Devil May Cry   Starring (voice): Toshiyuki Morikawa, Akio Ohtsuka and Atsuko Tanaka Manga Entertainment RRP: £29.99 MANG3047 Certificate: 15 Available 19 October 2009

Dante is a demon slayer who turned to this profession following the murder of his mother. Working out of the Devil May Cry office he takes on various jobs to pay off his debt. His lonely existence is transformed when he is asked to protect Patty, an heiress, although this turns out to be a ruse, landing Dante with an unwelcome guest...

Devil May Cry (2007) is an anime show adapted from the long running series of fighting games produced by Capcom and contains the characters of Trish and Lady from the original. The format has also spawned a number of novels and comics. The DVD set brings together all twelve shows on a three DVD set.

Madhouse has produced a pretty ‘by the numbers’ show for Devil, little of Dante's background is explained or explored, so this is one for fans of the game. That is not to say that Devil is a bad show, but even in this action/horror genre there are better examples. Shin Itagaki (Black Cat, Desert Punk) directed the show well, but fails to add much in the way of originality.

For the most part the series consists of standalone episodes, though the first and the last two episodes are connected, which gives the feeling that the show was properly bookended and didn’t just run out of steam. True, Lady does turn up to get Dante to work some jobs for her and eventually Trish also makes an appearance leading to the trio working together on some particularly difficult cases. Towards the end of the twelve episodes it is revealed that Patty’s is descended from a sorcerer, who had sealed away the power of Abigail. This revelation brings in the last big villain for the boss fight which closes the story.

The discs have audio options for both the original Japanese track, with subtitles, and an English track. For a show that didn’t last that long the set initially looks to have some surprisingly good extras, but then sometimes looks can be deceiving.

On disc one you get an interview with Toshiyuki Morikama (5 min, 11 sec - the Japanese voice of Dante) who strangely looks a lot like the character he plays. There are four Promos (5 min, 40 sec) the first for Devil May Cry 4 (a pretty good game) as well as three others for the anime series. You get the clean opening and closing sequence and two cut scenes from DMC 4, if you’ve played the game then you will have seen these already, if not Capcom is trying hard to flog you the game. This is followed by another poorly disguised advert for the game in the E3 2007 Preview (1 min, 57 sec) and the Tokyo Game Show '06 Preview (2 min, 22 sec), these sections contain shots from the game but no new information.

Disc two continues the hard sell for the game DMC 4 with both a long (3 min, 34 sec) and a short trailer (1 min, 20 sec), though a lot of the imagery is repeated in the extras which deal with the game. Carrying on with the game we have four more cut scenes and for the animation, you remember you bought the discs for the animation right? We have clean opening and closing sequences.

Disc three once again has the clean opening and closing sequence and for those who may have forgotten about the game we also have the Final 2007 Footage (3 min, 08 sec) and the First 2008 Footage (2 min, 59 sec), the disc wraps up with a final cut scene (3 min, 51 sec).

Now don’t get me wrong I bought Devil May Cry 4 for the PS3, I played it and enjoyed the experience, however the heavy handed attempt at flogging the game by pretending that they are extras on the anime does not sit well. Take out the game related extras and you are left with one short interview and a couple of clean opening and closing sequences. The reality is that the extras, for the anime, are pretty paltry.

The show is slightly above average and will appeal to fans of the games but as a standalone it just doesn’t measure up to some other shows that are out there.

6

Charles Packer