The original Devil May Cry, when it arrived on the still-fresh PS2, had undergone a massive transformation from its original conception as a potential Resident Evil 4. Inspired by the Divine Comedy (from whose writer, Dante Alighieri, came the name of the series’ iconic main character), DmC switched up its bio-weapon zombie origins for a more ancient, inherently sinister evil spreading through the world: demons, a representation of pure malice and chaos across countless religions and ironically a cannon fodder video game staple since the days of Doom. The bedrock of the series’ lore rests on the idea that demons from Hell (or Makai in the Japanese translation), beings incompatible with the natural world, are secretly invading Earth with the goal of conquering humanity — an idea that becomes unintentionally and darkly ironic when considering the fact that the game released just a month before the September 11th attacks, leading to the Islamaphobic rhetoric used to justify the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan in the aftermath.
The first season of Adi Shankar’s animated adaptation of Devil May Cry engaged with this unforeseen juxtaposition by depicting demons as a nuanced and morally diverse species caught in a cycle of subjugation by tyrants, as well as introducing DARKCOM (a theocratic American militia dedicated to exterminating demons) in an attempt to explore the hatred, misunderstanding, and shadowy intrigue that breeds conflict. It was a move that, although compelling, earned mixed results — while some found it thematically engaging (if not heavy-handed), many fans felt like it was a bewildering deviation from the central thrust of the games, one that left Dante (Johnny Yong Bosch) mostly on the sidelines. Without abandoning the show’s allegory, Devil May Cry’s second season manages to significantly improve upon the foundation of the first, marrying its incisive depiction of the machinery of senseless conflict with the intimate familial conflict that drives so much of the first game and the resulting franchise.
