Having heard a good deal about the series and games, I was very interested to find out what all the buzz was about. Dante, a tall, thin, youngish man with white hair and a really big sword is out to kill the Devils for a price. His agency, Devil May Cry, is all about stopping the eradication of Demons that are in the human world.

Highlights
The series opens with Dante playing baby sitter to an illegitimate child of a very wealthy man, now deceased. She is the possible heir to his fortune and is also of some interest to the Demon world. After fighting off several demons Dante arrives late but is still in time to fight the brother, a demon who is out to have it all. Patty Lowell, the girl, does inherit the fortune, and remains in town to help at the orphanage and spend most of her time with Dante. For the next eight episodes Dante seems to be involved in non-related battles and the series seems to stall and turn into a Johnny One Note. There are several characters introduced, but the only connection is that they killed demons and were friends of Dante. In the last 3 episodes a plot does emerge. In the first episode a small, weak demon appears and pops up in several other episodes until the end, where he becomes the focus of attention when it is discovered that he wants to possess a locked away power that would allow him to rule the Demon world and destroy the human world. This never goes well for these type of characters and it is no different here.



Overall
Being unfamiliar with the series or games I was excited about being able to review this series and in Blu-ray to top it off. This is about as far as my excitement goes. I found the series to be rather one dimensional. The writing was lame at times, with the characters coming across as cardboard cutouts and not the fully developed characters I have come to expect in anime. This is not to say that the series does not have its fine points. I did enjoy the campy discourse Dante has with most of the Demons he fights, and many of the concepts were well developed. I think that too much time was spent on creating a dark monotone world that these individuals lived in. It was great to see Dante as a real slacker who seemed to only like strawberry sundays and pizza, but his relationship with Patty Lowell just did not click, and it should have been the most developed one of all.

 

I was also rather disappointed in seeing this series in Blu-ray. The Blu-ray looked great and the overall definition was wonderful, but because the series has such a mono-chromatic pallet it does not seem to make any sense as to why it was produced in Blu-ray. I would believe that it was just as strong in standard format as in Blu-ray. The gray, black and red look of the series did support the theme and basic emotional overtone of the series, but it becomes tedious after a while. Devil May Cry is not without its merits and it does provide plenty of action and humorous dialog. The creators did a great job at making Dante a sympathetic protagonist and leaving much of the main plot to be discovered later in the series. The extras were enjoyable, but the interview with Toshiyuki Morikawa, the voice of Dante (Japanese), was somewhat flat. The cut scenes and trailers of the game were fun to watch, but the CG appeared to be standard fair. The colors were much more brilliant and I wished they would have used that pallet in the series.

All in all, I found Devil May Cry to be something worth watching if you are familiar with the plot and story line of the games. I would recommend this as a rental for those that want to know more about the series and a buy for those who are big fans.

ComicsOnline gives Devil May Cry: The Animated Series on Blu-ray 3 out of 5 Drooling Demons.