilege of writing the book? Because it's just that bad. It is literally worse than fanfiction, every single aspect of the plot is badly done on all levels, hardly anything coherently links together, and the prose itself is simply tiring and flat. It feels like an author's first work.

Whatever he was paid - And I'll remind you again that there's no evidence he was compensated poorly - I cannot imagine the insultingly meager amount that would cause him to release a work in such low quality.

I'm not here to defend the book, I'm just saying that there are indeed a lot of reasons where "production value" can affect the quality of a story.

I disagree that it adds nothing, and moreover after rewatching it really isn't that boring. It has a lot of slower dialog scenes, but the main criticism I'd give it is that the action scenes are generally just badly animated and slow as well.

What does it actually give us? In what solid way does it actually supplement the franchise? It doesn't, because nobody of value changes in any way. Static characters hang out with the characters made for the anime, whom we never see ever again; they change, but have absolutely no impact on the characters or world at large - even Sid's little uprising seems to have no lasting impact.

I'm pretty sure that was the point of Sid. He was a conniving little snake that we see pop up from time to time (Like more than half the episodes really), enough to see that he's clearly up to something but without a frame for what, and then it turns out that he was manipulating individual events in order to collect the artifacts needed to summon the power of a greater Demon.

And then he dies, because Dante has to win. Extremely uninteresting because a) we've seen that plot done to death, and b) nothing new or interesting was done to make it stand out from the others.

I wouldn't say that, in fact I'm pretty sure he's affected at least a little bit by each episode. Like say in the third, where at first he's all set to kill the demon guy, but after seeing that his feelings are genuine (Similar to his father) he instead helps him out, and at the end we see he's really happy with how it ended up. Frankly I would say that the perception of Dante being really passive the whole way through is down to how ungodly unanimated the animation is.

Dante having compassion for demons isn't a new thing in the slightest. That's not a new development for him, it's been a core part of his personality since the first game that it doesn't matter if your a demon or human, it's your actions that make you good or evil.

Overall, I'd say he does go through development in the series, namely in regards to the personal conflict of what he wants to do with his life. He's stuck between trying to move on from everything that's happened to him, and trying to throw his life away through fights that would be completely suicidal for anyone else. For one thing I'm pretty sure this is the entire reason that Dante was so lenient towards Sid and let him go through with his plan, as at the end of Once Upon a Time Sid promises that what he's doing would "be of use" to Dante, but obviously the only thing he does after getting Abigail's power is immediately try to kill him. Ultimately Dante doesn't let it do him in, I suspect because Patty's crying over his near-dead body hit a little too close to home to himself at the time of his mother's death, and also because passing up the opportunity to reunite her with her own mother pricked at his conscience too much.

Plot is the reason Dante doesn't die, because he literally can't. There is absolutely no tension to his apparent "death" because we know he still has two more game worth of missions to do. This is the problem with telling a story set before or during the events of a franchise, because you have to go the extra mile in trying to create suspense because you know certain characters have to make it.

Reuniting Patty with her parents would be interesting, if they hadn't made Patty such an annoying character, and even made Dante hate her half the time. Despite Dante's aloofness and trying to act cool all the time, he never really shows legitimate care for her, instead playing to the tune of that cold guardian doing it because he has to. I can't get emotionally attached to her or Dante's desire to reunite her with her mother because it almost comes out of no where.

If your skeptical, consider that the soundtrack practically spells this mindset out directly with it's three main songs. I'll be Your Home is the idea to move on, make a new life and let go of the regrets of the past. Room Despair is the idea of giving in and giving up, dumping himself into some crazy situation that might do him in. Future In My Hands represents being stuck between decisions, should he just pretend to be what everyone sees him as, try and grow into a better person, or let the past take him? The only answer is that it's a choice he has to make himself.

If you're still doubtful, remember that Future In My Hands was considered important enough for the anime to dedicate an entire episode to it, with Dante outright saying that it's his favorite song which he played so much that it broke, and he went to the trouble of framing it.

Now, do I think the anime pull this off really well? Not in the least, it's a show with a lot of issues, among them an obtuseness that the whole series seems to love which everybody seems to hate. But I am certain that it's what they were going for, and the framework and beats of it is present throughout the story.

This is all well and good, but that's the music again. It's not the story itself. No matter what they tried to convey, they did it poorly. Hence the "good idea, bad execution" comment.

Well then let's say there's just no explanation whatsoever. Is that enough to ruin the series for you?

Doesn't ruin the series for me. The overall point in that is that this series gives us so little to work with, has a lot of potential, and a lot of the times people are far too willing to administer headcanon to fill in the blanks, somehow rectifying whatever shortcomings the series has. DMC is great, it's a lot of fun, but it's not the greatest at telling a story (for a bevy of reasons).

I feel the same way about other aspects of the story. Why is it the universe being "normal" is something obvious that never needs to be touched upon (Especially when the characters never normally interact with it in the games, the closest was Fortuna but it was a cult loony bin), but things like characterizations and motivations need to be screamed from the rooftops because nobody can seem to pick up on what's already there?

Because normalcy is boring. Would you read a story about a guy who just has the okayest day of his life? Nothing happens to him, nothing happens to the world? He just gets up, does his thing, goes to work, and goes home and sleeps? People don't consume the normal, and they certainly don't want to read a story about a guy who is just having the best day of his life - you would sit there waiting for something to happen to him, something to bring it all down around him. We don't need characterization and motivation screamed from the rooftops, but when the characters are so flat, what they have is really boring. No one at Capcom seems to be able to tackle the deeper aspects of the characters they created past one or two instances, as if their character arcs are finally breaching the surface, only to dip back under the murk.

I disagree, I found most of the supporting or one-off cast pretty good, some of them I wouldn't even mind seeing make a cameo in the games, like an older Patty, who was perfectly fine aside from her grating as hell VA.

Half the cast is literally mimicking Dante's other relationships and his life, and the other half are cliches, especially in anime - even Patty. Although it would be nice to see some of these characters return, if only to actually make it feel like the anime has some sort of part in the world itself. Patty would obviously be the best envoy for the anime, perhaps she could actually be some sort of federal representative handling supernatural affairs in the aftermath of things like Temen-ni=gru and Sid's shenanigans, to actually put some of that reality into the series.

I was saying "slaughtered badly" as in "swiftness with which the population was exterminated", not how brutally they were killed.

Doesn't change the fact that they could get literally everyone in the city, and it wouldn't be hard to see a gigantic fish swimming around a tower that just erupted out of the ground. There's no way there weren't witnesses, even in the next town.

I want it to be better as well, all I'm saying is it ain't a deal-breaker for my enjoyment, and I don't get outraged at every flaw.

I am certainly not outraged, but what bugs me is when people up headcanon and theory as fact to make up for the series' obvious shortcomings. I spent a lot of time learning the intricacies of writing and editing, of telling a story, so it really just gets under my skin to see people wave away criticism of things we shouldn't be just accepting, or worse, when people toss up theory as fact.

Multiple properties are entirely built around "fill in the blank" storytelling where the reader/viewer is given as few details as possible and expected to extrapolate whole swathes of the story from almost nothing.

Yeah, they're called mysteries, and DMC is not a mystery series. Dark Souls is probably as close as one could come to the actual concept of what you're talking about, but DMC tries to present a story, but does it poorly. It has characters, but they are rather flat. It has a world, but we only see tiny slices of it. But that's fine, because the main point of DMC is the action, which it does well. I would love if DMC tried to do more with telling a story, but I don't need it to. What I have a problem with is people who put so much effort into trying to convince others of what they want to see in the series that just doesn't exist.

Completely serious, a system where you can just ring up other characters and talk to them about events as they happen or what something is and how it relates to the world would be perfect. The codecs in MGR were literally that game's best feature, and since all it is is voicework and some looped character models talking it's easy and cost-effective too.

Y'know what's even more cost-effective? Files that you can look at from a menu, whenever you want to learn more about something, which most of the games had. DMC1 probably did it best when encounters would actually increase how much info was in a file. Or, they could just try doing a better job of conveying information the proper way, with their writing. Something the anime doesn't have.

Say what you will about the quality of the story, but at least they tried to present a story, and the characters had clear character arcs, motivations, and personality.

 

[Veloran]

I'm not here to defend the book, I'm just saying that there are indeed a lot of reasons where "production value" can affect the quality of a story.

I understand that, I'm just not certain there's any bearing for such a thing with the case of the second novel. I've never heard of the author getting shortchanged anyway.

What does it actually give us? In what solid way does it actually supplement the franchise? It doesn't, because nobody of value changes in any way. Static characters hang out with the characters made for the anime, whom we never see ever again; they change, but have absolutely no impact on the characters or world at large - even Sid's little uprising seems to have no lasting impact.

I'm not sure what you want it to have given. What supplementation was necessary? At the very least we saw Lady and Trish's first meeting, we learned that ghosts and spirits exist, there was quite a bit about magic from both sides, and there was a fair amount of Demons with their own gimmicks like possession or trickery, and we see that many even lesser Demons are intelligent on their own.

As a side note, the only piece of media that came out after the anime was DMC4, which not only was self-contained to a singular area away from where the characters of the anime were, but also released just four months after it aired, meaning integrating elements of it would have been difficult and last-minute. We all know the game had a rough, unfinished production, with most of Dante's segments cut, and because nothing else has since released for the series I don't think it's correct to say that the anime was lastingly irrelevant.

And then he dies, because Dante has to win. Extremely uninteresting because a) we've seen that plot done to death, and b) nothing new or interesting was done to make it stand out from the others.

I don't entirely agree, but moreover I think you're too busy looking at it collectively with the rest of the property. The climax of the story with Sid's death was done to highlight that idea of the soul which DMC4 very shortly after reiterates with Agnus. Now, taken together, it seems like a rehash, but you have to remember that these two things were developed almost simultaneously. Of course you could say that similar ideas were used before in the previous games, specifically in 3 with Dante and Vergil, but obviously there it was never stated outright and left to inference. Personally I do enjoy that subtly a bit more, but at the same time people might not have gotten it, so who knows.

Dante having compassion for demons isn't a new thing in the slightest. That's not a new development for him, it's been a core part of his personality since the first game that it doesn't matter if your a demon or human, it's your actions that make you good or evil.

Sure, but it's something rarely seen. You've basically just got Trish and Lucia, and both of them are pretty unique cases. A Demon straight from their realm, which Dante had no connection to and who didn't have a change of heart because to goodness of him, hey it's nice to see.

Also that was just one example, I'd say in most episodes Dante at least has a minor personality change or resolution from the beginning to the end, even if it's self-contained. A lot may be mirroring similar occasions elsewhere in the series, but a lot of it is obscure enough that I don't have a problem with some retreading.

Plot is the reason Dante doesn't die, because he literally can't. There is absolutely no tension to his apparent "death" because we know he still has two more game worth of missions to do. This is the problem with telling a story set before or during the events of a franchise, because you have to go the extra mile in trying to create suspense because you know certain characters have to make it.

That's faulty logic. With that thinking, obviously there's no tension to anything, ever, because it's a game series so obviously the protagonist will never lose and will always win in the end. Even at the beginning of DMC1, where Dante gets stabbed by Trish, then again by Alastor, clearly nothing will happen and he'll get back up because you've got the entire rest of a game to play through.

If you're looking at it that way and completely dismiss any drama out of hand, then I can't even see why you'd get invested in the story in the first place.

Reuniting Patty with her parents would be interesting, if they hadn't made Patty such an annoying character, and even made Dante hate her half the time. Despite Dante's aloofness and trying to act cool all the time, he never really shows legitimate care for her, instead playing to the tune of that cold guardian doing it because he has to. I can't get emotionally attached to her or Dante's desire to reunite her with her mother because it almost comes out of no where.

Eh, I didn't mind her. It mostly just seemed like Dante liked making a show of being annoyed with her, because in the end he'd always put up with it and keep her around anyway. When looking at their relationship in perspective of Dante's own life, I wasn't exactly surprised that he'd want to give her her mother back.

This is all well and good, but that's the music again. It's not the story itself. No matter what they tried to convey, they did it poorly. Hence the "good idea, bad execution" comment.

Music itself is a storytelling component for any series, even without lyricals which spell things out directly. For DMC, basically every single lyric track holds some relevance and talks about aspects of whatever the song is about, the anime in particular emphasizes it a lot by making one track be the entire focus of an episode's plot.

Of course you are right here as well, I wouldn't call the execution very good. Specifically I'd cite the animation as being the biggest letdown in that regard, and the overall story/dialog sort of middling out or being inconsistent. Overall I like what they were going for, but the show is just "okay" on the whole, with a lot of rough patches or moments that don't hit as hard as they should have.

Doesn't ruin the series for me. The overall point in that is that this series gives us so little to work with, has a lot of potential, and a lot of the times people are far too willing to administer headcanon to fill in the blanks, somehow rectifying whatever shortcomings the series has. DMC is great, it's a lot of fun, but it's not the greatest at telling a story (for a bevy of reasons).

Perhaps people gloss over the blanks or ignore the shortcomings too much, but simultaneously I feel as though the criticism levied down can oftentimes be way too harsh or undeserving.

Because normalcy is boring. Would you read a story about a guy who just has the okayest day of his life? Nothing happens to him, nothing happens to the world? He just gets up, does his thing, goes to work, and goes home and sleeps?

I mean that's basically the entire plot of Ulysses.

And while the anime sure as hell ain't no Ulysses, but the setup also isn't as "normal". What I'm saying is, the events of the plot itself can be secondary to how it's told, and depending on the person and how they interpret what's going on enjoyment can vary drastically.

Half the cast is literally mimicking Dante's other relationships and his life, and the other half are cliches, especially in anime - even Patty.

Even with similarities, I generally liked them. If there was some sort of DMC game that dropped an adventure in favor of some sort of mission system based out of Devil May Cry just made up of jobs, I'd like for most if not all of the cast to show up as cameos on missions or as the people offering them.

Patty would obviously be the best envoy for the anime, perhaps she could actually be some sort of federal representative handling supernatural affairs in the aftermath of things like Temen-ni=gru and Sid's shenanigans, to actually put some of that reality into the series.

That could be okay, personally I was thinking "supernatural museum curator" or whatever, something which integrated that sort of alchemist family idea. There are a lot of potential routes to go.

Doesn't change the fact that they could get literally everyone in the city, and it wouldn't be hard to see a gigantic fish swimming around a tower that just erupted out of the ground. There's no way there weren't witnesses, even in the next town.

At that point you have to speculate on just where the city was or how big the outbreak was, the exact level of technology, or how Demons appear to Humans. Most of it is up in the air.

I am certainly not outraged, but what bugs me is when people up headcanon and theory as fact to make up for the series' obvious shortcomings. I spent a lot of time learning the intricacies of writing and editing, of telling a story, so it really just gets under my skin to see people wave away criticism of things we shouldn't be just accepting, or worse, when people toss up theory as fact.

The line between theory and interpretation is very much a subjective one. Elements that are obvious to one person might never register for another, and a third might not care to begin with.

Dark Souls is probably as close as one could come to the actual concept of what you're talking about, but DMC tries to present a story, but does it poorly. It has characters, but they are rather flat. It has a world, but we only see tiny slices of it.

Way I see it, what Dark Souls does with it's world, Devil May Cry does with it's characters. It doesn't tell you much except the barebones essentials, but leaves hints for people to reach other conclusions. In both series the plots themselves are extremely simple "Go here, kill the guys, save the world" plots.

With Dark Souls the fun of the story comes from piecing things together about the universe and what's going on, maybe you find a piece of armor that gives you hints as to what an organization or land is like, then find something later that puts a different twist on it by contrasting it against something else. Devil May Cry is a bit similar but with characterization, it's almost tradition that the only characters that have their thoughts, feelings, or motivations spelled out to the player are the leading females - Trish, Lucia, Lady, even Beryl, they're the ones that express the most, while the leading guy (Generally Dante, Vergil gets this in antagonist form while Nero has it with his backstory and just who he is) is more of an enigma in that you're really not sure what their "deal" is, but usually hints are dropped here and there to give people an idea of what they might really be like.

In both cases, it's sort of paint by numbers storytelling, but overall Dark Souls does it much better because not only can they go much harder on it because the games are far larger, but also because it's much easier for the audience to accept not knowing things about the world than it is not knowing things about the characters, much less the protagonist themselves. It also helps that Dark Souls takes itself much more seriously, whereas with DMC it's way easier - And probably completely expected of the player - To just have a fun ride without worrying about the story too much beyond the cuhrayzee factor.

Y'know what's even more cost-effective? Files that you can look at from a menu, whenever you want to learn more about something, which most of the games had.

But codecs are basically just voiced files that have characters speaking to each other.

Honestly I think the preference for files versus codecs highlights the difference in what each of us is looking for in terms of "exposition".

Say what you will about the quality of the story, but at least they tried to present a story, and the characters had clear character arcs, motivations, and personality.

But Devil May Cry does normally do that.

To expand on the earlier comparison - DmC is to DMC as Lords of the Fallen is to Dark Souls. One might be preferable to the other, it depends entirely on the viewer.

 

[TWOxACROSS]

I'm not sure what you want it to have given. What supplementation was necessary? At the very least we saw Lady and Trish's first meeting, we learned that ghosts and spirits exist, there was quite a bit about magic from both sides, and there was a fair amount of Demons with their own gimmicks like possession or trickery, and we see that many even lesser Demons are intelligent on their own.

None of that is a surprise. The supplementation is supposed to give a deeper understanding of the world and its characters, and whatever is done in the anime is so shallow that it doesn't even count as supplementation. So Lady and Trish hated each other for an episode, then they kissed and made up (I've seen it on deviantART), and they are amicable towards on another.

I don't entirely agree, but moreover I think you're too busy looking at it collectively with the rest of the property. The climax of the story with Sid's death was done to highlight that idea of the soul which DMC4 very shortly after reiterates with Agnus. Now, taken together, it seems like a rehash, but you have to remember that these two things were developed almost simultaneously. Of course you could say that similar ideas were used before in the previous games, specifically in 3 with Dante and Vergil, but obviously there it was never stated outright and left to inference. Personally I do enjoy that subtly a bit more, but at the same time people might not have gotten it, so who knows.

I'm not even talking about it being a rehash within the franchise, it's just a cliche in general at this point, and nothing new was done with it to make it interesting.

Sure, but it's something rarely seen. You've basically just got Trish and Lucia, and both of them are pretty unique cases. A Demon straight from their realm, which Dante had no connection to and who didn't have a change of heart because to goodness of him, hey it's nice to see.

We've seen it enough that it's something that Dante believes. We don't need to be beaten over the head at every possible turn that he thinks that way. The fact that it's "rarely seen" is a good thing. Also, remember how Dante also thought it was despicable that Mundus killed one of his loyal servants? He had compassion for his enemy, who had just tried to kill him. It's not that big a deal that he does it in the anime, to a guy who is basically just a copy of Sparda's past.

Also that was just one example, I'd say in most episodes Dante at least has a minor personality change or resolution from the beginning to the end, even if it's self-contained. A lot may be mirroring similar occasions elsewhere in the series, but a lot of it is obscure enough that I don't have a problem with some retreading.

The obscurity of it doesn't make it okay to retread the same elements we've experience before, especially in the same series, and especially not if you're gonna say that they're positive points for the anime.

That's faulty logic. With that thinking, obviously there's no tension to anything, ever, because it's a game series so obviously the protagonist will never lose and will always win in the end. Even at the beginning of DMC1, where Dante gets stabbed by Trish, then again by Alastor, clearly nothing will happen and he'll get back up because you've got the entire rest of a game to play through.

No, no it's not faulty logic. As a game, we are trying to survive in the gameplay, but we have no reason to believe that our character won't bite it by the end or something (except for DMC3 and 4, of course). There's a bit of ludonarrative dissonance with DMC to begin with though, because he can obviously survive a lot of grievous injuries, but they have to give us an arbitrary vitality meter to inject risk into it. However, DMC1 does slowly pit you against stronger and stronger characters, and I'd have been willing to believe that Mundus had the capability to kill him.

As an aside though, when it comes to action heroes, we handle things a little differently, because usually we want to see them save the day and make a difference, and we want to see how they'll overcome the struggles they're pitted against. For the anime, though, it tries to make us worry about his death or something, when there's no reason to. I can enjoy the action without having to wonder whether or not the hero is gonna make it, because it's just expected, hence why action has to be pretty entertaining to watch if there's no real risk of death. It's difficult to even feel the impact of Dante rallying in order to reunite Patty with her mom, because we know first and foremost he has to rally because he literally is just incapable of dying, since he's in other material later in the franchise timeline.

If you're looking at it that way and completely dismiss any drama out of hand, then I can't even see why you'd get invested in the story in the first place.

Seriously? That's why I couldn't get invested in the suspense. Alternatively, I couldn't get invested in the story because they didn't make me care. The hilarious thing is that when you're tasked with being unable to kill a character because of where the story takes place within a timeline, you have to find other ways to raise the stakes, liiiike other, new characters (Patty). However, it feels like they did the best they could to remove all interest or investment I could derive for the character, especially when the hero himself acts like she is just a hassle.

Dante liked making a show of being annoyed with her, because in the end he'd always put up with it and keep her around anyway. When looking at their relationship in perspective of Dante's own life, I wasn't exactly surprised that he'd want to give her her mother back.

That's another thing, because there have been points when Dante would drop the act and get serious, but seeing Dante act like he was sick of Patty's **** for nearly the entire run of the anime was just too much. Even if he did care, and it was all an act, there was just nothing there to actually make me care about her. His cool act lasted too long negatively impacts the audience being able to care about Patty's plight.

Music itself is a storytelling component for any series, even without lyricals which spell things out directly. For DMC, basically every single lyric track holds some relevance and talks about aspects of whatever the song is about, the anime in particular emphasizes it a lot by making one track be the entire focus of an episode's plot.

But see, what you're essentially telling me is that the music spells out stuff, as if the lyrics are explaining things to me. That's bad - because the story should be doing the majority of that, not the music. Music is supposed to set the tone, not tell the story of what it's supposed to be supporting. It's nice that it's doing that, but that's a huge failure on the storyteller's part.

Overall I like what they were going for, but the show is just "okay" on the whole, with a lot of rough patches or moments that don't hit as hard as they should have.

This is how I usually operate; even if I don't like the content overall, I can dig the concept (what they were going for). However, when I look at it critically (which is what I'm doing), there's a lot to be disappointed by.

Perhaps people gloss over the blanks or ignore the shortcomings too much, but simultaneously I feel as though the criticism levied down can oftentimes be way too harsh or undeserving.

It's only undeserving when people hold up elements as though it deserves praise. The execution is the failure, and to praise the execution will get that praise criticized. It gets criticized harshly because that's just how criticism can be. Despite whatever voice I or Wolfy may give to our criticism, the points themselves don't change.

At that point you have to speculate on just where the city was or how big the outbreak was, the exact level of technology, or how Demons appear to Humans. Most of it is up in the air.

Well, we know there's TV, and helicopters, so we know there would have to have been some people recording the events, possibly from news choppers. Plus, the anime itself implies that demons appear to humans just as they do to Dante, all dependent on their disguise.

The line between theory and interpretation is very much a subjective one. Elements that are obvious to one person might never register for another, and a third might not care to begin with.

Of course, but both theory and interpretation can change in the face of facts, or the absence of it. In the end, it's fine to have your own theory and interpretation, but just as headcanon, it's all personal.

Way I see it, what Dark Souls does with it's world, Devil May Cry does with it's characters. It doesn't tell you much except the barebones essentials, but leaves hints for people to reach other conclusions. In both series the plots themselves are extremely simple "Go here, kill the guys, save the world" plots.

But Dark Souls also offers all the ample material to near-completely piece together any particular element. There's like, a handful of unsolved mysteries in the lore, amidst history that is pretty well-established. When it comes to the characters in Devil May Cry, they get called bland and flat because they don't go very deep, and there's too much conjecture in finding out more about their inner workings.

But codecs are basically just voiced files that have characters speaking to each other.

Well sure, but I'm just saying that files were even more cost effective, and DMC1 had a very nice system in place that they should have kept up with.

 

[berto]

@Veloran @TWOxACROSS
I take my eyes off this thread for a second and there are like 12 essay long responses.

I'm not going to read all that but sufficient to say it's starting to border on spam. Keep it shorter, people.

 

[Veloran]

None of that is a surprise.

Even so, we didn't know most of it. Like, Lady and Trish' meeting might not have been mind-blowing, but I'm still happy to have seen it.

I'm not even talking about it being a rehash within the franchise, it's just a cliche in general at this point, and nothing new was done with it to make it interesting.

It's often said but few ideas are really new, so generally I like to take things on their own without regards to media as a whole.

We've seen it enough that it's something that Dante believes.

Now, yes. That doesn't mean it was a bad inclusion.

The obscurity of it doesn't make it okay to retread the same elements we've experience before, especially in the same series, and especially not if you're gonna say that they're positive points for the anime.

I don't get it, do you want things to be vague and sparse or do you want it spelled out? Why is Dante being angry at Mundus for being such a scumbag to kill his enemies more than enough evidence for him being okay with Demons that don't try to kill Humans, but other plot elements need to be explicitly stated through dialog itself in order for them to have been properly conveyed?

No, no it's not faulty logic.

I think it is. You need to be more than willing to suspend your disbelief for things like overall series timeline contradictions when it comes to threats/deaths of characters, and just enjoy it as it comes. Personally, I found the impossibility of Dante dying in that situation less interesting and narratively important than the fact that he was willing to die in that situation.

Seriously? That's why I couldn't get invested in the suspense. Alternatively, I couldn't get invested in the story because they didn't make me care.

I don't know man, it seems kind of up to personal opinion.

However, it feels like they did the best they could to remove all interest or investment I could derive for the character, especially when the hero himself acts like she is just a hassle.

He acts like everything is a hassle, that's just the way Dante is.

That's another thing, because there have been points when Dante would drop the act and get serious, but seeing Dante act like he was sick of Patty's **** for nearly the entire run of the anime was just too much. Even if he did care, and it was all an act, there was just nothing there to actually make me care about her. His cool act lasted too long negatively impacts the audience being able to care about Patty's plight.

I never really felt like he was sick of her. He constantly let her be around, took her out to eat, paid (Or, you know, built up debt on her part) for whatever stuff she wanted, let her renovate his place however she liked, and most of all always tried to spare her from seeing any of the violent stuff go down. For her part she obviously liked him too, I mean she literally spent an entire day talking him up to Modeus. Once you know Dante's act is just an act, and her brattiness is also quite similar, it's not hard to see that they quite liked each other.

But see, what you're essentially telling me is that the music spells out stuff, as if the lyrics are explaining things to me. That's bad - because the story should be doing the majority of that, not the music. Music is supposed to set the tone, not tell the story of what it's supposed to be supporting. It's nice that it's doing that, but that's a huge failure on the storyteller's part.

But music is part of the story, hell entire stories have been told entirely with music. I think it's completely valid for the music to be a crucial facet of the plot, one that if you don't pay attention to the story is made much lesser for it.

This is how I usually operate; even if I don't like the content overall, I can dig the concept (what they were going for). However, when I look at it critically (which is what I'm doing), there's a lot to be disappointed by.

Not to say I'm not disappointed by parts of it, but on a critical level I tend to think it's blown out of proportion.

It's only undeserving when people hold up elements as though it deserves praise. The execution is the failure, and to praise the execution will get that praise criticized. It gets criticized harshly because that's just how criticism can be. Despite whatever voice I or Wolfy may give to our criticism, the points themselves don't change.

But Wolf's point was that everything in the anime was entirely lifted from 3, it added absolutely nothing and wasn't even going for anything, and ultimately everything about Dante including and after 3 was terrible and doesn't compare to 1.

Obviously it's up to personal opinion, but to me that really isn't deserved criticism.

Well, we know there's TV, and helicopters, so we know there would have to have been some people recording the events, possibly from news choppers. Plus, the anime itself implies that demons appear to humans just as they do to Dante, all dependent on their disguise.

But there also doesn't appear to be anything like the internet or modern electronics, I'm not sure they have the capability to broadcast stuff like that live, especially before getting killed especially.

Anyway, it seems like Demons are practically a sort of open secret or something. The government definitely knows, and covertly tasks people with taking care of them when they appear, and some individuals or groups know like the people who tend to hire Dante, but simultaneously others are ignorant and Dante usually passes himself off as an odd-job guy rather than a demon hunter.

Of course, but both theory and interpretation can change in the face of facts, or the absence of it. In the end, it's fine to have your own theory and interpretation, but just as headcanon, it's all personal.

But the problem comes in when something is evidence to someone, but not applicable to someone else. At that point the argument isn't about interpretations of facts, but what someone does or doesn't take as acceptable information in the first place.

But Dark Souls also offers all the ample material to near-completely piece together any particular element.

Dark Souls is made up of vastly larger games with a system much more amicable to hinting at things, a single item description can do the job of an animated scene no problem.

There's like, a handful of unsolved mysteries in the lore, amidst history that is pretty well-established.

Well, I don't know about that. There are countless things in the series that just makes absolutely no sense and no explanation is ever offered up. Supposedly the director wanted the experience to be similar to his own as a child, reading western fantasy books without really knowing much of the language. Sometimes that works in a positive way, other times it's a pretty big flaw.

When it comes to the characters in Devil May Cry, they get called bland and flat because they don't go very deep, and there's too much conjecture in finding out more about their inner workings.

The depth of the characters is up to what the viewer to discern in a way, and I'd say many things in Dark Souls are even moreso left up to player conjecture.

Well sure, but I'm just saying that files were even more cost effective, and DMC1 had a very nice system in place that they should have kept up with.

It was a good system, I'm just saying that I prefer the style of codecs a bit more. I mean, I'd think characters talking to each other about something would be a slightly better fit than reading from a notebook, and it's not particularly crazy to implement either.

 

[V's patron]

I like the theory and think its a pretty good take. I wouldnt mind seeing more of his ideas but i don't think it would change anyone's feelings on the anime.

Its competently made and worth a binge watch on Hulu+ if you have it. Its just not worth a lot of praise because feels uninspired to me.

I wouldn't mind another attempt at it just with a different studio/team and maybe a different lead.

 

[ToCool74]

I think the anime messed up really with its story placement, it should have been after DMC4 and leading towards DMC2 since that would have made more sense for Dante personality wise, having it before DMC4 makes it so freaken weird and makes the inconsistency with Dante's character progression so painfully obvious.

I mean DMC4 didn't help with Dante being a goofy fratboy type of character that while excusable within DMC3 it was kinda weird to have him act that way after DMC1 since he should be much more mature since he teen years in DMC3, but the DMC anime made it even weirder with him going from cocky hunter (DMC1) to stoic hunter (DMCanime) and somehow degrading back to cocky fratboy from DMC3 (DMC4).

And I remember watching the anime for the first time and just hoping that it would actually bring SOMETHING to the established mythos that will actually be relevant within the series and in the end it did NOTHING.

You can say each installment introduced something important to the mythos,

DMC3 is the prequel game and shows how Dante got his devil hunter business off the ground and his relationship with his brother.

DMC1 has Dante taking on Mundus and defeating him and thus surpassing his father's established legacy.

DMC4 gave us Nero who may well be Vergil's son and also used plotpoints from DMC1 such as Nero Angelo's armor fragments being used.

DMC2 gave us a much more powerful and older Dante at the "current" height of his powers.

In the end I can't think of one thing worthwhile that DMC anime brought to the series other than finding out Dante loves strawberry sundaes, everyhting else was so self contained and full of missed opportunities to make a lasting affect on the series.