u/Bujorba

Heads up, I'm not saying whether or not this was intended by the creators. Like a lot of art analysis, this is less "damn, they were smart to do this, " and more "this is an interesting way to fit these pieces together"

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Afterlife is a song about seeing your loved ones in the.... afterlife. The idea that reuniting with them will be healing.

\*"Today, I'm not afraid to die"\*

It's pretty easy to apply this to dante, who believed both Eva and Vergil were dead.

It dives into why Dante is not concerned with his own safety. He'll either win and succeed or he'll finally get to see his family again.

The song also says

\*"judge me in the afterlife"\*

which is an allusion to the guilt dante feels over his family dying. Like he's begging them to absolve him of the sins he feel like he's committed

\--

If "Afterlife" is dante calling out to his deceased family, "See U in Hell" is Vergil's response

It is a song of rage directed towards both someone else and the singer (singer is used in more of a pov sense, not talking about the Papa Roach singer specifically).

Let's look at the first verse.

\*"I'm the peril inside

I'm the truth that you hide

I'm the reason you don't look back in the mirror

I'm the blood on your hands

In those nightmares you have

I'm the memory you don't want to remember

We're oil and water

You mixed it yourself

You let all your bad blood poison the well

You stand so tall

But you hate yourself\*

In Afterlife, Dante asked to be judged in the afterlife, and this is basically vergil saying "fine, I'll see you in Hell.

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I posted this to the anime subreddit originally, but thought to post this here because these songs still got fans. Someone there pointed out that the song was originally written with lady in mind, according to the vocalist. Which is an interesting tidbit of info, but i think this is an interesting way to look at it on a more series wide level

I got into devil may cry when I was like 7, probably around 2005.

My mom was/is a lady of faith, but she spent a long time trying to find what religion really fit her and the family.

I was around 15, and she would have someone talk to me and brother about the Bible every Sunday. I wasn't super religious, but i did believe inOne day, when the man came inside, he saw me playing devil may cry, and oh maaaaan, he talked about it quite a bit. Saying everything you can think of.

It all boiled down to "the devil tries to find small ways into your life" you know, like a slippery slope kinda deal.

He called out Dante by name and knew some basic facts, like how he's half demon. So he already knew about dmc, at least on a super, incredibly surface level.

I remember after he left that day, just thinking "no. I will not stop playing dmc. Also, I don't like how he talked about dante"

After that, I refused to see him again or step into any church.

Still haven't and I consider myself an atheist now.

It's just a little story I remember occasionally. The rest of my family still goes to church, except for me, and my little brother (who also enjoys dmc. Funny that)

Honestly, as someone who's been a huge fan since 2005 and grew up on the franchise, I spent almost the entire time watching season 1 and having a good time. After a few days of sitting on it, I went online to see what the general reception was and was blown away by the volume of extremely negative posts about it. Criticism is one thing, and there are, of course, things to criticize in season one, but i heard things like it was disrespectful to the games, the characters were butchered, that the anime misunderstands the meaning and appeal of DMC.

I wanna offer my perspective on why I think that not only is the Netflix anime a worthwhile addition to the franchise, but that it shows a strong understanding of what makes this franchise great.

However, before I do that

##My own criticisms

I wanna show that I'm approaching this in good faith and lay my own out. At least some of them. The ones that did impact my enjoyment as I was watching it.

1. most importantly, the show gets a bit too bogged down in logic, attempting to justify the state its world exists in. Especially in episode one, where the MAIN focus should be on audience enjoyment. The games avoid that to focus on and maximize exposure to its strengths, the characters. The game understands that people will buy into the premise if they want to experience it. If they don't, you won't be able to convince them by explaining it.

2. lady's f-bombs. It really gets in the way of enjoying, what I think, is an interesting take on her character. She's got the rough toughness Lady needs, but it's hard to hear past her 10th f bomb in a single episode.

3. this is what I'd call my only "fan critique".

I don't like how they are taking Nero's songs and transposing them onto dante. Dante and Nero both have such strong musical identities that mixing them muddles what makes them different

4. the overall pacing of the show feels off. Like it's slower than it needs to be. Overall, production probably could've shaved off a few minutes per episode, and that would probably improve the audience experience. That's not really something you want to hear about a show with a very limited episode count. It's hard to say if this is an issue with the script or editing, but the problem is felt nonetheless.

I wouldn't say those are all my critiques, but the rest of them get more granular, and i don't wanna nitpick

But with that out of the way, let's move onto the meat of the post

###Themes of a Feather

I read this a lot. The idea that the DMC anime, on a fundamental level, misunderstands the soul of the games, particularly on a narrative/ character level.

To examine this, we need to define what that soul is. Now, we can all have different interpretations of what that is, but here's my attempt. I'm not smart enough to define this in a single sentence, so I'll just list out the elements.

The coolest characters doing the coolest things, exploring what it means to be human and the idea that you can gain or lose humanity, the complexities of family, the purpose/ corruption of power, and the human capacity to grow from trauma.

That's a lot, but DMC is a pretty narrative rich franchise. Much more than it's often recognized for. For the sake of some sense of brevity in this long ass post, I won't dive into all of these.

The Netflix anime explores all of these but one, and it comes to the same conclusions, regarding these themes, that the games do.

- To be human is to empathize with those around you. Recognize their own inner demons and help when you have the strength and right.

- the anime has many awesome action scenes. The type we don't often get to see in media. There are times where I'll just throw some of these moments on just the experience them again.

Now, there is one narrative choice, in particular, that gets the most flack for "misunderstanding" the franchise, and that's the decision to include America and basically make it the true villain of s1. To me, this is an understandable initial response, but the more I sat on it, the more okay with it I was. Because it ties back into one of those central themes I mentioned earlier. The series tendency to think on the nature of power and it's corrupting effects

However, the games *never* solely explored physical power. Every game, and the original anime, explored social power. Every villain was either in an inherently corrupt position of power or corrupted it through their actions

DMC1 - Mundus is the emperor of hell and exercised his power over Trish and his other minions.

Dmc2 - Arius is literally a ceo who you meet on an oil rig

Dmc3 - Arkham corrupts his position as lady's father to manipulate and torture her.

Dmc4 - a religious leader who sells out his faith and followers for personal gain.

DMC5 - this actually doesn't apply too much to this game since the villain is vergil again, but the game laser focused on family, for better and worse.

Additionally, the series has always been interested in exploring how religion and fait can be corrupted to justify evils or manipulate others. Mundus took on the iconography of the traditional Christian god, arkham is implied to be a fallen man of faith, she sanctus is the god damn pope.

The leader of a country, who dresses his atrocities in the language of God fits in pretty well. That's basically what sanctus was, but he leans more into the religious aspect than the government leader aspect. I've always seen it as a kind of counter part to Mundus. The natural end game boss for that faction.

Now, in the games, they do practice a degree of separation and fantasy with these villains. Sanctus is the leader of the order of the sword, not Catholicism, uroboros is not a real company, and, thankfully, bald men like arkham do not exist.

You could argue that the separation is what makes these villains tasteful. And I probably would've agreed with you a bit when the show came out. But, given current events and hearing the way my country's leaders are directly talking about their military operations, it actually feels nice to have it so directly called out. Like the show and I are going "that's messed up" together.

Earlier I mentioned that the Netflix series doesn't explore one theme much and that would be family. It kinda teases that theme but it seems like it's saving it for season 2. Would've liked it if they included it more, but it handled the rest well enough to satisfy me.

This post ended up being a lot longer than expected, so i won't dive into the characters like i initially planned. Maybe I'll make a part two.

Am I saying you should like the anime?

No. You feel how you feel and some post on reddit won't change that, but I just wanted to offer my perspective on why I think the anime "gets" dmc a lot better than it's often given credit for

Ever since 2.0 dropped, I think I've lost to maybe 2 ky players

Is it because I'm god like?

No

Is it because Testament is strong this patch?

No

It's because y'all won't stop shooting out stun edges to fish for lightning strike.

Please, I've got 3 different projectiles. How many times do I need to arbiter sign you before you change