Devil May Cry: The Animated Series

Keep Rockin', Baby!

Devil May Cry: The Animated Series is an anime series based on the video game series Devil May Cry created and owned by Capcom, and animated by Madhouse. It is a story that ran for twelve episodes and takes place between the first and fourth games of the video games.

The series follows half-demon Dante as he runs his supernatural Detective Agency, Devil May Cry, as a justification for carrying out his war against the Demon World. In addition to Trish and Lady, characters from the video game that the series is based upon, two new characters make an appearance. These are Morrison and Patty Lowell; Dante's informant and temporary ward, respectively.

The Devil May Cry animated series follows the tradition of the original animated series of Hellsing in that it chronicles primarily self-contained adventures before bringing them to a linked final conclusion at the end of the season. The animated series favors animation, music, and other elements of style over detailed plots or characterization.

The Devil May Cry animated series has received mixed reviews from fans with some believing the series works better as a self-contained work than attempting to adapt the video games on which it was based.

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This Anime contains examples of:

• Action Girl: Trish and Lady
• All There in the Manual/Continuity Lock Out: You will understand a lot more if you have played the games.
• Always Chaotic Evil: Subverted, one demon is redeemed thanks to Dante's efforts.
• Ascended Demon: Brad, thanks to The Power of Love.
• Badass: Dante, Trish, and Lady
  • Badass Biker: Dante and Lady
  • Badass Longcoat: Dante
  • Badass Mustache: Morrison
  • Badass Normal: Lady
• Bad Guy Bar: Dante trashes one.
• Be Careful What You Wish For: The episode "Wishes Come True."
  • Same applies to Elena Houston, the singer in the episode "Rock Queen." She wanted folks to become intoxicated with her singing? She got obsessively intoxicated fans.
• BFG
• BFS
• Blade Across the Shoulder: One of Dante's favourite poses.
• Blood Knight: Dante
• Bloody Murder
• Blown Across the Room
• Body Horror
• Boring Invincible Hero: Dante. He dispatches most demons with a bullet to the head or a single sword swing. The ones that are meant to be a huge threat generally only last a few seconds longer and don't even hurt him. The games and the show illustrate the difference between a Showy Invincible Hero and a Boring Invincible Hero: The fights in the games are a lot more spectacular.
• Bottomless Magazines: Just like in the games, Dante never has to reload his guns.
• Breath Weapon: The Big Bad has one.
• The Butler Did It: Third episode.
• Butt Monkey: Dante, to some extent.
• Cannot Spit It Out: Trish in the fourth episode.
• Cat Scare: Played straight early on in the fourth episode.
• Character Exaggeration: Dante is accused of being ridiculously over the top.
• Children Are Innocent
• Clasp Your Hands If You Deceive: One person in Episode 9, "Death Poker," does this.
• Continuity Nod: The fact that Dante owes Lady a massive sum of cash is brought up numerous times. This debt is, of course, due to his wrecking of Lady's bike in Devil May Cry 3. There's even a bonus image in that game of Dante shrugging while Lady stares in shock to the only part left of her beloved bike.
  • The scar on Lady's leg also came from Devil May Cry 3, when her father stabbed her in the leg with her own bayonet.
• Cool Bike: The show is full of them.
• Cool Car: Morrison's classic car. Dante's red convertible also counts, though Patty doesn't seem to think so.
• Cool Guns: Dante's custom Colt 1911's Ebony & Ivory.
• Cool Sword: Dante's Rebellion, a memento from his dad Sparda.
• Convection, Schmonvection: It's funny how Patty and her mom can have a heartfelt reconciliation in a burning hotel without, y'know... roasting to death.
• Crucified Hero Shot: Dante, pinned to a cross by his own sword at the end of the penultimate episode, following the Once an Episode routine of the games.
• Curb Stomp Battle: A lot of Dante's fight scenes are like this.
• Destructive Saviour
• Designated Girl Fight: Lady vs. Trish.
• Discontinuity Nod: Dante's love of strawberry sundaes is a reference to the first light novel that served as a prequel to the original game (until the third game went and kicked it out of canon).
  • The name "Tony Redgrave" inscribed on Ebony & Ivory is used as a plot point in episode 8 "Once Upon a Time".
• Eldritch Abomination: Belphegor in the third episode, although despite all the build-up about how he'll devour the entire city, Dante beats him in about five seconds.
• Fat Bastard: The warden of Devil's Prison.
• Fight Unscene: Some fights, like the demon in the third episode and the final clash against the Big Bad, are underwhelming.
• Flanderization: This is where it happens.
• Gangsta Style
• Good Scars, Evil Scars: Lady sports attractive scarring across her face and on her right leg.
• Good Thing You Can Heal: Dante tends to get stabbed, shot and impaled with alarming frequency.
• The Gunslinger: Dante
• Guns Akimbo
• Half-Human Hybrid: Dante
• Hand Cannon
• Harmful to Minors: Dante usually attempts to shield Patty from the gruesome battles he has with demons. He occasionally fails, though.
• Healing Factor: Dante and Trish, natch.
• Hey, It's That Voice!: The core cast, and then some!
  • Toshiyuki Morikawa and Reuben Langdon as Dante in Japanese and English, respectively.
  • Atsuko Tanaka (Japanese) and Luci Christian (English) as Trish
  • Fumiko Orikasa as Lady
  • Misato Fukuen (Japanese) and Hillary Haag (English) as Patty
  • Akio Ohtsuka as Morrison
  • Nachi Nozawa as Sid (Father Alexander Anderson in the first Hellsing anime). Chris Ayres voices him in English
  • Tomokazu Seki as Vincent in episode 2 "Highway Star"
  • Vic Mignogna as the Pick-Up Man in episode 3 "Not Love" for the English dub
  • Romi Paku as Elena in episode 6 "Rock Queen"
  • Yuji Ueda as Kelly Marcus in episode 7 "Wishes Come True"
  • Akemi Okamura as Elise in episode 8 "Once Upon a Time"
  • Shinichiro Miki as Modeus and Joji Nakata as Baaru in episode 10 "The Last Promise"
  • Katsuyuki Konishi as Simon in episode 11 "Showtime!"
  • Aya Hisakawa as Patty's mother in episodes 11 and 12 "Stylish!"
• High-Pressure Blood
• I Call It Vera: Dante's pistols "Ebony & Ivory," Lady's rocket launcher "Kalina Ann," and "Luce & Ombra" for Trish's pistols.
• I'm Melting: The demon in "Wishes Come True" does a particularly nasty version of this to its victims.
• Idiosyncratic Episode Naming: The episodes are called "Missions" instead of "Episodes," and the last two are named "Showtime!" and "Stylish!" in reference to the games.
• Idiot Ball: As noted below, the world would have come a lot less closer to destruction if Dante had just killed the demon he encountered in the first episode.
• Immune to Bullets: Dante
• Implausible Fencing Powers: Dante
• Impossibly Cool Clothes
• Instrumental Theme Tune: "d.m.c." by rungan. Not to be confused with Run DMC.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Dante
• Knight in Sour Armor: Dante
• Ludicrous Gibs: It's amazing how much damage those little .45s of Dante's can do.
• Made of Iron
• The Magic Poker Equation: In the episode "Death Poker," it's magic that's influencing the players' "luck" on getting the winning cards Lady (masquerading as a dealer) doles out.
• Major Injury Underreaction: Dante is rarely fazed by even the most grievous injuries.
• Mismatched Eyes: Lady's red and green eyes.
• More Dakka: Lady's massive arsenal of firearms.
• Nice Hat: Morrison's fedora.
• Offscreen Moment of Awesome: So the final battle arrives, and Dante finally use Devil Trigger... for an instant, and all the viewers get is a hint to what it looks like.
• Ojou: Patty
• Our Demons Are Different: Lesser demons are Always Chaotic Evil, devils like Trish and Sparda's disciples are Noble Demons, or just not evil to begin with. (One of Sparda's disciples is too much of a Proud Warrior Race Guy to pass up a chance to fight Dante, and the nicer one is compelled to avenge his death.)
• Out-of-Character Moment: Dante in Episode 10 of the anime. Right after Dante kills Modeus's older brother Baal (who he'd been warned not to fight for the entirety of the episode up until then), Modeus explains that he'd given up fighting for his brother's sake after vowing to stay true to himself. What does Dante do then? Taunt him and call his wanting to avenge Baal "pathetic" which causes Modeus to charge (with tears in his eyes). Placing Dante and Vergil into Modeus and Baal's roles makes him come off as extremely hypocritical.
  • Not really an OOC moment because Dante and Vergil's case was completely different. The only similarity was that both cases involved the death of a brother. Vergil "died" because he wouldn't listen to Dante and ended up spitefully slicing Dante's hand to prevent his rescue as he tumbled to hell. Baal died because he was mad at Dante's father and picked a fight with Dante when he couldn't find Sparda (someone Dante already barely acknowledges or accepts on most days). Dante was most likely referring to how stupid it was for Modeus to throw his life away by fighting a battle he could never win in hopes of avenging a brother who basically threw his life away as well. Dante states the same thing to the gang leader in the second episode of the anime, once again referring to the idiocy of avenging his brother; His brother died street racing a demon who ended up killing him... trying to obtain vengeance against that demon would only lead to the gang leaders death as well.
• Percussive Maintenance: Dante to his jukebox on occasion.
• Perpetual Poverty
• Pistol Between The Teeth
• Pre-Ass-Kicking One-Liner: Dante is full of these.
• Precision F-Strike: Used three times in "Wishes Come True."
• Prison Rape: Strongly hinted that the warden of Devil's Prison gets up to this with the inmates.
• Reckless Sidekick: Patty.
• Rule of Cool: This anime, like the games that it's based on, is almost made of it.
• Sealed Evil in a Can
• Senseless Violins: Dante often carries his sword in a guitar case.
• Shadow Discretion Shot: Done intentionally by Dante in the first episode with a theatre backdrop to prevent Patty from witnessing the violent ongoings.

"Sorry, honey, but this show isn't for kids."

• Shirtless Scene
• Shock and Awe: Trish's lightning powers.
• Shout-Out: "Capulet City."
• Single-Stroke Battle: Dante has quite a few of these.
• Sticks to the Back: Dante's sword.
• Stripperiffic: Most of the show's female characters, to varying degrees.
• Swipe Your Blade Off: Dante is occasionally shown doing this after slaying a demon. Other times the blood just sort of magically vanishes off his sword.
• Throwing Your Sword Always Works
• Token Mini-Moe: Patty.
• Toplessness From the Back: Lady in the change room...
• Trademark Favorite Food: Dante with Strawberry Sundaes and pizzas with no olives (and possibly garlic potatoes).
• Twelve-Episode Anime
• Unusually Uninteresting Sight: People generally tend to find little, if anything out of the ordinary about the tall, white-haired guy in the long red coat with a big-ass sword slung across his back.
  • To be fair, though, Dante keeps his sword in a guitar case most times he's using it.
  • Two people's perception of Dante actually becomes a plot point in one episode. A woman views him as very cool, and encourages her boyfriend to be more like him. The boyfriend, however, thinks Dante looks dangerous. So while Dante is an unusual sight, his appearance probably keeps people away.
• Unwitting Pawn: Dante
• What Do You Mean It's Not Awesome?: Death Poker.
• White-Haired Pretty Boy: Dante
• You Can't Thwart Stage One: Unfortunately. The Big Bad is unsealed mostly because Dante didn't just shoot the guy from Episode 1, nor did he do that in every other episode the guy appeared in.
  • Of course, Sid didn't really show his real teeth until the end of the series, anyway. Up until Showtime, he was just a harmless demon with basically no real power to speak of, apart from his cunning.