Where the Art Direction of DMC Failed.

I am mostly only going to be talking about art direction in the show. I feel like everyone has already said enough on the story. Before I get into it I want to give the show its flowers, I loved all the character designs (yes including Lady) and the fight scenes were animated really well. There were many fun little details and they did a great job with facial expressions. Definitely an improvement to Castlevania in all those aspects in my opinion. Episode 6 honestly was incredible too.

Now to get to what I think sucked. I really disliked the atmosphere of the show. Devil May Cry's stories and plot have never been its strongest suit tbh. But what makes DMC games so good is the detailed horror designs of the demons and goth atmosphere paired up with the characters shenanigans and detailed hack and slash combat. It's that contrast and balance of grim badass and goofy. But the show didn't really have much of that atmosphere.

What makes it worse for me is that they showed that they can capture that DMC vibe but just chose not to. The introduction to the white rabbit in the church was VERY Devil May Cry and it was hauntingly perfect. Even the plasma reveal was not bad. I also found it strange that when the two realms combined- hell actually looked a lot more like hell and closer to the depictions of hell in the games. But the actual hell itself is so bland and dull in the show.

The demons aren't really gross or scary. There's no body horror or creepiness in tbe designs. And except for white Rabit and Cavillier, the demons felt more like alien supervillains. Agni and Rudra literally looked like the twin clones in Invincible. I don't understand why they just didn't use more lower demons and game designs.

Given that they were trying to expand DMC's world and put it in a city, I get they can't just use game designs and have to be a bit more creative with it. Which is why I feel like they should have tried to take more inspiration from Chainsaw Man. Chainsaw man also has whacky characters fighting demons in a modern city setting- but it still manages to deliver a sense of dread and grim especially in fight scenes that is missing in the Netflix DMC series. It does a really good job using gore to make fighting demons always feel gross, also always make them frightening or scummy in one way or another by use of civillians or the protagonists. Even in the middle of the day, by use of shadows, lighting and clouds, they are still able to recreate and maintain a grim atmosphere in fight scenes. Chainsaw man also has a good degree of realism but it never loses the fantastical nature of the powers or the demons which I think also adds to their fear. By removing all these and going down the superhero route ruins Devil May Cry.

To give credit where it's due, Lady's team getting wiped out in the abandoned building followed with her hallucinations was probably the scariest/grossest the demons felt. Which wasn't a lot but still something. Narratively too I also feel like CSM handles the good demon/bad demon and part demon thing much better than the netflix show. Since Adi didn't want to simply just copy the games he should at least have relied more on media that actually handles Demons than just relying on Superhero tropes. Hell forget Japanese media, he could have rebuilt the wheel by just looking at Western horror shows and games and try to incorporate that considering the show is about demons and not supervillains.

Mind you, I enjoyed the show. Many will disagree but I think they did take good care of all the characters narratively and did a good job with making sure the dialogue isn't as corny as some of the dialogue in the games. But the show heavily suffers from trying to look like a superhero show both in design and themes.