Netflix's Devil May Cry: Cynical, Reactionary, Dismissive
When Netflix's adaptation of Devil May Cry was first announced, I, like many other DMC fans, were quite excited. DMC has a lot of storytelling potential, which historically has been explored widely in novels, comics, manga, and even anime. The games themselves, while inconsistent, have had massive peaks in narrative finesse, with Devil May Cry 3 being regarded as one of the best narratives in gaming. While the games themselves are a bit niche, Dante as a character is massively popular and won Capcom's poll as the company's most popular character. Bury the Light, Vergil's theme, was a smash hit that has wider recognition than the game it came from. The cultural impact & recognizability of the characters and mythos of Devil May Cry can't be denied, so you would think that it would make a solid foundation for an animated adaptation.
Before this show was released, the fandom had extensive communication with Adi Shankar, the self-proclaimed "visionary" behind this series. It was assured that he wanted to get this right and he showed that he did an extensive amount of research that even hardcore fans may not know about the series, reading obscure cancelled manga, novels with dubious canon, exploring as much of the extended media as possible and leaving no stone unturned. He even posted himself in a Dante cosplay. It was made clear that he was a fan of DMC, and so it seemed to be in safe hands. Up to the release, however, Adi Shankar started to do some things that were strange.
He tweeted that "Vergil was right" and called him an anti-hero, he revealed that Lady was part of a military group...these are very, very different takes on the characters. As we got more and more details, it became apparent that this show was going to be very different from the original games. Whenever we got projects in the past like this, they were usually canon to the games, so this became a strange thing to wrap our heads around.
For this reason, I'd like to look at this series as it's own property, completely separated and different from the games. Despite everything Adi Shankar may have said, this simply is not a faithful adaptation at all, it's very different and on the grounds of an adaptation, it fails at the job. So in the interest of fairness, I wanted to look at it as it's own story. But even then, I was disappointed.
DMC is heavily rooted in punk culture, drawing from it's music, the fashion sensibilities, and certain aesthetics. However, something (mostly) unique to the Netflix series is it's exploration of American culture. The last attempt at exploring this in DMC was in the reboot, DmC. However, I would say this series goes a step further than that game did and really pushes this theme even harder. The instinct to do this is a little understandableā punk culture has always been heavily influenced by American culture, often stemming from there, so this isn't entirely coming from nowhere. Although I disagree with this as a DMC fan, I wanted to be fair so I chose to approach this as if I knew nothing about DMC.
Adi Shankar stated "My DMC Universe is set in a late '90s/early 2000s PS2 era of the world. It's not set in modern times. It's set in my memory of the world, pre- and post-9/11.". This is heavily reflected in the series, with the American government playing a role as a major player in the story. The show depicts an extrajudicial rule of law under the Vice President and his control of a shadowy US Military group, DARKCOM. The Vice President and DARKCOM, in no uncertain means, are portrayed as villainous figures with negative intentions. It's very clear that this show is meant to critique the America of the 90s/00s and the War on Terror as a whole. At one point, there is a drone strike montage on demon refugees wearing head coverings played to American Idiot by Green Day with American soldiers proudly flaunting war crimes in the media in response to a terror event.
This may make you think, is Netflix's Devil May Cry meant to be "woke"? The answer may surprise you.
A major plot point of this show is its exploration of the demon realm. In the games, the demon realm is a mysterious, transient place rarely explored and its depiction wildly varies between games. We are given a variety of clues as to its inner workings, but it has never been explained fully. The Netflix show has a wildly different approach to this.
In the show, we are introduced to the demon realm through the lens of White Rabbit, the main antagonist of the show. As a child, he was bullied and dreamed of an escape. One day, he chanced upon a portal to the demon realm and took it. Upon arriving, the air was shown to be highly toxic, and the realm itself was dangerous with powerful demons trying to kill White Rabbit. However, he is saved by another demon and introduced to an underground civilization of weaker demons, called Makaians, named after what they call the demon realm, Makai. Makaians are shown to be a tightly knit, happy community living in prosperity in this underground society. However, the toxic atmosphere of Makai is still an issue, with Makaians dying off to illness. White Rabbit grows up, and comes up with a way to help the Makaians find refuge in the human realm, specifically America. One day, helping refugees cross over into America, he happens upon a DARKCOM squad who opens fire on him and the refugees, a brutal massacre that leaves almost no survivors. White Rabbit, as the lone survivor, takes it upon himself to swear vengeance on DARKCOM.
He continues aiding refugees, and builds a community of refugees in an apartment complex. However, he begins to rule them through fear, performing experiments on the refugees (he is compared to a Nazi at one point), and uses the refugees as a militant force against Americans.
At one point, Dante has a debate with White Rabbit. White Rabbit argues that by sealing away Makai and creating the border between it and the human realm, Sparda trapped the Makaians in a world with a mad ruler, Mundus, violent demons, and a toxic environment that kills them to breathe in. He wants to unite the worlds so the refugees, the Makaians have a safe place to live. Dante retorts that what his father Sparda did was the right thing, and that by letting in the Makaian refugees, the violent demons will also cross over and slaughter humans by the millions. He also remarks that the human world isn't a good place anyway.
Adi Shankar, the "visionary" behind the show, was in attendance at Donald Trump's inauguration and said he respected him. With this in mind, what does this say when combined with the aforementioned discussion of immigration within the show?
Later, the US is shown to invade Makai and establish concentration camps, and Vergil is depicted as being a freedom fighter for the Makaians, freeing them from US prisons as an agent of Mundus. Although White Rabbit says Mundus is oppressive, we haven't been shown any real bad sides of his regime. In fact, by all accounts, Mundus and his operatives look to be quite sympathetic.
With all of the aforementioned details, it seems that Adi Shankar, while critical of US interventionism, goes a step further and suggests that isolationism is the answer, that we should go so far as to not even allow refugees from areas with literally poisonous air, that they should stay in their place and we should stay in ours. This is the conclusion of season 1, and I am not interested in further exploration of this world and themes. The show is cynical, reactionary and pessimistic. There isn't an ounce of positive messaging in regards to any of the conflicts portrayed in this series, and it reads as a self-indulgence so contradictory to humanity that the author has to craft an unbelievably terrible world to affirm their own views.
Of course, this is an incomplete saga. There will likely be a Season 2 and it may go against how I interpreted the intent of the author here, but Season 1 is what we have been given and what I am judging. Even when viewed by its own merits, separate from the original material, this story simply falls flat. With the current state of the world in 2025, we did not need a story like this.
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