I'm going to take this chance to say I'm not one of those nerds who thinks every adaptation has to adapt as little as possible to be good. "Canon" leaving the realm of church and entering fandom is one of the worst modern developments, a series of self entitled whiny fanboys stifling creativity because they can't imagine seeing things they like through a new lens, creating the MCU's endless torrent of predictably bland nonsense.

Rather, my gripes from the Devil May Cry Netflix series are simply that it takes a bunch of interesting building blocks and chooses to make a square out of it. Is the square a cool color? No.

A Misplaced Kind of Grunge

The very first thing I get out of watching Adi Shankar's 8-episode series is that it seems very Wikipedia core. The series seems more intent on celebrating the year Devil May Cry released than the games itself- it's a series steeped in Americana, in the grunge that colored years defined by phrases like "The War on Terror".

The problem is that it's a misplaced Grunge- Capcom's hack and slash was always gothic, yes, but in a timeless way that simplified the need to ask too many establishing questions. Devil May Cry 5's blatantly Borough Market stage is the closest the games have gotten to even resembling the real world. Yet, the Devil May Cry Netflix series says that this show must exist as the antithesis to Turning Red, and be grounded in its 2000s reality rather than be a romp about fighting demons.

It's the difference between Green Day and Outrage. Outrage is charisma and attitude, it talks about universal themes, but is ultimately introspective rather than a commentary on anything at best. Green Day is so good for this metaphor that a Green Day song makes up one of the best sequences in the show. It's "The pain of being alone" vs "The pain of another Bush administration".

And then there's the explaining.

Seriously, I cannot begin to explain how annoying the explaining is. The first episode literally starts with trying to explain what a demon is. Why do we need to know what a demon is? All we've ever needed to know is if they can be launched or juggled or, as of DMC 4, Bustered. In another scene, the shapeshifter Plazma feels the need to explain how his powers work, using a bunch of sci-fi lingo just to say he only needs to kill one hostage. It's like the Devil May Cry Netflix show is almost ashamed of being Devil May Cry. I want to play as a bishie in a loose situationship with gravity at best, you think I care about keeping things realistic?

These aren't fan-specific complaints, either. The problem with trying so hard to ground your fantasy is it starts coming off as a resentment for its own genre. Look, I don't tell my dates that I have the self-esteem of the US Stock Market. Maybe having a show billed as the cool demon killing special spend screen time talking down how cool the demon killing is isn't a great idea. Things like how a shapeshifter works or parallel dimensions are great art book stuff- but not so much actual content for the episodes themselves.

And Now The Fan Complaints

So like I said at the top of this, I don't think Shankar and team needed to be slavishly beholden to DMC canon when it comes to the Devil May Cry Netflix series. But I do think they should have at least taken a deeper reading of the themes at play that make the games such peak melodrama.

The biggest offender of this is Lady, who acts as the human half of the core cast. In Devil May Cry 3 she is a great parallel to Dante- she's taking responsibility for the evil of her family member, while battling with her internal conflict of knowing he'll always be a part of her no matter how many times she pulls the trigger.

In the Devil May Cry Netflix series, she's…. just mean, really. Not even in that fun way that she is in Devil May Cry 4 where it's implied that Dante owes her so much money she basically owns his store. She's just a cop.

The fact that they even go out of their way to remove something like her one tie to her dad (their matching heterochrome eyes) almost feels like they wanted to actively avoid any kind of depth when it comes to characters. Having her spend the entire show in a Captain Commando uniform with jet boots and magnet cuffs for her guns feels like an extra level of character butchery- I really liked that Lady was the Krillin of Devil May Cry, the strongest human and powered exclusively by spite. Now, it's just super suit and gadgets.

Fanservice in the show feels surface-level and shallow at best. Literally having a wispy whisper girl sing Bury The Light when Vergil is referenced feels like the same kind of one-dimensional musical cues from Suicide Squad. Having "Devil Trigger" be a diegetic term also feels functionally wrong- we're talking about demonic half-breeds, not Super Saiyans. The show prances around with so many "I bet you cheered" moments that it's almost adorable how misguided it really is.

And this is what I mean by Wikipedia core. It's so clearly a checklist of what they thought would be "hype moments" that I doubt anyone actually considered what, thematically, Devil May Cry is and how they could build off that. What was a fun fantasy adventure story with tragic melodrama got turned into yet another 9/11 story. It's not that I don't like political reimaginings, but you're literally looking at a cast of characters who were built for introspection- it just feels like a waste having them used for the most boring possible version of the setting.

Some Amazing Casting

Yet somehow, even in this mess of dull ideas, there's a few glimmers of hope. First off- Johnny Yong Bosch kills it as Dante. Despite me not liking the real world references Bosch absolutely makes the most of the script he's given. Despite the Nero comparisons, Bosch actually puts a really good amount of legwork in separating his Devil Hunter portrayals- Netflix Dante isn't nearly as angsty as Game Nero, and the fact that he conveys that despite them both being kind of silly sword men is a technical feat.

There's also the case of the series-original character Baines, played by the late Kevin Conroy. If I told you he was from a niche Devil May Cry spinoff I think you'd believe me- the idea of an evangelical Vice President trying to wage a holy war on hell is way more faithful to the spirit of Devil May Cry than the show's take on Lady, Vergil or even Dante himself is.

I also really like the series main villain, the White Rabbit. An actual character from a niche spinoff, he's such a charismatic villain whose encounters are written almost like in-game bossfights. I can totally see the forum posts now- recommending weapons to clear White Rabbit II or rumors that you could totally get a special cutscene if you actually beat White Rabbit I. It's a shame that once the series pulls back the curtain on him he gets significantly less interesting- I could watch this rodent yuck it up and chew scenery for ages.

Devil May Cry Netflix Series – Closing Thoughts

At the end of the day, it's very hard to recommend the Devil May Cry Netflix series if you enjoy the games in any meaningful way. From the weirdly unsexy Devil Triggers to the one-dimensional characters, it's a mess of what it wants to be.

At its best, it's a color-by-numbers story about "what if humans were the real devils" that's afraid of saying anything sincere. At its worst its watching someone throw out a perfectly cooked steak because as we all know, its the garnish that everyone really cares about.

Still, if you're simply in it for Studio Mir's name in the credits, I guess you could give it a watch? Whoever decided Lady and Dante should have hate-fuck energy clearly did play Devil May Cry 3, but even then the Mir charm seems to have faded quite a bit compared to the Castlevania days.

On the plus side, the Devil May Cry series is on sale to celebrate its launch. Watching the series legitimately made me appreciate the plot of Devil May Cry 3, and you should probably go check the series out for some life-changing action games.

• Visuals: 7/10
• Music: 6/10
• Story: 5/10

Final Score: 6/10

The Devil May Cry Netflix series is streaming now on Netflix