REVIEW: ‘Devil May Cry’ Season 1 Tries to Do Too Much and Doesn’t Accomplish Enough

Disclaimer: This review contains minor spoilers for Devil May Cry Season 1.

When the Limp Bizkit song “Rollin’ (Air Raid Vehicle)” blares out under the opening animation of Adi Shankar’s Devil May Cry Season 1, it sets the tone of the show as a love letter to America in the early 2000s. From the nebulous government agencies involved in a post-9/11 take on demon hunting, to questions of identity and personal responsibility, Devil May Cry was made by Millenials, for Millenials. While knowledge of the CAPCOM game from which the show hails is not required, keen-eyed observers will spot many visual and audio references to the original 2001 game, adding to the sense of being transported back to the era in which the source material came to fruition.

“Throw Your Hands Up”

Devil May Cry Season 1 tells a twisted story that entangles Dante, a demon hunter with a past not even he knows about, and Mary, a pseudo-government agent who is fighting to save the world from an influx of demons. Dante is in possession of the show’s Macguffin, an amulet that promises to help open the doors to Hell itself.

In pursuit of the amulet are both Mary’s organization, DARKCOM, and a creature from Hell, in the form of a man-sized White Rabbit. Each has their own cadre of adversaries for Dante to fight his way through, which he does with aplomb. Like many of his ilk, Dante is a protagonist who knows the value of a good one-liner. He does not, however, always have one ready to go at a moment’s notice.

Dante’s strength as a hero lies in his almost hapless involvement in forces bigger than himself. While he is a professional demon hunter/gun-for-hire, his own background is enough of a mystery to him that he doesn’t consider himself a major player in the struggle between light and dark. His quips are reminiscent of Deadpool: a certain level of wry self-awareness that nearly breaks the fourth wall at times.

“Tell Me What You’re Gonna Do Now”

This tendency of the series to lean on meta humor, especially with Dante and his unwitting sidekick Enzo, is one of its biggest weaknesses. While the humor is appreciated amidst a cavalcade of gory mythos, the off the cuff quipping feels off. The humor itself appears to be a nod to the time period in which the series seems to not only take place, but which launched the franchise as a whole. That is to say, it feels dated.

Another dated aspect of the production is the clunky exposition, especially in the early episodes. There is a lot of information to give the audience, and it is dumped on them unceremoniously on multiple occasions. The one exception to this is the sixth episode, “The First Circle,” which intertwines both Mary and the White Rabbit’s backstories in a beautifully-animated musical sequence with vocals from Evanescence lead singer Amy Lee. The lack of dialogue of any kind during this episode is a stark contrast from the rest of the series with its speechifying and info dumps, and is the strongest of the eight episodes. Much like the acclaimed, dialogue-less Bojack Horseman episode “Fish Out of Water”, “The First Circle” manages to elicit an emotional response lacking in the rest of the series as a whole.

“You Wanna Mess with [the White Rabbit]?”

The emotional core of the series is an unexpected one. While it is easy to see the demons serving under the White Rabbit as equally culpable in the horror perpetuated on Earth, the truth is far more complex. It is a surprising attempt at nuance from a production that is otherwise very on-the-nose. There is a certain cognitive dissonance that the series excels in highlighting, a question of who is really the villain.

The question of villainy is asked throughout the series. Everyone has shifting alliances, and nothing is what it seems. The reveal of the White Rabbit’s background is a surprising one. It would have been easy to keep him as a generic villain, but his ultimate pathos adds a depth that otherwise would have been lost. The audience does not have enough time to get to know him as anything besides the generic villain, however, so the reveal loses its impact.

“Keep Rollin’”

Devil May Cry Season 1 has an additional narrative thread running through it that does not come to fruition until the very end of the season, without enough time to resolve any of the new story before it ends. As a second season has not been confirmed, the cliffhanger left behind is too big to be ignored.

Full of action, blood, and a soundtrack from a school dance in 2002, Devil May Cry Season 1 is a fun watch, but is ultimately trying to tell too many stories at once, and only succeeds in telling one.

Rating: ★★☆☆☆

About Devil May Cry

Premiere Date: April 3, 2025

Episode Count: 8

Executive Producers/Showrunner: Adi Shankar, Lee Seung-wook, Hideaki Itsuno

Writers: Alex Larsen

Production: Studio Mir

Distribution: Netflix

Cast: Johnny Yong Bosch, Scout Taylor-Compton, Hoon Lee, Chris Coppola, Kevin Conroy, Robbie Daymond

Synopsis: In this animated adaptation of the popular Capcom game and from the vision of Adi Shankar, sinister forces are at play to open the portal between the human and demon realms. In the middle of it all is Dante, an orphaned demon-hunter-for-hire, unaware that the fate of both worlds hangs around his neck.