madimpossibledreamer

I was thinking about why I like Devil May Cry (and my own writing on Giles’ Detective Agency) and why I don’t think that the story is “terrible” like a lot of people. Unlike my other lit analysis posts this one is mostly about DMC, mostly because I started writing and apparently had a lot to say and this is long enough as it is. This does tie in slightly to why I’m also more positive on DMC 2 (at least story wise, and you can’t argue that the outfit and music weren’t stylish) and the anime (which got me into the story). Again, I haven’t experienced DMC 5 yet; it’s one of the ones I want to actually experience myself, rather than watching someone else play, and admittedly half of my issue is that I want to wait until I’m living somewhere one of my roommates isn’t going to break a newly bought PS4 in a fit of rage or because they’re mad I haven’t cleaned the microwave or whatever. I look forward to seeing how it fits in with this mini-essay. It’s also why I don’t like the Ninja Theory one and why writing crossovers with lgbtq+ themes feels very natural to me. We will also be getting into story spoilers here, so warning for that.

Not every story needs to be Yakuza 0, and a lot of the more simplistic elements (color coding, the battle of brothers, return of ancient evil, and the like) seem deliberately chosen for modern myth-making. Most myths aren’t overly complicated. Despite being down-to-earth (the sneeze scene in DMC 3, for instance), Dante and Vergil are larger-than-life figures. I won’t harp on it too much, because it’s not my main point, but the over-the-top framing, the absolute absurdities, that’s the kind of tall-tale exaggeration you’d get when talking about demigods. Sparda is a figure that most people in the setting know about (even though, as Lady puts it, some might see him as a “fairy tale”) and he’s practically hyped up to godlike proportions (somewhat literally, when we come to DMC4!). People tend to think of myths as being just religious. I think it’s more fair to say that they’re philosophical. They have things to say about the human condition, which transitions to most of this essay.

The main topic I want to talk about here is themes. Both family and found family are important themes given equal weight in pretty much every installment. They’re not perfectly told. There are missteps. But conscious or not there’s a constant through-line here. Both shape you, neither one is shown as good without exception, and the choice between who you decide to protect is a weighty one that helps define who you are. And, of course, the liminality (not liminal spaces, though similar concept; basically existing between categories and therefore not belonging to either) of being half-human, half-devil, which...liminal readings lend themselves to lgbtq+ and other marginalized interpretations. A lot. As Lady said, “But now I realize there are humans as evil as any devil, as well as kind and compassionate demons in this universe. At least I’ve found one so-called devil who’s able to shed tears for those he cares about.” Being evil isn’t who you are. It’s what you do, specifically in hurting other people even for supposedly noble purposes. Even devils and demons can care. Even a devil may cry. In other words: how much power do you need, and why do you seek it? What lengths will you go to to protect the ones you love? Are you essentially willing to make a deal with the devil to protect them now, only to run the risk of turning on them later?

Devil May Cry 1: the legacy of Sparda, the badass who gets established pre-credits (even if he’s just dancing with a fire sword and a background, which is kind of dorky, but I actually like that because from what little we hear Sparda does seem like the kind of dorky demon who would figure out a greenscreen just so he can dance around with his sword). Dante definitely respects him more in this one than in 3, but there’s also some lingering hints of he absolutely loves his mom more. Picking up Trish as a sidekick, because while she’s not filling in as a mother figure (and doesn’t have to; there’s very little emphasis in the series about ‘being a mom is the only fulfilling thing in a woman’s life’ despite Eva’s prominence which is so refreshing compared to the current conservative zeitgeist in America and Whedon and especially the Moff), that doesn’t mean she’s not part of the family. She’s gotten adopted into Dante’s quirky found family whether she likes it or not (and she does like it, at the end). And she doesn’t have to pretend to be human, either; she can just be her goofy little demon-self. It’s fine. Demons and devils aren’t just evil things to be eradicated. And there’s Vergil, too, even if he’s got a small part, the pain of a broken family-by-birth and a twin who’s lost his way, and there’s pain and loss and resolve there, the kind that says you still love them deeply but in the end you have to do what you have to do, especially if they’re going to do something awful they can’t come back from, like try and take over the world, or work for an evil world-conquering bigwig from the Underworld. (Even if it’s not willingly.) Sparda is shown as a noble example of the use of power, using and giving up power to protect the human race, and even that’s not a flawless choice because it put his family in danger. (I’m not sure if it also counts as a counterexample to the common Heroic Sacrifice trope, where it’s almost always a guy and can communicate in its overuse that the thing every man should aspire to is to die for someone else, which isn’t particularly healthy. If it isn’t, and Sparda did actually think it would mostly solve the problem, I think that’s actually cooler, because planning on living for and supporting the people you care about while still making a meaningful sacrifice is great and we need to see more of that in fiction. But anyway.)

Devil May Cry 2. Definitely the weakest entry of the mainline series, but I do like the grotesque living city elements and even some of the names like AgonofInis, but that’s not related to the topic at all. But even though the story wasn’t carried out to the extent it probably should have been, it retains the same themes—more of the complicated legacy of Sparda, with Dante now acting as his father had to protect the world, but most prominently with Lucia. Lucia was technically created by Arius (birth family), but her found family (Matier, eventually the Dante Extended Found Family) was more important. Here, too, is another instance of the Lady quote above, of how it’s not just a binary and that demons and devils aren’t the only evil ones, in the form of Arius, a greedy businessman like Mundus seeking power, not to protect others, but simply to rule. But it’s not a straightforward ‘power is bad’ moral of the story, either. Power to protect the ones you love is good, or Lucia delving further into her background and powers would be framed as bad, but at the same time, power for power’s sake or power without a purpose (Arius) is condemned.

Devil May Cry 3, the installment that probably has the most to say on this topic. There’s a lot of parallels between Dante and Lady, both of whom have suffered a great deal at the hands of their own birth family, still love them to the point, in both cases, of tears, but knowing they can’t let the pain continue, can’t let their loved ones continue to inflict pain and suffering on others, can’t let their own pain stop them from doing the right thing. They’ve both become strong because they had to be, because the world would just keep kicking them in the face if they hadn’t, but that doesn’t mean that they aren’t scarred. They didn’t take each other’s pain seriously, at first; Dante was just like “she’s taking this way too seriously, she’s no fun” and Lady was like “he’s a demon, what does he know about pain or family or dysfunctional families”. They both reduce each other to one-word mocking descriptions (“girl”, “demon”). After the fight in the library, though, they both get it.

(Side note of Lady vehemently rejecting the name given to her at birth by her father and taking on the one given to her by Dante. They’re both feminine names, but it’s a neat detail in line with the other lgbtq+ themes here.)

There’s also a lot about motivation (thanks Verg) and how it affects different characters, although they’re not always honest with themselves or others. Dante was doing it, at first, because fighting his brother was the only interaction they’d had for the longest time, and also because fighting just in general was fun: “this is what I live for! I’m absolutely crazy about it!” And yes, that’s a line at the end, when he’s already tried to argue that he’s not emotional over having to fight Vergil and abandon him to the Underworld. He’s trying to be strong, but Lady sees right through it. That being said...he’s also not fully lying, because yeah, he does find fighting fun, and sometimes it’s easier than feeling or remembering trauma. Which isn’t probably the best coping mechanism, but he’s at least channeling it into something productive (protecting other people from demons/devils). Lady’s goal is revenge: “It’s not something you can reason with. It has nothing to do with me being a human and you being a demon. I’m driven by the inability to forgive him. My soul is screaming, demanding me to kill him. That’s enough motivation to keep me going.” (I do like that she uses ‘motivation’ here, because it’s clear she has one.) One of the background voice lines in the Vergil boss fights is “where’s your motivation?”, because who else would know better than his twin that Dante still doesn’t have one, doesn’t want to follow his father’s legacy or even acknowledge him but otherwise still doesn’t know how he plans to keep people safe, other than just staying away from them in general, is a fighter without a cause.

Dante has this great quote about his motivation, and while it’s fairly close to Lady’s, hers has been clear from her actions this whole time. His? We play as him, we have fun, but we haven’t seen into what he’s thinking, and it becomes clear from the speech that he’s had this whole character arc and we didn’t even realize until now. “This whole business started with my father sealing the entrance between the two worlds. And now my brother’s trying to break that spell and turn everything into demonville. This is my family matter too. Quite frankly at first I didn’t give a damn. But because of you, I know what’s important now. I know what I need to do.” He is close enough to give her a kiss, but he doesn’t go for it, just uses the intimate moment to promise something that would mean more to her, and that’s carrying out her vengeance (which she actually does at the end!! the narrative and Dante don’t get to take that away from her!!) and I think that’s actually a really, really good choice, because it shows the intimacy but the idea that he only fights for humankind because of one human cheapens it. (See Ninja Theory.) Nothing against the shipping, either; they’d make for an unconventional couple, and unconventional couples are also great for interrogating gender norms. I just think it was the right choice here. To quote Ben from National Treasure, “those who have the ability to take action have the responsibility to take action”. She’s learned this is about more than just revenge. And he’s learned that maybe fighting evil is about more than just fun. While this fight is deeply personal for both of them, the stakes are higher than just the effects on them personally. They’ve also learned that this fight isn’t just theirs alone; they’ve both acted selfishly (Lady preferring to fight on her own, trying to kill him and shooting him in the head rather than accept his help up, Dante abandoning her to fight the demons alone as he goes to try to catch up with Vergil) through a combination of pride and lack of seeing the other’s pain as valid or worthy. They learn to see each other’s goals and help as worthy.

Oddly enough, Vergil is even somewhat validated in his speech: “Might controls everything. And without strength, you cannot protect anything, let alone yourself.” He is shown to be correct: Lady and Dante only made it this far with powers of their own, Lady training obsessively to become the best killing machine a human woman can be, while Dante only made it this far by honing his own fighting prowess. The issue here is limits; Vergil just kept seeking more and more power, never feeling as if he had enough. He was completely willing to become a monster, to sacrifice humanity for the sake of the power he desired, but once he’d essentially destroyed everything in his quest for power, nothing would remain to protect. Dante points that out at the end: “What are you gonna do with all that power, huh?” And Vergil, usually the one more ready to debate, has no answer. In contrast, Dante and Lady weren’t willing to make that sacrifice, to put what they wanted in harm’s way for the sake of keeping it safe. Power for power’s sake and power to maintain power are both condemned consistently in the series.

Devil May Cry 4, with Dante’s nephew and Vergil’s son, Nero. We don’t get a ton with Dante, but it’s clear he’s still not quite sure about living up to his father’s legacy even now. Nero got to have an even more complicated blood family legacy than Dante and Vergil, with a power-hungry dad who basically abandoned him, an uncle who hadn’t known about him (and probably left a bad impression from the first meeting) and a complicated adoptive family situation; it’s clear that Credo was a kind of adoptive older brother, kind of similar to Katsuya from Persona 2; they love each other, but also there’s very little Nero does that Credo actually approves of. And then he’s clearly in love with Kyrie. There’s also the first clear example of found family not being always positive. Credo might see His Holiness as a kind of father figure he should obey and not question in a patriarchal sense, but the man is, at best, a cult leader, and doing so puts his own blood sister Kyrie (and his adoptive brother Nero) at risk. Cults usually prey on the marginalized, those who don’t otherwise feel like they have a home, in some cases because they have been kicked out of their home by blood family. In other cases, when you’re born into it, they’re also a dysfunctional blood family. It’s also really cool having this nuance, that blood family and found family aren’t always good or bad, that humans and demons aren’t always good or bad. It’s ironically more inclusive that way, because it doesn’t invalidate your experiences. Some queer people have loving families of birth, and the existence of utterly supportive blood family doesn’t negate the existence of awful blood family or vice versa. A lot more often, it’s complicated, which is kind of the default setting shown in Devil May Cry and I love it for that.

DMC4 is probably the most “straight” of the stories, having an actual canon straight couple (Nero and Kyrie, though you could read them as just siblings if you wanted) and Vergil’s biological kid, but, as we see above, there are still the themes, and, um. Something occurred to me, I went back and re-watched the scene, and, yeah. So the cutscene with Lucifer. If you’ve seen it, you know the one. No pronouns were used in the scene. At least not in the English version. So that’s awesome.

On the power-seeking front, we’ve got human-turned-demon cultists that might say they’re seeking power to protect their community, and it can’t be easy living on the outskirts of Devil’s Gates where demons just invade and kill people all the time, but, like with Vergil, it’s excessive. Some, like Credo and the Knights, probably still saw becoming demons as pursuing noble ends, as protecting people, especially since his last request is to save his sister and his adoptive brother. That’s not true of Agnus or Sanctus. At some point, the quest became power for powers’ sake. (Or, in Agnus’s case, might have been true ‘mad scientist’ merely trying to figure out how all of this works without regard for life or limits...which is, itself, dating back to Frankenstein, perhaps just another search for power for power’s sake, having lost track of the true goal of the experiment.) Juxtaposed, we’ve got Nero. Previously, it’s implied he was hiding the power of his demon arm and attempting not to use it too much, to alarm the other villagers and his adoptive family, but it turns out he has a bit of his dad’s attitude. “From that day forth, my arm changed, and a voice echoed. ‘Power. Give me more power!’” (Which, tentatively, having not seen DMC5, speculating that it’s some sort of possession-like thing, there, so there’s a very good reason that attitude is like Vergil. However, there’s more to it than that.) “And if I become a demon, so be it. I will endure the exile. Anything to protect her.” Unlike Vergil, he hasn’t lost sight of the reason he sought power, possibly because, well, for him, it’s not a theoretical, a distant memory of lost family, but a living breathing person he can still see. He also is aware that there could be consequences, that power comes with a price.

It’s even a theme in the anime. (Although ironically the back cover of the version I have reads ‘this time there’s no sympathy for the devil’, which, uh, respectfully, that’s not what I see at all. I get what they were going for, but also, nope. There’s sympathy for individual devils who have shown the capacity to care about others all over the place.) There’s a lot more of the day-to-day, of the very human aspects of how Devil May Cry operates, the very human aspects of ‘here’s a friend you’ll bully into taking care of himself and make sure he doesn’t starve to death but also absolutely will never lend money to’. Lady and Trish meeting each other and almost killing each other, not because of jealousy over Dante but because of the time-honored shounen/superhero tradition of misunderstanding→fight→friends. I think I remember hearing around the time of all the trailers before DMC 5 release that Dante is still single, and I know other guys that have moaned and groaned about that but I actually think it’s really great because it demonstrates that men and women don’t have to just relate to each other in terms of romance. They can be friends too. (On a side note, I do think this is rather telling, that the people who complain that guys can’t be friends without someone shipping them I have yet to see also complain about the fact that a man and a woman can’t even exist in the same room without people shipping them.) I didn’t actually look into it because I was afraid of running into spoilers, but. Point stands. We get Patty, who, yes, can be annoying, but gets moments of vulnerability and we see that sometimes that’s just because she doesn’t know what else to do. Which could also be applied to Dante, who is often a jerk when he’s at a loss. And who is also an orphan, just like Dante, Vergil, and Nero. (And more of problematic blood family there in the first episode, because, uh, rich family + demons to ensure inheritance.) We get Highway Star, with one brother dead and the other possibly partially suicidal and not wanting to lose the only connection he’s got left, is looking for revenge, and is in denial and grief. (That sounds possibly weirdly familiar.) We get Not Love, with a demon and a human falling in love and a disapproving father. (I’d say found family, or, maybe more so family of choice, can even include who you fall in love with, because hey, unless it’s a certain kind of story, it’s not your blood relatives.) Rock Queen, love and demons (and, in an interesting twist, the sacrifices you would make to attain power for fame and success), Wishes Come True, friendship and demons (and jealousy and guilt and also ghost relatives who care beyond the grave), Once Upon a Time (friendship and a kind of bittersweet reminder that not everyone’s going to accept you for who you are and in some cases, like self-protection, that can even be perfectly valid; Sid says he thinks humans [all humans, it’s a blanket statement] are worse than demons, and Dante doesn’t bother even entertaining the conversation because hello, some of his best friends are human), Death Poker, a look at the cost of gambling addictions on one’s family, though demons are involved, The Last Promise, two brothers who worked for Sparda, clearly loved each other, and sought revenge and an end to the violence, and Showtime! and Stylish!, the two-part season finale, with Patty’s mother (actually alive, clearly loved her daughter, not perhaps making the best decisions for her) and all of Dante’s found family.

I think the anime has the most missteps, but it’s still got some great themes. There is a moment in Wishes Come True that could be read as homophobic, but having recently rewatched it I think it’s probably more fatphobic, and not even necessarily Dante believing that, just saying something provocative to be thrown in higher isolation in the prison. That being a predator and homosexual or bisexual just happened to be together, rather than being innately connected. I might be giving them a little too much credit given the above found family themes though. (Also, all the excessive swearing in the dub. Seriously, the creator of the character said that would be out of character, so. Whatcha doin, man.) But still, it’s a far cry from Supernatural’s early ‘anything non-human is evil’ focus, which I really enjoyed, and it was enough to get me into the games and not have me feeling anything incongruous there.

The treatment is also very humanistic and compassionate, something that I found lacking in everything that I had heard about Ninja Theory’s attempt (and why I couldn’t even make it through watching someone else play a single cutscene from the game). (Then again, if you read the story of a guest writer, Alex Garland, on Enslaved, maybe that was just an overall studio thing, and not confined to a single project: “We got to a section where Monkey was walking down a walkway, and he sees an escaping slave trying to pull himself up to the walkway. And instead of helping the guy up, Monkey kicked him in the face and sent him to his death. They thought that projected the idea that Monkey was a badass. Whereas, to me, it projected the idea that Monkey was a bit of a cunt.”) Dante is constantly sparing people (Trish, Griffon, Vergil, Jester, Agnus, Sid) and most of the time it comes back to bite him in the ass, but even one success is enough to keep doing it and let their actions after being spared speak for themselves. If they won’t stop hurting people, they don’t get another chance. People like Vergil might be suffering, but they can’t be allowed to continue hurting people, either. Marginalized people, the working class, demon “working girls” (Nevan), they’re all treated with dignity. Which is why I didn’t feel at all weirded out when they had Morrison be a black guy. Lady and Trish aren’t whores because the story doesn’t treat them as such—especially by the point of 4, they’re hardly just “accessories”. (And, y’know, nothing wrong with it if they were; while there might be those, especially traffickers, who are being predatory about the sex trade, being a sex worker in of itself is just another job. One of the reasons that Whedon’s writing was consistent and bugged me, because while on paper Inara’s profession is a noble one, he sure didn’t care about showing it, and this is the same guy that just casually was like ‘let’s have Buffy burn down a vampire brothel in jealous rage and not show that that’s a problem in any way’. I don’t know if he personally wrote every instance, but as showrunner he did okay them. But there’s ways you talk about the profession if you’re trying to be demeaning, and using ‘whore’ as a slur (Whedon) and Tameem dismissing Lady and Trish as ‘prostitutes with guns’ are both pretty good examples of what this looks like. Dismissing women because they don’t fit what you want them to look/act like is not the feminist take you think it is. It does not help if you say “not to demean prostitutes”. That’s like saying something incredibly racist, homophobic, etc and then saying ‘just joking’. Excuse you. The courtesans in Assassin’s Creed actually fighting for you is one of my favorite things and I would honestly rather fight with the Sunshine Girls at my side than any of your characters. This is a tangent, but you have reached the Ninja Theory Rant section of this rather long essay, so it’s only going to devolve from here.)

So...yeah. Going from a sometimes flawed but compassionate look at found family, blood family, existing between worlds, what makes excessive force, and what makes one good and evil, to something where the story and marketing couldn’t help but be pointlessly edgy and keep trying to pick fights and prove itself superior...did not feel good. Being told that the story with all these lgbtq+ themes was outdated and the accepting over the top goofball devil hunter would be laughed out of a bar told me “we’re not even bothering to try to keep the same story/themes, so this isn’t for you, don’t even bother”. I tried to watch someone play the game, but couldn’t even make it through the first cutscene with the “new Dante”. I like edge and goth and emo and punk aesthetic, but there’s something to be said for the playful, hopeful feel, and the two aren’t necessarily mutually exclusive. I’ve actually never been in that scene (too nervous to actually get involved, I guess), but from what I’ve read, that crowd tends to be some of the most warm-hearted accepting people around (probably because they are willingly the outcasts, so you have to look out for each other ‘cause who else is gonna do it?). And people talk specifically about the Brokeback Mountain slide, but that entire conference was a complete disaster. Saying that Dante should be like Tyler Durden (the author himself doesn’t say that Fight Club is a critique of toxic masculinity but he does emphasize that the violence is consensual and compares it to BDSM, which is an easily lost distinction when you get the guys who want to impose that on everyone else who haven’t bought in or consented and you can still read it as an unintentional critique due to the literary concept of Death of the Author), a character from Chronicle (who becomes the superpowered version of a school shooter) and shouldn’t be anime or Visual Kei (super Japanese, can be read as feminized, gasp, and obviously playing with gender stereotypes is ‘insert racist sexist comment here’) or, yeah, the infamous Brokeback Mountain, because Dante shouldn’t be a gay cowboy either. I don’t know if they consciously noticed gay themes in the writing—I kind of assume not because I’m not sure that they even experienced enough of the story/games to actually notice, and probably aren’t familiar enough with how found family and themes of thinking about how much power is enough in a super over the top hack and slash are super lgbtq+, actually, but it’s especially offensive whether or not it was intended as just a hahaha homophobia and xenophobia are actually funny, guys ‘joke’ or whether they were poking fun because they wanted definitively to reestablish ‘hey you there queer audience? You’re not allowed in’ and assert dominance and their own masculinity. Here’s a shocker: people can say bigoted things even unintentionally. It doesn’t matter their intentions, because it’s offensive any way you slice it. And no, you don’t get to tell me it’s not offensive if you’re somebody who wouldn’t be affected in the first place. Otherwise, you get to say “I personally didn’t get offended”, but you don’t get to invalidate my feelings and that of a decent amount of other people on the internet. And you don’t get a sticker if you’re the director and you say “I wish we could make our main character gay, that would show all the homophobes out there”, and then not actually do it with not so much as a ‘Capcom wouldn’t let us, guys, sorry’. (The only acceptable type of dominance assertion is T-posing. I’m not even joking here. When it’s the bullies doing the bullying, that’s status quo.)

*takes a deep breath* /endrant

Okay. So it’s taken a little less than five thousand words to get here. Sorry for the length. It’s a big topic.

So...yeah, I came to this conclusion when I was writing a few more chapters for [Mission 3: The World’s Stage], but I did not intentionally make queer half-devil Xander’s hangout a saloon-style bar, but did I absolutely grin when I realized? Yes. (I have, sadly, had the Faust Devil Arm spoiled for me, but that also gets a big thumbs-up from me.) The Found Family was absolutely intentional, because we needed more of it in BtVS proper, and never got it. Found Family in Devil Arms. Found Family with the Scoobies. Buffy being all regretful that she had to basically just abandon her mom, but it was a situation that couldn’t be helped. Xander’s mixed thoughts about his own legacy as a half-devil. Blood family in Ghost Lights. Blood and chosen/found family in Shed the Past. And there’s more coming for The World’s Stage. How family and the ones that you love aren’t always positive or negative, what they’ll do for the ones they love, and how you love them despite the missteps. What it means to be a monster, with evil humans and friendly non-humans and everything in between. And discussions about power: we’ve got the invention of the Style System (because yeah even though you can heal that doesn’t mean you should if you can help it), we’ve got family members trying to work out how to protect each other, we’ve got overprotective swords and a sympathetic police officer and nuanced portrayals of what that entails because police queer story hello, we’ve got a bit of a look at Willow and her own spiral of power for power’s sake, we’ve got mind control (a case for easing up on the whole ‘gaining power’ thing if ever I’ve seen one), and more coming. I’d have finished it a lot sooner if not for the fact that I’m trying to write all twenty-one chapters of the third Mission before I post so that way I can be sure it will be twenty-one chapters, but man did I forget how much I love writing it because I’m excited about the thematic crossovers. (This is not to say that I did a terrible job with my other crossovers, only that I wasn’t intentional about any of this because I didn’t sit down and actually fully analyze all of this until now. And, like, I’m sure I’m missing stuff, I’m sure if I went back through every cutscene and every episode I’d find more and this would be 2x to 3x as long.)