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So new DMC animated series are coming to Netflix

Ever notice how Lady doesn't have that scar on her nose?
I would not be surprised if much like the Empire grunt writing in Han's last name as "Solo" because he came by himself in that awful spin-off movie, this cartoon might also suffer "prequel-litus" (technical term donut steal) where they insist on explaining every little detail of a character's past that no one wanted answers for like how Lady got that scar. :unsure:
 
I would not be surprised if much like the Empire grunt writing in Han's last name as "Solo" because he came by himself in that awful spin-off movie, this cartoon might also suffer "prequel-litus" (technical term donut steal) where they insist on explaining every little detail of a character's past that no one wanted answers for like how Lady got that scar. :unsure:
Better call saul did a similar approach so im hoping they follow that show's lead instead.
 
Well, now that I got a little more time to type I'll explain what I was thinking.

Lady didn't have that scar in the manga for 3. In fact, she has a bunch of scars all over in the game. not just the one in her nose. There is a pretty prominent one on her leg. There always was this implied idea that she got all of those scars on the day her father killed her mother; violence done to both of them. Well, I guess that's no longer the case. It's really hard to get anything from the series to stick and I think this anime is going to make it all the more convoluted, specially when you have people who can't read between the lines and will burn all before getting through their heads that they're wrong. It's not like that's never been me but it's still not fun to talk to people in a fandom.

Funny thing. There was an interview a long while back, I forget where, from one of DMC3's makers. He mentioned that people often thought that Lady's mother was the descendant of the priestess she inherited her blood from but in actuality it was Arkham who was the descendant of said priestess. Well, it turns out that there is a conflicting account for that. In the Trinity of Fates book there is a relationship chart where the arrow pointing from Lady's mother to her says that she is where she got that blood from.

I don't know. Sometimes it feels like DMC canon is so hard to pin down because there isn't anything concrete to pin down.
 
Well, now that I got a little more time to type I'll explain what I was thinking.

Lady didn't have that scar in the manga for 3. In fact, she has a bunch of scars all over in the game. not just the one in her nose. There is a pretty prominent one on her leg. There always was this implied idea that she got all of those scars on the day her father killed her mother; violence done to both of them. Well, I guess that's no longer the case. It's really hard to get anything from the series to stick and I think this anime is going to make it all the more convoluted, specially when you have people who can't read between the lines and will burn all before getting through their heads that they're wrong. It's not like that's never been me but it's still not fun to talk to people in a fandom.

Funny thing. There was an interview a long while back, I forget where, from one of DMC3's makers. He mentioned that people often thought that Lady's mother was the descendant of the priestess she inherited her blood from but in actuality it was Arkham who was the descendant of said priestess. Well, it turns out that there is a conflicting account for that. In the Trinity of Fates book there is a relationship chart where the arrow pointing from Lady's mother to her says that she is where she got that blood from.

I don't know. Sometimes it feels like DMC canon is so hard to pin down because there isn't anything concrete to pin down.
i dont think this twist helps Arkham as a character but maybe the show can use it better?

on the differing canon, its better to just take what you want and do your own thing if you adapt a story with multiple versions.
 
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i dont think this twist helps Arkham as a character but maybe the show can use it better?

on the differing canon, its better to just take what you want and do your own thing if you adapt a story with multiple versions.
I don't know that I'd call it a twist. Each interpretation implies different possibilities for Arkham. If his wife is the descendant it shows that he went out of his way to find a descendant and wed her, have a child, and use/sacrifice them both, one for demonic power, the other to open the door. If he's the descendant it means that he let his daughter get away so she could track him down because he was unwilling to risk hurting himself.

But, yar, your right that at this point you might as well just take whatever preference you have. If the canon really is multiple choice, as unstable a ground as it might be, might as well make the best of it.
 
I don't know that I'd call it a twist. Each interpretation implies different possibilities for Arkham. If his wife is the descendant it shows that he went out of his way to find a descendant and wed her, have a child, and use/sacrifice them both, one for demonic power, the other to open the door. If he's the descendant it means that he let his daughter get away so she could track him down because he was unwilling to risk hurting himself.

But, yar, your right that at this point you might as well just take whatever preference you have. If the canon really is multiple choice, as unstable a ground as it might be, might as well make the best of it.
there are also writers in Marvel and DC that do try to treat everything as canon. Its not really feasible but its something that could be done more easily with DMC.
 
But he did. The whole line is:
Might controls everything, and without strength you cannot protect anything. Let alone yourself.

You want them to be explicit but telling the audience everything out loud shows a lack subtlety and fines. Show don't tell isn't just a matter of action. You don't even have to think very hard about this line to get the subtext since it's not that subtle. Even Dante got the meaning behind his words , well, considering it was directed at him and their shared experience. When you take this line and add the way he put the amulet to his forehead it all adds up pretty evidently. In all my years in the fandom this was never in question and everyone I talked to understood his meaning.

For the sake of argument, let's take do what you're asking and have everyone saying everything out loud.
-Dante, I was pretty traumatized by the events in our childhood so I'm going to get as much power as I can in order to make sure I never suffer a loss like that again, even if it means sacrificing something equally precious since, subconsciously or otherwise, I feel that this is the way to achieve that.
-Well, I'm going to pretend I don't really care about anything and hide my conflicting emotions behind a rather douchebagy persona when in reality I am tremendiously invested in all of this but showing that I care takes a level of maturity I've yet to achieve, but even then, I will be going to great lengths to do what I feel is right.

This might be a big exaggeration but my point is when do you stop trusting your audience to interpret things for themselves? Blatant dialogue isn't always better. What one doesn't say can tell us more about them than what they do say. This is an idea that Japan seems to embrace more since they don't mind letting their audience put a bit of effort into their fiction. I see this all the time in manga and anime. There is subtext, undertones and underlining themes in the narratives and it makes for better storytelling where there is these things at play.
*Comes in weeks later with Starbucks*

I can actually contest this post with the fact that the dialogue within 3 is painfully unsubtle particularly where Lady is concerned and literally any mention of Sparda including character motivations, as well as redundantly stating information that the characters should already know in a follow-up to the manga (despite the manga being written after the game, the dialogue of 3 still acknowledges a prequel, see: "nearly a year since we last met. Where does the time go?").

The faux pas that Benny is talking about is a very deliberate failure of the game in that it minimizes Eva to being "that mom who died" and less worthy of mention than Sparda, the same way Kalina is "that mom who died" and less worthy of mention than Arkham, and both women are interchangeable including with the unnamed Priestess that Sparda "sacrificed to become a legend" with nothing distinguishable about any of these women except the man they happened to be with at the time.

Often, it's not just what the character says in a given scene that matters, but who it's said to, and I've already called out the hokey dialogue in 3 for treating us to scenes where:

i.) Lady in her Mission 10 scene with Dante, refers to Kalina Ann with the line, "He was obsessed with becoming a devil, so much he killed his own wife. [...] He's the most vile kind of creature. To top it off, that filthy scum... is my father." where she refers to Kalina Ann as "[Arkham's] wife" but Arkham is directly referred to as "my father", suggesting she's closer to him than she is to the woman he was with, which could be her mother, stepmother, or any woman he happened to marry from the street. Her point of anger with him is not that he killed someone important to her and she has to personally avenge her mother's death, it's more that her father meant a lot to her but his violence against innocent people and betrayal of his own morals shattered her image of him as a kind person. Arkham is the guy we're told gave her her birth name and also read her bedtime stories like a Dad would. Kalina is not similarly described as anyone she has a special relationship with, outside of Lady denying Arkham his "right" to refer to her as his family or call her by her real name and her gun being named after her mom, which literally no one would know outside of flavor text.

Lady before and after that scene only refers to Kalina Ann as "my mother" to Arkham, the same man who would already know this information and whose entire character revolves around his indifference for that bond and willful violation of it by wanting to murder both women for power.

She keeps trying to use the "family" connection on someone who doesn't care, and failing to use the connection on Dante, who would actually have a point in common with her about them both losing their beloved mother to evil if she ever mentioned it that way. This is ignored because the writing is garbage.

ii.) Dante similarly doesn't refer to his mother at all when talking to Lady, even though they have the loss of their mother to demons in common. Their point in common is instead referred to explicitly as "Father and family, huh?" and his awakening speech in Mission 16 is, "This whole business started with my father sealing the entrance between the two worlds. And now, my brother is trying to break that spell and turn everything into demonville. This is my family matter." His reason for acting has to do with the men in his life; his mother and honoring her memory quite literally had no place in his motivations when it should've, and no amount of "but the dialogue is subtle!" can explain this when he's being unsubtle and explicit in his explanation of why he's doing something. Dante failing to mention his mother to Lady is a major factor as to why she still calls him (and believes him to be) a demon and nothing but, when he was born from a human woman.

Dante after that scene only refers to his mother as his mother in the line, "So... my mother's amulet is the key that unlocks the door to the demon world. Good plan, pop." to Vergil, the same man who would already know this information and whose entire character revolves around his indifference for that bond and willful violation of it by wanting to use the amulet to undo his father's work, going against his mother's wishes, and siding with "the same demons that killed Mom" (as Dante refers to them in the manga) by unleashing the Temen, which per the Note of Naught: "the citizens in the city where Temen-Ni-Gru appeared (and where Dante lives) have transformed into lesser demons (the seven sins) due to being consumed by corruption and darkness." When Dante asks him, "What are you going to do with all that power, huh?" the line directly after is "No matter how hard you try, you're never gonna be like father" and he does not deny that in the least, merely deflects it.

This is because Vergil does not honor his mother. Vergil does not care about his mother. Her blood devalues him in his eyes, it gave him "cancerous human emotions," and his underestimation of humanity's power is a consistent character trait from 3 to 5. Eva does not exist as her own person, only a vague base for him to prove his superiority, making him no different than an internet keyboard warrior. He curses human weakness. The power he seeks is "the power of our father Sparda". His introspection at the end of his volume in the manga is "What is a demon? My father was one. That is where my strength lies."

( The Tokyopop version has him instead wonder "What is evil? 'Evil' was my father. Of that I am certain." for reasons we'll never understand. It also removes Dante's reference to Eva when talking to Alice, "Didn't your mother ever scold you? Don't go barging into other people's homes. [...] Can't count the number of times she got p!ssed off at me. 'Put it back when you've finished using it.' 'If you broke something you'd better fix it, mister!'" and replaces it with some line about mandatory sterilization and Neil Sedaka records. )

Describing the amulet as the key to the demon world and only that, thereby relegates Eva to "the human who had an important demon artifact that Sparda made great use of in a legendary event" and not what she was in the very first game of the series, "the woman whose spirit haunts the amulet, and who saved Dante multiple times from mortal injury and who revived Trish at the first opportunity via said haunting, thwarting Mundus's plans both times".

Her amulet being the key to unlocking the Sparda sword's true power is a fantastic visual representation of what their relationship was; him becoming his true and most powerful self through his union with her, and whose power was only used for a righteous cause. Post-3, it's some nonsense about how "he feared his own power so he sealed it in the demon world and also his amulets, and IDK Eva got it as a gift I guess", but also the Rebellion and the Yamato are also fragments of his power because reasons.

Dante's portrayed as completely aimless and lacking in internal motivations for 3 in order to pin his character development on Lady being racist to him for 20 minutes. His aimlessness contradicts his drive for vengeance in DMC1 that saw him killing every demon he could find until he got Mundus's attention. His aimlessness requires him to completely ignore his mother's words, her love for Sparda plus her stories of him being a righteous man, focusing his character arc instead on him wanting to disown/deny his father at first and then inherit his legacy, because the writing is garbage.

iii.) When Arkham asks Dante about his lineage in the very first part of the game, Dante asks, "Who told you that?" knowing well that his brother is alive, in cahoots with demons, and that he encountered Vergil nearly a year prior, as he'll reveal minutes later. So he didn't need to ask, he only asked so that Arkham would very unsubtly say "Your brother" as if making a reveal that Vergil was alive after Dante not having seen him in so long, but whatever encounter they had in the manga was legit not that important or lethal to either of them that Dante would have reason to think Vergil was long gone or not active in the area.

In a similar vein, Vergil's question of "Does he have it?" in reference to whether Dante possesses the amulet is just as redundant, since they already encountered each other, Dante had the amulet, lost the amulet to Alice only to get it back during his encounter with Vergil, where the elder twin magnanimously screwed his own plans over by handing the amulet back because "I can retrieve it at any time". It's a good thing Dante played into Vergil's explicitly stated and unsubtle plans to revive the demon world by going to the tower anyway, right?

iv.) Perhaps the only point of "subtlety" is that Dante appears to notice Lady's, Arkham's, and Jester's heterochromia, but he not only never brings it up, but he also never acts on it nor on the knowledge that he knows Lady from somewhere; specifically, that he saw a photo of her in the mansion he broke into during the Alice rescue mission. Lady's eye colors are treated as a distinctive feature for a reason, he should remember who she is, but since he doesn't, either the camera focus was specifically for the audience and Dante didn't notice at all or he has selective amnesia because the writing is garbage.

v.) Arkham's line, "You point a gun at me? Your own kin? Your dear Papa?" is one of many lines in the game that restate, over and over, that Lady and Arkham are father and daughter. Lady says it, Arkham says it, Vergil says it. They're quite explicit about this. The fact that they are unsubtle is exemplified in that Arkham's line didn't stop at merely referring to himself as her kin, he goes one step further and enforces that he is her Papa. The line after Lady's "The only family I ever had was my mother, and she's dead!", Arkham retorts with, "You break my heart. After all, it was I who gave you your name.... MY DARLING DAUGHTER!"

Three points if you can figure out what's wrong with that. Except no, no points, because I'm going to say it. He already called himself her Papa one line ago, as if it wasn't enough for him to call himself her "kin" and open their scene with his remark that she'd "grown stronger", establishing that he'd watched her grow up into the woman she is, which is a space reserved for parents. So, Arkham wastes yet more words to state that he's her father and she is his daughter, with a pause for a "dramatic reveal" that would be better served by saying her actual name.

This problem comes back up in Lady's exchange with Dante: "What's your name?" "I don't have a name!" "Oh, then what should I call you?" "I don't care. Whatever you want." thus fails to show that Lady is distancing herself from her connection to Arkham by deliberately abandoning the name we know she has, she's just restating that because of a linguistic redundancy in the second-to-last scene we saw her in, her name simply wasn't revealed at all and she would still be "???" in the subtitles or transcripts. Arkham then calls her Mary in his "dying moment" in Mission 11, and Jester casually drops that same name in some line in Mission 13, because the writing is garbage.

vi.) Vergil very much plainly states Arkham's entire doings thus far when he "kills" him in Mission 10: "To further your study of the black arts, you sacrificed your loving wife, to become a devil as well. Knowing this I thought you'd be more useful to me, but I was wrong. No wonder your attainment of power is incomplete." One, this obviously means Vergil's a villain and doesn't care about familial relations since he does not care that a man killed his wife and expected him to kill his daughter. He straight up considers "fatherly love" a weakness and obstacle to power.

Vergil stating all of Arkham's actions and motivations to Arkham himself is redundant because Arkham already knows these things. If it was done for the benefit of the audience, it renders Lady's restatement of this at the end of the mission redundant to the audience. This dialogue is now completely unimportant to Dante because their point in common should've been Kalina and Eva being lost to evil, but Lady doesn't have a brother spitting on the family legacy and Dante doesn't have a murderous father who sacrificed his own wife, so really "this has to do with my dad" is the only other thing they've got, because the writing is garbage.

vii.) Every single time Lady refers to Dante as "a demon" and denies that he's capable of empathy or knowing what family is and blatantly states her motivations:

"And what would you know about family? You're a demon! This is my father. My family! This was all supposed to end by my hand!"

"I'm going to finish him off. [...] I had a chance to stop him before but I couldn't. I'm responsible for all this mess. [...] He's my father. Besides, who else can undo what he's done? A demon like you, wouldn't understand."

"I'm driven by the inability to forgive him! My soul is screaming, demanding me to kill him! That's enough motivation to keep me going. Besides, this is my family matter."

But sandwiched in there is the laughable line of "It has nothing to do with me being a human and you being a demon" when it has everything to do with their genetics, that's the reason why she keeps talking down to him, and ultimately their genetics is the deciding factor of their strength and who goes forward after Mission 16. The story isn't about her. It's about Dante. Dante's the character we play as, his motivations and story are more important because his father is important and Arkham is only emulating Sparda's greatness poorly. Dante and Vergil combined defeat Arkham in the way that matters, Lady only picks up the scraps. The best she offers is very unsubtly screaming her motivations at Dante over and over and over until he "gets it" but he defeats her like he would any other boss he stomped on through the game and gets "her soul" (the Kalina Ann) as a reward, because... you get the idea.

viii.) We've established that none of this dialogue is actually subtle, nor are the character motivations. Any defense of the "Might controls everything" line is specifically based on the nostalgia for a 20-year-old game and how popular and cool Vergil seemed at the time just by being cryptic in the one scene he needed to not be cryptic in. This is true, because the rest of the game drives home the point that Vergil wants to emulate Sparda and Arkham wants the same power and notoriety, and his path toward both is more cartoonishly evil.

Since the game isn't at all shy of constantly bringing up Sparda and fathers and family as the reason the characters are there, at literally any point prior to and including Mission 20, Eva could've been mentioned. Dante could mention her. His line of "What are you gonna do with all that power?" could've concluded with "All of that power won't bring our mom back." or he could've said it in Mission 7. Instead of Dante nonsensically disowning Sparda with "I don't have a father. I just don't like you." in M7, Vergil could ask the same question about refusal to gain power, Dante's answer would be "Because that power didn't save Mom"/"it wouldn't bring Mom back," and Vergil would get angry because that struck a nerve. Bam, instant characterization of Vergil as the guy who thinks attaining some level of godhood would retroactively cure his ills when it'd only provide a hollow comfort, and Dante would actually have mentioned someone he loves instead of someone he hates.

But here, let's have M7 and M20 being yet more lines about Sparda, who looms over the plot like a cancer. Dante asks Vergil his direct motivations in M20 and Vergil throws it in the audience's face with "You're wasting time!" and Vergil's cryptic line about being able to protect with strength can be manipulated to hinting at Nero's existence and the fact that Vergil fathered a child by that point with a woman he must have cared about and hadn't yet referred to dismissively like some cheap teenage fling. Him having a son is game canon. Him not protecting his mother is supplementary material that can be rendered noncanon the very next game. Hell, the fact that even Eva sacrificing herself to save Dante's life is now retconned to "she died trying to look for Vergil" because Dante had to capitulate to his tantruming manchild of a brother makes any of these details unsafe from one game to another.

Also, you're wrong about this specifically

Now Vergil thinks him mom didn't love him like she loved Dante, which is what he said to her in the Vergil's Downfall expansion.

Because that detail is not new and didn't happen "now". It was explicit text in the DMC3 Manga, vol. 1, the Special Bonus files. The profile for Vergil states "Vergil also believes that his mother loved Dante more than him, and that the power Dante possesses is rightfully his."

Those fanfictions of Woobie Vergil, Misunderstood Anti-Hero, "Mommy Loved Dante More" motivation predate DmC and DMC5. They're because of the DMC3 Manga saying that was the case that Vergil thinks Eva favored Dante at a point where such an assessment was irrational. They were around for DMC3 the moment Vergil sprung into existence being cryptic and cool.
 
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I feel arthritis coming in...

This is way too long. I'm just going to hit the big points.

painfully unsubtle particularly where Lady
For Lady, yes. She is on a rage fuelled vengeance quest, I don't expect her to hold her tonged. Dante and Vergil are a different story. We know now because we've had 20 years of time, interviews and books to tell us but when the game came out people have very different interpretations of how things were. To this day people think Dante is just some prick who is just doing all this to pay back being attached at his shop and not for any personal stake. People think the two emotional moments are the exception when, in reality, they are the release of how he really felt and his acceptance of it. He didn't tell Lady to step off and that she couldn't do it to mock her, he just did it to hide his real concern for her.

it minimizes Eva to being "that mom who died"
No, she wasn't. Lady's, yes, but Eva isn't a footnote. She is been very central to the narrative. You argue that Sparda is more prominent. Yeah, what's the issue with that? Of course he is. He is a literal legend. The legend of this story. A story is about the son of a mythic hero, why shouldn't he be? It's like complaining that Megara and Guinevere don't get as much focus as much focus as Heracles or Arthur.

but Arkham is directly referred to as "my father"
This is way a stretch. She referred to her mother as her mother firsts. How is this showing preference to one parent over another? This seems like a big semantic. Yeah, how you talk about someone can tell us about the relationship and connection they have to that person but this would imply that Lady's attachment to her mother is never as stated as the one to her father. She named her tool of vengeance after that mother symbolically seeking her strenght. Her mother is the reason she is climbing.

Ok, let's change the line. Lets go from "He was obsessed with becoming a devil, so much he killed his own wife." to "He was obsessed with becoming a devil, so much he killed my mother." Yeah, see how that doesn't have the same dramatic poingnancy? She is listing the reason that man is human trash and is basically saying 'do you see just how much of a monster that man was? Yeah, that monster. And you know what the worst part is? He was my father.' Now, flip that and start with, that was my father and he was this kind of monster. It lacks the dramatic impact.

It's also important that she refers to him as 'my father' throughout the story not because of the level of attachment she has compared to her mother but to emphasis just why it's so important that she is the one to kill him. It can't be some rando who just shows up. She is responsible and his child, just as it is so important that Dante or Vergil be the ones to deal with the consequences of what their father did.

and her gun being named after her mom, which literally no one would know outside of flavor text.
It's literally on the gun description when you obtain it. It's not a hidden fact.

This is ignored because the writing is garbage.
This is both dismissive and wrong.

Dismissive because the writing isn't garbage. I wouldn't call it excellent, not quite at that level, and I would definitely not call it adequate because it is well above that. The writing isn't just solid, it's strong. I'd go into more detail but I'd end up typing up more than you, which, granted, it's still only about a quarter the length of my most wordy posts.

Wrong because you are applying bad logic to the interactions. Imagine for a moment that you are 16 and just bought a car. Took you about 3 years of saving birthday money and you even took a job. Then, not two weeks later, your father totals it. He is dismissive and tells you he'll give you the money later, acting like he doesn't care and you're being whiny. You stop talking to him. He wants to know why and you remind him but he's still dismissive. At that point, are you going to stop reminding him of what he did? No, you are going to throw it in his face every chance you get. It's not about telling someone what they already know, it's about showing you displeasure or, in this case, rage. And ofcourse she doesn't tell Dante. She still thinks of his as just some demon incapable of understanding something as human as family. It's not until she's mad at him that she goes off on him.

What is with this whole thing about their mother? They're at the tower where Sparda sealed the path the demon world, not Eva. She's not the one whose power is sealed there and everyone is after. Why would she be as much of a focus. Yeah, fathers and their families because they are all there in reaction to their fathers actions, not their mothers. Lady brings up her mother as much as she needs to and so does Dante. More than that would be irrelevant because they are not involved to that degree.

His reason for acting has to do with the men in his life; his mother and honoring her memory quite literally had no place in his motivations when it should've, and no amount of "but the dialogue is subtle!" can explain this when he's being unsubtle and explicit in his explanation of why he's doing something.
These are two unrelated statements.

First, this His reason for acting has to do with the men in his life; his mother and honoring her memory quite literally had no place in his motivations when it should've. Why? How is she involved outside of being their mother? I'm serious. You've presented no reason she should be a bigger focal point than she is beyond 'she's their mom.' Outside of the amulet being hers she has no involvement in this. Dante's father sealed the tower and Vergil is trying to undo it. Where does Eva come in? She's not unevolved, that for damn sure, but she's not a direct participant and you are demanding far more focus on someone who not only isn't there but doesn't need to be focused on. To continue with the analogy of totaled cars, it's like a son crashing his father's car and claiming it was actually his brother driving then having someone demanding to add a bunch of information about the mother on the police report. Why? She wasn't involved. It wasn't her car, she wasn't driving and no one is accusing her of it. She should be mentioned to the extent of her involvement. No more, no less.

And that leads to the second point: this has nothing to do with subtlety. She's not mentioned more because she's only so relevant.

PS- I never said the dialogue was subtle, I said the narrative was subtle. And since you can't simply say because people will interpret at their will and not as you meant I'll elaborate.

I'm sure someone will say that a story where a man rides a motorcycle up a building is not a subtle one. Well, that's wrong. I didn't say the action was subtle, I didn't say the choreography was subtle, I didn't say the dialogue was, I said the narrative had finesse and subtlety. The story we see on the surface is not the whole story. There is more nuance and undertones beneath that story. Ideas that involve themes of personal responsibility, Freudian archetypes and the search for the self. They aren't stated out loud but the makers talk about them and it shows a deeper consideration for the story than just what is visible. Dante's ass##le demeanour hides a conflicted but heroic nature, Lady's rageful attitude hides a broken hearted young girl at a breaking point and beneath Vergil's cold and brutal presence is a young man seeking to regain the control he lost in a, probably, feeble attempt to regain everything else he's lost. The only one who's as straight as he seems is Arkham, and he's the trickster of this narrative, ironically enough.

Dante after that scene only refers to his mother as his mother in the line
Again, you are putting so weird emphasis on odd things. What is he supposed to call her if no his mother? Eva, the wh#re? In any conversation you are supposed to state the noun, even if the other person has met them or knows about them. Besides, you just referred to his mother as 'his mother' and have been doing so for a while.

You point out that this is something Vergil already knew and are making it seem like since he already knows then he shouldn't say it. The problem there is that we didn't know everything Vergil did. The writing here takes this opportunity to give us more information on the amulets. Why would this be wrong?

This is because Vergil does not honor his mother. Vergil does not care about his mother.
That's a lie. Yes he does, they both do. It is stated clearly in game and in media. This is actually a rather unfounded statement. Not sure how you arrived at this conclusion but it is flat out wrong.

"What is a demon? My father was one. That is where my strength lies."

"What is evil? 'Evil' was my father. Of that I am certain."
Well, the TokyoPop translations were famous for taking one too many liberties. That, however, is something I've seen before. In the Sound DVD for DMC1 there are passages where Dante talks about his father. He refers to him as 'Evil' but the grammar is off and it's only off in those instances. Then there is one passage where Dante is thinking about his father and refers to himself as 'Half-Evil' which we can deduce that the actual word they're trying to use isn't Evil but Devil.

iii.) When Arkham asks Dante about his lineage in the very first part of the game, Dante asks, "Who told you that?" knowing well that his brother is alive, in cahoots with demons, and that he encountered Vergil nearly a year prior, as he'll reveal minutes later. So he didn't need to ask, he only asked so that Arkham would very unsubtly say "Your brother"
Are you kidding me!?

No. Done. This just became silly. I was taking all of this sincerely but if you define people giving basic information as 'unsubtle' what do you with that? What about that was unsubtle? Was it the fact that he said out loud that it was 'your brother?' As opposed to what? What was he supposed to do? Open the door, state at Dante for 4 seconds and then close the door slowly? It's not like he pulled out a giant portrait of Vergil, put it on a canvas in front of his desk and told him 'fromyourtwinbrotherwhomyouareatoddsagainstandifyoulookatdiagram#2you'llnoteyou'vegotthesamefacemeaningyouare,inessense,thesamepersonandtheonlydifferencebetweenthetwoishowyouwearyourhairmeaningyouareatoddwithyourselfnowandwillbattleagainstthatpartofyourselfyoudenyforthehalfoftheamuletyourmothergavetobothofyouonyourbirthdayswhichisobviouslyamethaphoreforyourotherhalfwhichwe'llusefornefariouspurposes. Mwahahaha-ha. We're evil.' Stating facts is not lacking subtlety nor is it a writing sin. Exposition is not a bad thing because some youtube channels make a joke of it. It's a fundamental aspect of storytelling. The exposition itself isn't the sign of poor writing, it's when people don't do it well that it becomes an issue. Are you expecting people to not talk or to talk around the point and only drop hints even for the most rudimentary parts of the plot?

Looking back at some of the other things I'm reading, so, now, even just basic dialogue and exchange of information is a lack of subtlety. Or that they call their moms mom, that's for some reason the same as them not loving them. Lady is racist? Take it from a Mexican living outside of Mexico. I've seen real racism and that ain't it. If a shark eats your mother and it makes you hate sharks that's not racist.

Your points and logic, I don't know how to interpret them. I was willing to entertain and debate most of this because, as far fetched as your reasoning was, I saw a certain logic to it. I'm always willing to debate others because it's important to engage with those you disagree with so that you can both expand your horizons and find things outside of yourself, so that you're not just get grounded on some circle jerk of thought. This, however, is not that. Sorry, this is actually so illogical I'm not gonna continue with it.


Because that detail is not new and didn't happen "now". It was explicit text in the DMC3 Manga, vol. 1, the Special Bonus files. The profile for Vergil states "Vergil also believes that his mother loved Dante more than him, and that the power Dante possesses is rightfully his."
Caught this on the way out.

I don't know where my copy of the manga is but I remember something vaguely as such so I'll take your word for it.

Like I said before, this is the big issue I think DMC has. This is actually contradictory to what other media says about the topic and it becomes incohesive. When it comes to emotions and human turmoil two things can be true but I don't buy that this the case. I just think there is no attachment to things in the developer side and this strikes me as just another drop in that bucket.
 
For Lady, yes. She is on a rage fuelled vengeance quest, I don't expect her to hold her tonged. Dante and Vergil are a different story. We know now because we've had 20 years of time, interviews and books to tell us but when the game came out people have very different interpretations of how things were. To this day people think Dante is just some prick who is just doing all this to pay back being attached at his shop and not for any personal stake. People think the two emotional moments are the exception when, in reality, they are the release of how he really felt and his acceptance of it. He didn't tell Lady to step off and that she couldn't do it to mock her, he just did it to hide his real concern for her.
"People think Dante is just some prick"

Because he was. That's what he said. He literally said that. And he acted like it, otherwise he wouldn't be developing as a character at all.

"Quite frankly, at first, I didn't give a damn. But because of you, I know what's important now. I know what I need to do." Dante to Lady, Mission 16, just after their boss battle. He very clearly states he was a prick and pins his development on interacting with her, nothing more and nothing less.

At least in the past two games when he talked to emotional women in order to comfort them, he was actually telling the truth/the same truth to them in different ways. "Devils never cry. These tears? Tears are a gift only humans have" to Trish, a simple "Devils never cry" to Lucia. But in 3, since he suddenly doesn't have his development and they're trying to pin Lady as emotionally necessary to Dante's arc, if we believe what you say then he's just into the habit of lying right to some hysterical chick's face to make her feel better.

None of these characters held their tongues around each other as often as you think they did. They are plainly stating how they feel and their motivations to each other at the worst times. The only cryptic moments are specifically to minimize Eva's presence in the story as Sparda and fathers and family overtake the narrative.

No, she wasn't. Lady's, yes, but Eva isn't a footnote. She is been very central to the narrative. You argue that Sparda is more prominent. Yeah, what's the issue with that? Of course he is. He is a literal legend. The legend of this story. A story is about the son of a mythic hero, why shouldn't he be? It's like complaining that Megara and Guinevere don't get as much focus as much focus as Heracles or Arthur.
Eva is about as central to the narrative in this new series of games as Maria Stark was to Iron Man throughout his tenure in the MCU, where his outings are glutted with constant references to his relationship with his father and his reckoning with his father's legacy but in Civil War we're expected to believe that he's willing to kill the Winter Soldier over "I don't care, he killed my mom" when you can't find any mention of her through any of his previous appearances on a Ctrl+F of the script.

The fact that you're asking what's the issue with Sparda being prominent? in a hero's journey that only starts because the hero's mother died and he was trying to avenge her for decades since, is an actual joke. It's been two other games of Sparda being a mythic hero. One more mention of the hero's mom in a game filled with characters explaining motivations to total strangers wouldn't kill anyone.

Because it's pointless to talk about Eva. She has, literally, no bearing to the story, no more than Batman's mother did in the Dark Knight. Lady's mother is central to her motivation, [...] Dante's has no relevance outside of having something in common with Lady and bringing her up would change nothing.
But like, you've pretty consistently insisted that Eva isn't important even to Dante's own story in a game that's supposed to be his origin for how he became who he is, so. I mean. At least.

This is way a stretch. She referred to her mother as her mother firsts. How is this showing preference to one parent over another? This seems like a big semantic. Yeah, how you talk about someone can tell us about the relationship and connection they have to that person but this would imply that Lady's attachment to her mother is never as stated as the one to her father. She named her tool of vengeance after that mother symbolically seeking her strenght. Her mother is the reason she is climbing.
Read what I said again.

She referred to her mother as her mother in front of her mother's murderer, who would not care.

And yes, I am saying that they way she refers to a given character suggests the connection she has to them. She refers to Arkham as her father in front of a total stranger. In front of that same stranger, she refers to Kalina Ann as her father's wife. That does suggest distance!

"She named her tool of vengeance after that mother, symbolically seeking her strength". And in this game where characters unsubtly state their motivations, especially Lady because

For Lady, yes. She is on a rage fuelled vengeance quest, I don't expect her to hold her tonged

can you find the quote she gave to Dante explaining that detail, or do we only know the detail of her mother's name being etched on the weapon through the flavor text after Dante acquires it? I'll wait for you to pull her dialogue on the matter.

Go ahead, I'll wait.

Ok, let's change the line. Lets go from "He was obsessed with becoming a devil, so much he killed his own wife." to "He was obsessed with becoming a devil, so much he killed my mother." Yeah, see how that doesn't have the same dramatic poingnancy? She is listing the reason that man is human trash and is basically saying 'do you see just how much of a monster that man was? Yeah, that monster. And you know what the worst part is? He was my father.' Now, flip that and start with, that was my father and he was this kind of monster. It lacks the dramatic impact.
You're explaining the quote I'm saying would be better if she referred to her mother as her mother. Given how they continually refer to Arkham as her father and Lady as his daughter in the dialogue and how Vergil at the start of Mission 10 called Arkham out on sacrificing his own wife, I would dispute that changing Lady's line at the end of Mission 10 to "He was obsessed with becoming the devil, so much he killed my mother! [...] and to top it off, that scum is my father" still carries the same dramatic impact, unless you're saying the player is too stupid to understand that "You sacrificed your loving wife" at Mission 10's start and "My father killed my mother" at Mission 10's end are two statements referring to the same event and the player would instead consider the same woman as two different characters just because "wife" was only said one time instead of two times.

This is an argument over semantics. Of course. Do you not think the use and meaning of words is important when discussing dialogue and how characters convey plot relevant information to each other?

It's also important that she refers to him as 'my father' throughout the story not because of the level of attachment she has compared to her mother but to emphasis just why it's so important that she is the one to kill him. It can't be some rando who just shows up. She is responsible and his child, just as it is so important that Dante or Vergil be the ones to deal with the consequences of what their father did.
Oh, so you do think that a connection between two characters is established or reinforced if it's externalized verbally in a specific way, in no uncertain terms? Interesting. Tell me more.

Lady constantly calling Arkham "father" even at the final moment is why the Mission 20 scene falls flat: as Lady attempts to divorce herself from her past life and her previous name by saying "Mary died a long time ago. My name is Lady," she completely messes that up when she insists on calling this man father instead of finally severing the connection as she puts him down like the monster he is.

The line as-is, is braindead.

If her mother was killed, and the concept of Mary died at the same time at the very hands of the man she's about to put down, that man as a consequence is no longer her father. He stopped being one when he took away her innocence. The man who claimed to be a loving husband to Kalina Ann and devoted father to Mary therefore died at that same point he killed Kalina Ann and killed Mary as a consequence, or (depending on the canon) he never existed and the monster was putting on an act up until the point he revealed his true colors because his aim was always to kill them for power. Her father is dead. She's putting down the unrepentant creature wearing his husk.

It should sound ridiculous that Lady was willing to forsake her past life and former name but still insisted on humanizing her manipulator/murderer and maintaining the connection that he's the reason she exists. She may as well just drop the pretense and keep the name Mary. She does not benefit from confirming to him at the very last second that she is his child, seeing as he used her name and her past life and their familial connection to drag her around by the nose by those same concepts and used her desire for vengeance to lead her into a sacrifice.

"Mary died a long time ago. My name is Lady. Goodbye, Arkham." sufficiently conveys that he no longer has an avenue to control her into doing his bidding.

Her still calling him "father" is the avenue by which DMC5 made her part of the Vergil Defense Squad, telling Nero that it was oh-so-traumatizing to put down a vile mass murderer because the fact that they're family by blood is more important than the crimes he's committed, and killing a monster is irreparably damaging to the psyche, as if there was ever a chance that Arkham could be redeemed or that Lady would've considered walking away from Arkham as he bled out or letting any other person put him down during that Mission 20 scene.

If the dialogue is actually competently written and the best character motivations are implicit and easily derived from inference on the character's shared experiences, they don't actually need to call Arkham her father or Lady his daughter at all as much as they do, they can just subtly imply or show things as her responsibility to kill him is clear, as is his older age compared to her. The characters certainly don't need to keep saying that information to each other as much as they do. He already knows he's her father; she already knows she's his daughter. They have that shared experience of being family.

Either the player is smart enough to grasp that he's not some joe schmo and her responsibility to put him down runs deep for a reason, and they're smart enough to grasp that her shedding tears after she kills him proves they were close enough for her to mourn the loss of what was and what could've been, or the player is too stupid to get that he's her dad and needs things repeated over and over in the same way each time or else they won't get it.

Pick a lane.

Dismissive because the writing isn't garbage. I wouldn't call it excellent, not quite at that level, and I would definitely not call it adequate because it is well above that. The writing isn't just solid, it's strong. I'd go into more detail but I'd end up typing up more than you, which, granted, it's still only about a quarter the length of my most wordy posts.
No, it's pretty garbage for a video game. The twenty years of cope and DMC3 being hyped up as a great game for its gameplay just because it came after DMC2 doesn't change that.

It can't even tell a complete story in its single game given the supplementary material around it that revealed extra detail that wasn't in the disc. It's an action game. Capcom needs to stop expecting the audience to do homework for their action games and pay more money outside of the game for things that should've been in the game.


Wrong because you are applying bad logic to the interactions. Imagine for a moment that you are 16 and just bought a car. Took you about 3 years of saving birthday money and you even took a job. Then, not two weeks later, your father totals it. He is dismissive and tells you he'll give you the money later, acting like he doesn't care and you're being whiny. You stop talking to him. He wants to know why and you remind him but he's still dismissive. At that point, are you going to stop reminding him of what he did? No, you are going to throw it in his face every chance you get. It's not about telling someone what they already know, it's about showing you displeasure or, in this case, rage. And of course she doesn't tell Dante. She still thinks of his as just some demon incapable of understanding something as human as family. It's not until she's mad at him that she goes off on him.
Totaling a car isn't the same thing as willful murder of a whole human being, but nice try, I guess?

I mean... to you it totally makes sense that this random girl is going off on a sociopath and telling him her life story even as she thinks he's wholly unempathetic and incapable of understanding her because she's a human and he's a demon; the same guy she tried to kill at least two times prior and who she thinks killed her father before she arrived there.

It's not "bad logic", it's literally just logic. It doesn't make sense for her to explain her life's story to an unempathetic monster who she thinks murdered her dad. Using the same logic that the characters don't know the same thing the audience does, she has no reason to believe he will spare her life and ought to be doing everything in her power to put him down before her corpse joins Arkham's on that floor. But because illogically ranting to an unempathetic monster is a thing she already did, you posit it had to have made sense in order for it to be in the game and it otherwise wouldn't be there if it clashed against the story that much.

I'm saying it's in the game and it's still illogical and shouldn't be there because the writing is garbage and the same team of writers/scenarists between 3, 4, and 5 are willing to forsake any consistency in order to say whatever it is they want in the moment, even if it runs contrary to what they said before whether it's one game, one scene, or one sentence.

These are the same people who vetoed a version of the Mission 13 scene where Lady actually holds her own in the three-way fight between the Sparda boys because "a human shouldn't be that strong", but they did approve her being stabbed through her femoral artery by her own bayonet, and her simply bandaging herself up like that fatal stab was barely an inconvenience, climbing an entire side of the Temen-ni-Gru and only being tired after that climb because she didn't re-open that stab wound at any point, and she proceeds to have a boss fight with Dante where she's left a bit disoriented. But she can't fight two already-tired half-demons who'd wounded each other because "a human shouldn't be that strong".

They released an artbook whose title was the chronology of the series, 3142, and then come 5 they flipped the chronology to 3124 to justify 5.

This is what you're dealing with.

Anyway, the analogy isn't explaining to your dismissive dad that he totaled your car (why doesn't he have his own car, is he a deadbeat? Your scenario is one where this father has no self-respect), it's Laurie trying to exposit to Michael Myers about his various murders across 40 years of the Halloween series. She didn't even do that in Halloween Ends; she kept it simple, had flashbacks to show us her trauma throughout the series, and Michael is put down.

Even then Laurie had the good sense to open her mouth only when Michael was pinned down and no sooner. Lady's ranting at a supposed unempathetic demonic murderer as he's casually rebuffing everything that she has to throw at him and then she thinks turning her back completely to this assumed unempathetic demonic murderer and letting him walk away is the proper thing to do, because of her womanly feelings.

To you it makes sense to constantly expend energy restating something to someone who clearly does not care and refuses to change; and in Dante's case he's not even responsible for the murder, she just thinks he is and "goes off" on him because he was a little flippant. I'm calling it out as the waste of energy that it is because of how unproductive it is. Self-righteously venting rage to someone who isn't even responsible of the thing they're being accused of and they're doing a little trolling just makes Lady a performative Twitter keyboard warrior. You keep giving this a pass.

First, this His reason for acting has to do with the men in his life; his mother and honoring her memory quite literally had no place in his motivations when it should've. Why? How is she involved outside of being their mother? I'm serious. You've presented no reason she should be a bigger focal point than she is beyond 'she's their mom.'
Because it's her amulet they're using, the same amulet with her spirit haunting it since the demon attack. In DMC1 Dante already made it a point to say he spent his time prior to that game cutting a bloody swath through demonkind trying to get Mundus's attention/enacting his vengeance entirely because his mother was that important to him, and she raised him with stories of how righteous his father was in order to instill in him a moral character and sense of justice.

Do motivations disappear when they're outside of the game they first appeared in? Everything past DMC3 caters specifically to people who believe that, especially 4 and 5. None of the characters act like their given motivations from previous entries have any appreciable hold on who they're supposed to be years later, given they're some variation of psychopaths that casually allow innocents to die and don't take anything seriously unless it's convenient. Lady turns into a hoochie gold digger in the anime and especially 4, Trish is a sociopath who casually gave an evil cult the Sparda sword and accelerated their plans for world domination and got innocents killed. Dante "suspects" Vergil is responsible for the Qliphoth (he's outright told by V) but allows Lady and Trish to go ahead and they get turned into the average hentai heroine thanks to his tentacle brother. Good stuff.

Dante's father sealed the tower and Vergil is trying to undo it. Where does Eva come in? She's not unevolved, that for damn sure, but she's not a direct participant and you are demanding far more focus on someone who not only isn't there but doesn't need to be focused on.
"Mundus... His heinous ways make me sick; killing his own like they were nothing. He's the one that took the life of my mother, my brother, I'm sure of it. My mother always used to tell me that my father was a man who fought for the weak. He had courage and a righteous heart."

Her stories didn't stop being told just because DMC3 exists. She still told them. Dante knows what a strong, courageous man with a righteous heart is supposed to act like, and he already showed repulsion towards people that are willing to betray loyalty as an established character trait. And Vergil has done his fair share of "killing his own" all throughout DMC3 (Hell Vanguard, "Arkham", etc.) which is exactly as heinous and cowardly when Vergil does it as it is when Mundus does it. It doesn't cease to be heinous and cowardly even if the enemies in question tried to kill Dante moments prior and in Griffon's case were begging for more power to kill him with.

And it can't be argued that Vergil killing Arkham was perfectly fine because Arkham later was revealed as duplicitous; that he's Jester did not factor in to why Vergil turned against him. Vergil's reason was literally "you are not as evil and murderous as I thought you would be"; per his POV, Arkham wasn't willing to kill his daughter the way he did his wife because of "fatherly love". Vergil isn't absolved of attempted murder just because Arkham turned out to be a liar/double agent/snitch. It just means Vergil is dumb and didn't do his research.

To continue with the analogy of totaled cars, it's like a son crashing his father's car and claiming it was actually his brother driving then having someone demanding to add a bunch of information about the mother on the police report. Why? She wasn't involved. It wasn't her car, she wasn't driving and no one is accusing her of it. She should be mentioned to the extent of her involvement. No more, no less.
I mean, aside from the fact that parents are legally liable for the criminal acts of their children, especially if their children cause injuries/fatalities or property damage to third parties, and more so in events when the child acts as an agent of the parent, the parent's negligence made the harm possible, or the parent negligently entrusted the child with the instrument used to carry out the crime (such as a gun in a shooting, etc.) whether they consciously handed it to the child or left it unsecured and easy to access? Why else do you think?

They're not legally liable simply because they spawned the kid. But your scenario ignores that the mother gave her sons the key to the car and one of the brothers killed people with the car, which means she fulfills "entrusted the child with the instrument used" where the crime otherwise wouldn't have happened if she just kept the keys to herself.

In the event one of the brothers knows that despite giving them the keys, she told them as they grew up to drive responsibly and that Dad was a good man and a great driver, I would sure hope the brother who can recount that detail could bring it up to the other one, or at least include that in the future wrongful death lawsuit the state will level at the murderous brother to explain why the mom isn't negligent, the brother is just a psychopath.

Vergil is a mass murderer twice over by now and the reason may or may not be because of how he feels about his mother, whether it's inadequacy/jealousy because Eva loved Dante more, a sense of responsibility for her premature death, or because he's a raging psycho and tantruming manchild who doesn't actually care, he looks for excuses instead of taking accountability. I believe his actions more than his words, and his actions have not been kind to innocent people.


PS- I never said the dialogue was subtle, I said the narrative was subtle. And since you can't simply say because people will interpret at their will and not as you meant I'll elaborate.
You argued against blatant dialogue and characters stating how they feel or their characterizations in a game that features blatant dialogue and characters stating how they feel or their characterizations.

Your point?

Again, you are putting so weird emphasis on odd things. What is he supposed to call her if no his mother? Eva, the wh#re? In any conversation you are supposed to state the noun, even if the other person has met them or knows about them. Besides, you just referred to his mother as 'his mother' and have been doing so for a while.
I dunno man, in the same line he calls his father "Pop", he could've just called her "Mom" instead of so formally as if she didn't bust her butt raising him. And, what, are you ignoring the rest of that point? He brings up Eva to Vergil who already knows their relationship to each other as a shared experience. He neglects to bring Eva up to Lady as a point in common where he can gain her empathy.

You point out that this is something Vergil already knew and are making it seem like since he already knows then he shouldn't say it. The problem there is that we didn't know everything Vergil did. The writing here takes this opportunity to give us more information on the amulets. Why would this be wrong?
Jester, Mission 12:

"You saw it too, didn't you? The huge tower jutting out of the ground [...] is actually a tunnel linking the demonic domain to the human world. And of course, your brother Vergil is the one who controls it by using your mommy's amulet."

"Amulet?"

"He's headed to the control room in the basement. If you don't hop down there quick like a bunny, he'll open the gate to hell. Isn't that a scary thought?"

Claiming we didn't know everything Vergil knew about the amulets is just, like, are you assuming the player is deaf and didn't at all catch on to Jester's exposition dump about what the amulet does and why Vergil is going to the sacrificial chamber? Vergil knows he needs the amulet to link the human and demon worlds together and is going to open Hell. Jester tells Dante the amulet will link the human and demon worlds together and open the gate to Hell. Dante restates this right to Vergil's face for no real reason given the audience already knows this, and Vergil goes "erm akshually" and adds a detail we didn't really need; "originally it was the key to the demon world but was given to humans as a gift". Okay, so... what, Sparda gave this to humans in general and it ended up in Eva's hands meaning it wasn't a special gift from him to her? Did Mundus give the humans that worshipped him this key and then Sparda took it and co-opted its purpose, later giving it to Eva? Is it exactly what people thought it was, and Sparda gave it to Eva personally, nothing less? What does Vergil referring to the singular Eva as the plural humans do except sound flowery and add confusion to something that was otherwise clear cut, again erasing her from an explanation that would include her?

That's a lie. Yes he does, they both do. It is stated clearly in game and in media. This is actually a rather unfounded statement. Not sure how you arrived at this conclusion but it is flat out wrong.
His actions.

The mass murdering psychopath who's willing to kill his underlings plural because they're not useful to him, who doesn't care that one underling inflicted the same trauma he suffered as a child onto another innocent person, who openly flouts the concept of fatherly/familial love, who brazenly resurrected a demonic tower that turned everyone else in the city into demons, and later came back to life to mass murder a second time because he was salty about his brother's life being saved over his, does not care about his mother in any appreciable way. What he's actually doing is spitting on his mother's memory, because the natural reaction to one's mother dying is not becoming a raging psychopath two times in five games and siding with the same creatures that caused her demise.

Take FFXV: people think it's really stupid if not irredeemably villainous that Ravus knows the Niflheim Empire killed his mother and yet he still chose to side with that same empire and work under the same man that murdered his mother in order to place the blame on King Regis and sided against Noctis through almost the whole game as a consequence.

Back to DMC, Vergil has done every single villainous action that other villains have done in the series (Mundus, Arius, Sanctus). What more does he need to do to prove that he's evil and he only "understands" family when the understanding is beaten into him?

No. Done. This just became silly. I was taking all of this sincerely but if you define people giving basic information as 'unsubtle' what do you with that? What about that was unsubtle? Was it the fact that he said out loud that it was 'your brother?' As opposed to what? What was he supposed to do?
Just answer the question with "Vergil". Dante knows who Vergil is. They both know Vergil is Dante's brother. We already know Dante and Vergil are brothers and identical twins at that because the start menu narration and the prologue narration are both the same exact scene of Lady's exposition about how she knows the Sparda brothers, with her exposition overlaid on a scene of them fighting on top of the Temen-ni-Gru and the closeups of their identical twin faces and wow, Vergil having his hair down in the rain makes him look exactly like Dante! Whoooaaaa!

Looking back at some of the other things I'm reading, so, now, even just basic dialogue and exchange of information is a lack of subtlety. Or that they call their moms mom, that's for some reason the same as them not loving them. Lady is racist? Take it from a Mexican living outside of Mexico. I've seen real racism and that ain't it. If a shark eats your mother and it makes you hate sharks that's not racist.
If a crazy human kills your mother and says they murdered her to support sharks, are you going to blame sharks because of what the human did? Instead of putting the blame on that human? Are you stupid?

I sure think Lady is stupid. Because her stupidity is based on treating every single member of a race as equally evil over what a person in her own race did, to the point of accusing a halfbreed of murder just for standing next to a dead body, and her belief system requires her to have never gone to school, opened up a history book, opened up a newspaper, or observed any other person in real life in however many years she's been alive. If she did, she'd have found plenty of proof that human beings are terrible to other human beings even without demonic intervention. Did murders, thefts, or any type of crime never happen in the human world at any single point ever in its history?

Regardless, it shouldn't take someone over a decade to figure that out, but she's imparting morals at the end of DMC3 that the average seven-year-old child would have learned about not to assume that everyone of a group is criminal. If her behavior towards Dante wasn't negative, she wouldn't have needed to learn a lesson about how wrong she was in her initial mindset. Even Dante isn't killing every single demon on the assumption that they're all evil even when he clocks them as a demon on sight, otherwise DMC1 wouldn't exist to begin with. He'd have just shot Trish in the face.
 
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@Morgan I have missed your takes on these games writing, much as I do enjoy the games myself.

Interestingly, I recently read a retrospective on the games which that claims Lady killing Arkham was something Morihashi had to argue in favor of.

Arkham, on the other hand, is simply a monster. He is an abuser who killed his own wife to gain a fraction of demonic power, and manipulated his daughter’s hate and confused feelings of affection of him to get what he wanted – a demonic invasion of Earth and the power of the strongest demon who ever lived. What’s refreshing about Arkham is that he is both simplistic, but in a very realistic and familiar way. He is a pathetic man who wanted authority over others, someone aware of his own smallness and lacking in empathy. The end result was an uncaring, vengeful bastard who would throw away the only people who cared about him to feel like he was more than he was, and ultimately for nothing. He gets the single most pathetic death in the whole series, and it is well earned.

Interestingly, 3’s main writer Bingo Morihashi had to fight for Lady taking out Arkham because Itsuno is kind of weirdly conservative about how his female characters act, thinking a daughter should never harm her father despite said father being an evil satan wizard who killed her mom in a blood sacrifice ritual. This explains somethings going forward.

Don't know how much truth there is to this but if it is true, it does put that scene of Lady telling Nero he will regret killing Vergil in a new light.

To go back on topic, I don't think we'll have any of these issues in the Netflix show.
 
To steer us back on topic, according to Shankar via X, the only part of DmC that was used in his cartoon was the reboot's redesign of the Amulet.

An odd choice of things to take methinks. :unsure:
 
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