Next year Devil May Cry will catch up with its lead character’s hair by celebrating its silver anniversary. The hellacious Capcom action series launched in 2001 and has nimbly zigged, zagged and pirouetted over the course of six core installments. Viewed as a gunslinging, sword-swinging continuum, the through line of the franchise seems to be this: if a demon is worth slaying, it’s worth doing it with needlessly flashy style.
Devil May Cry TV series 1 reviewAnimation: Studio MirProduced by: Capcom, NetflixAvailability: Out 3rd April on Netflix
That signature spirit of cocksure ultraviolence to goose a score-chasing Style Gauge is preserved in Netflix’s fizzy new series, which arrives this week after first being announced back in 2018. It has been overseen by Adi Shankar, a specialist in the streamer’s games-to-animation pipeline having worked on the admired Castlevania and daft Far Cry 3 sci-fi spin-off Captain Laserhawk: A Blood Dragon Remix.
With Limp Bizkit’s meathead anthem Rollin’ soundtracking the credits sequence and knowing needle drops from the likes of Linkin Park, Rage Against the Machine and Crazy Town, the personality of this adaptation – set in a modern-ish NYC where the world is being sporadically invaded by diabolical hellspawn – is very turn-of-the-millennium nu-metal. But thankfully it is not one of those protracted origin stories where the super-powered protagonist only pulls on their iconic costume in the final scenes.
At first glance, this incarnation of swaggering demon hunter Dante (voiced with impish glee by Johnny Yong Bosch) seems fully formed: the dual handguns, longsword, K-pop idol haircut and swirling red leather trenchcoat from the franchise’s imperial phase are all present and correct. Perhaps surprisingly, there is also a whiff of Ninja Theory’s 2013 reboot DmC: Devil May Cry in Dante’s callow slacker-dom and apparent allergy to introspection.