Happy holidays to everyone out there. It’s December and it’s time for me to do a month long mini-series of reviews but what can I talk about? I’ve already talked about the cartoons from Cartoon Network, Nickelodeon, and Disney, those were the three major channels I watched as a child so what else is there to talk about. Well after thinking about it there is something I can talk about this month, my reviews. I’ve been doing this for almost 4 years now and I’ve done over 200 reviews. That’s a lot of reviews and as time has gone by I’ve grown and matured as a person, a fan of anime, and as a reviewer. So I figured why not just take a look back at my year one reviews and see if my thoughts on the anime are the same or if they changed over the years. Just think of this as commentary for my reviews. Now I’m only going to be looking at my year 1 reviews and I’ll skip over the top 11 list reviews and side blogs as there’s really not much to talk about with them. With that said let’s get started. Welcome to the month of Nitsujcember: The Beginning.
Let’s start by taking a look at my very first blog Devil May Cry the anime. First off a little backstory into how I got into reviewing. I was telling a friend of mine about the anime and he wanted to know if it was good or not. Since he didn’t have time to watch it I decided I would write down my thoughts on each episode, provide a little side commentary, and kind of tell him what happens in each episode. I was a little worried about doing this because I’ve never written a review before. I’ve done essays and research papers but I’ve never written a review so this was a whole new experience for me. After showing it to my friend he got a kick out of it and convinced me to post it on Channel Awesome’s site just for the fun of it. I didn’t think it was gonna get that many hits because one it’s a blog and two it’s just some amateur writing about an anime he just watched but to my surprise it got a lot of hits and many people seemed to enjoy it. So I decided to write a few more blogs because I do enjoy writing and I had fun talking about anime so why not make this a side hobby and enjoy myself. Anyway, let’s talk about the anime.
So the anime is based off the popular PS2 series Devil May Cry which focuses on Dante the demon hunter and hands down one of the most badass videogame characters you’ll ever see. The anime takes place between games 1 and 4 and is its own story with Dante in his daily life performing jobs, killing demons, and trying to work off the debt he owes people. As someone who’s never played the Devil May Cry games before I honestly really did like this anime. I had a sense of who Dante was before watching the anime but I didn’t think he was this badass and this anime was a good entry point into the series and it’s an enjoyable watch for fans of the games as well. I am glad I choose this anime as my first review because each episode is a self-contained story so it was easy to just focus on that one particular story and then go on to the next one without feeling overwhelmed or having to re-watch the episode to make sure I didn’t miss anything.
It was nice to get introduced to other characters from the series such as Lady and fan favorite Trish although I do wish we had an episode or two where they used Trish more in the series because from what I’ve heard the two have some bit of romance going on between them. It would have been nice to explore that aspect of Dante’s life. Speaking of characters, we have to talk about Patty. Yeah I know a lot of people out there despise this character and found her annoying but I found her to be okay and I still do. Yes, I admit she’s not the best character in the series nor is she one of the best child characters either but she’s also not a bad character in my eyes. She works well off of Dante as this girl who’s mature for her age and sticks around with Dante because he’s like a big brother she’s always wanted. Looking back, I should have known she would play a major role in the finale since she kept popping up but at the time I was young and didn’t really think too much about it.
The animation looked great as this was a Madhouse production and they always knock it out of the park when it comes to their animation, the music was good especially the main theme, it matched the series up perfectly, and the voice acting is top notch. Whether it’s the dub or the sub you’ll like the voice acting. I still prefer the dub over the sub just because I’m used to their voices more and once again Justin Cause does an amazing job voicing Dante. His voice and Dante’s body match up perfectly together. It just sounds right. He makes Dante sound like a laidback guy but when he needs to he can make Dante sound threatening, funny, and serious. The fights scenes are still good but not as good as I originally thought. They definitely capture the feel of the games but they can be a little slow at times.
As I was writing the review I was trying to find the middle ground between informative and comedic writing although I think I was leaning more towards informative in this review. I had my moments where I would go full comedic but for the most part I felt I was more informative and played it safe on the jokes. So the final score I gave this anime was a 7/10 and yes I still stand by that score today. It’s a good anime worth checking out if you’re a fan of the games and if you’re thinking about checking the games out this is a good anime to get you interested in the series. It’s got a good balance of horror, action, and comedy and it’s always great to see a badass act like a badass outside of their games. This was the first step in what would become the beginning and spark of Project Nitsuj.