‘Devil May Cry’ (2025) Netflix Series Review - Devil Will Surely Cry After Watching this Bland Urban Fantasy

Your tolerance for the new Devil May Cry series will depend on your expectations of it. Do you just want blood and gore and fights? Congratulations! The anime is filled with stabbings, beheadings, demon bullets that explode their victims, and sword fights. There is too much violence on the screen, but the choreography is quite basic and repetitive. The stunts don't feel dazzling or exciting - there is no primal force in the action scenes. What Devil May Cry lacks is ferocious energy. Blood is spilled all right, but the effect is merely cartoonish. Even during dramatic reveals, the violence remains impersonal and uninteresting, which is why you don't feel anything. There is no sense of wonder or imagination in this Devil May Cry. The bodies move rigidly; the human characters in live-action productions move more freely. Creator Adi Shankar fails to utilize the medium properly. Animation gives filmmakers the freedom to bend anything according to their rules and creativity. You are not restricted by the limitations of the real world and real human beings. Yet, Devil May Cry chooses the path of mediocrity. The page-to-screen translation is literal and visually uninventive.

Devil May Cry is as bland as the Tomb Raider animated series on Netflix. This is surprising when you consider how expressive animes can be. Their visual language is inherently dramatic. Characters are surrounded by lines during shocking reveals. The background becomes black, and only two people are seen on the screen during important scenes. We quickly get a close-up of the weapon and the expression of the person it's about to hit, so we can determine whether the latter has the upper hand or is weak. Devil May Cry, too, contains these stylistic flourishes, but they are deployed mechanically. The focus is more on attacking the audience with plot-centric information that merely pushes the season toward a predetermined ending. The dialogue is just plain exposition delivered at the speed of all the bullets fired in the series. Some things are explained through quantum gibberish. It's pure hokum; it flies over your head most of the time. Anyway, sound logic is the last thing you expect from a Devil May Cry series - I find the games cheerfully silly. The 2013 DmC: Devil May Cry game is delightfully outlandish. It's not a stretch to say that you'll have a better time playing the DMC video games than watching this anime series.

The Dante of this Devil May Cry looks like a dud as soon as he arrives. After saving a mother and her baby, he tries to crack a joke like a Marvel Superhero, and he fails terribly. A few episodes later, Dante (Johnny Yong Bosch) learns that he is the son of Sparda and also a half-demon, and I guess this is meant to be a shocking reveal. The only problem is that we don't feel terribly shocked by this reveal (even someone new to this franchise will shrug their shoulders during this scene). The series bombards you with plot-related exposition instead of creating an atmosphere of suspense or magic. Even the quality of the animation is simply middling. There is one fine moment in the series involving Mary (Scout Taylor-Compton) making a deal with a shapeshifter demon, and the villain - the White Rabbit (Hoon Lee) - comes with an interesting motivation that could have given rise to a potent conflict. Devil May Cry, however, wastes a good opportunity. The refugee demons are reduced to cheap sentimental devices (a kid looks at a soldier nervously just before he and his family, along with other demons, are burned mercilessly). And isn't it kind of stupid that the whole half-demon thing doesn't lead to a clash of thoughts inside Dante's mind when he is told about the plight of smaller demons suffering from oppression and bad air quality? Everything, alas, is just casually brushed aside. Devil May Cry merely sets the stage for a second season. It ends with a cliffhanger you already see coming from a mile away. Given how dull the anime is, the Devil will surely cry.

Final Score- [3/10]
Reviewed by - Vikas Yadav
Follow @vikasonorous on Twitter
Publisher at Midgard Times