Stylish…
The anime series of DMC is twelve episodes, or missions, as they are referred to by Dante and the disc’s menu. Along with the extra features, this set spans two discs and some three hundred minutes of content. Each episode is viewable with Japanese or English Audio, and (only) English subtitles are provided.
Disc one contains the first nine missions:
01. Devil May Cry
02. Highway Star
03. Not Love
04. Rolling Thunder
05. In Private
06. Rock Queen
07. Wishes Come True
08. Once Upon A Time
09. Death Poker
While Disc two has the following missions, as well as several extra features:
10. The Last Promise
11. Showtime!
12. Stylish!
Each episode has a catchy opening and closing them song, “DMC,” and “I’ll Be Your Home,” although the latter one seems a little out of place given the type of show and the material. The show is, as you would expect given that it’s based on the video games, a mix of action and comedy, but mostly action. Dante is an interesting character, although the anime doesn’t really set up much of a backstory for him. Viewers have likely already played the games, so that’s probably not that big of a deal. Then again, the videogames themselves don’t really do much to explain the character either as I recall. Anyway, Dante is a half-human, half-demon who is basically immortal. He takes on various jobs, generally involving killing demons, to pay the rent and get by. He runs a shop named Devil May Cry, which he creates at the end of the first game. Dante loves his pizza, and he loves work, but he’s always behind on funds and never has much money, a fact that is driven home in the first several episodes.
The missions themselves involve Dante fighting a demonic motorcycle gang, a demon who has taken over a female rock star, rescuing a wrongly imprisoned man, and fighting off higher level evils like Barusa. For complete episode breakdowns, check out TV.com’s episode guide, although be mindful of spoilers if you’re concerned about such things. Also, it’s worth pointing out that this BD set doesn’t include any kind of episode summary within its inlay print or anywhere else, like a lot of TV shows do. It’s not a deal breaker, but it never hurts to have it.
Before getting into the mostly forgettable extra features, I should mention that the presentation quality of DMC on BD is consistently good from episode to episode. The animation itself is very stylish and smooth, while the voice acting is great. Music, effects, and overall technical aspects of both the video and audio are good. Like other anime I have seen on BD, the fact that it’s on Blu-ray doesn’t really make all that big of a difference compared to the DVD release, but between the two I would still prefer Blu-ray.
Extra Features
So, the extra features I alluded to earlier are mostly trailers and promo videos for DMC 4. The complete breakdown of extras would look something like this:
-Interview with Toshiyuki Morikawa (Dante) (5m, SD) – This video is ported from an older interview, done sometime in 2007. The actor who plays as Dante answers some questions about the series; via a translator, he describes Dante’s character, what makes the anime visually appealing, and who else to look out for in the anime series, among several other things.
-Cutscenes – Seven cutscenes from the then-upcoming DMC 4 game are shown in SD.
-E7 2007 and TGS 06 Preview – Footage from DMC 4 at these two events.
-Trailers – Short and long trailers of DMC 4.
–DMC 4 Final 07 and Final 08 Footage – Additional footage of Capcom’s latest entry to the venerable series.
-Clean Opening and Closing Animation – The opening and closing animations to the show are shown, sans credits.
And that’s it. I would have loved to have seen some extras that focused either more on the anime, or more on the older DMCs, but this anime is very much tied to the release of DMC 4, so it’s not surprising the older DMC games are not even mentioned. With that, let’s get to the summary.