Devil May Cry

I mean, his BROTHER DYING feels like a weird place to say, "he's upset all the time and self-loathing." I mean, there's a certain time when even other happy go lucky people are allowed to be upset. Dead Brother, Dead Trish, and so on.

Just Super-Saiyin.

The point is that he dealt with how shitty he's feeling by immediately going into the Stylish mindset. That really implies that the Stylish antics are at least in part a coping mechanism.

The self-loathing part is something from the prequel novel for DMC V. The actual reason he refused to attend Patty's birthday party was because he didn't think he fits in with regular people.

Edited by M84 on Oct 26th 2021 at 5:53:38 PM

And the 3 prequel manga states that he loathes his demonic heritage he blames it for the demonic attack on his family.

I do think that there's a salient point that the games usually just portray him having fun and being wacky, or else serious because there's an immediate threat to deal with — the downcast, self-loathing version of the character is in the margins and subtext of the games if at all. I don't blame people for taking the wacky woohoo pizza man at face value. Nor do I think that characterizing the over-the-top Dante persona as entirely a facade (as opposed to just part of his personality) is accurate.

And about the "stuck in hell" thing, I'd just take it as a way to write Dante and Vergil out of the story for the time being because otherwise it's the DMC 4 Dante problem only exacerbated — hard to write a credible threat when the twins are easily stronger than anyone else and could just stomp all over any demon lord wannabe du jour. Unless you just go full on DBZ power escalation, but I think 5 pushed that envelope as far as it can reasonably go, too. Blame DMC 1 having the king of demons as its villain.

I wouldn't say it was entirely a facade, but it does seem to be at least partly a coping mechanism for the shit he's been through.

I'm just noting that the novelization going True Art Is Angsty is not something that I think is very true to the character.

There's irony in the fact that Nero starts out more serious and brooding back in DMC 4 but ultimately handles his baggage a lot better than Dante does.

Well, not having his brother some evil doppelganger of his brother come in and slaughter everyone who he had any sort of positive relationship with probably helped in that regard

And personally, I'm in the camp that while Dante's "wacky woohoo pizza man" shtick is indeed a coping mechanism, it's usually not an act.

Edited by Reflextion on Oct 26th 2021 at 12:32:24 PM

Closest thing Nero had to that was Credo but all he really did was try to arrest him under blind loyalty. Which didn't last very long. Too bad his death was kinda anti-climatic.

x5

That about sums up my problem with how they portray Dante's depression.

Though losing Credo did weigh heavily on Nero as the endgame of DMC V shows. Nero still handles it relatively well, making it the driving motivation to save his father and uncle from themselves.

I agree with that last part. I feel like if he’d had a better life, he’d probably still be a goofball - just a happier one.

As far as this topic in general…it seems like most of the fandom agrees that Dante has issues. “What kind” and “how bad” are more subjective.

Edited by SapphireBlue on Oct 26th 2021 at 6:53:38 AM

He probably always was one even as a kid, considering Vergil still remembers Dante saying "Jackpot!".

I kind of think of Dante as being similar to Bruce Wayne. The tragedies in their childhoods caused them to grow up too fast in some ways and stop growing up in other ways.

Heck, Vergil's a case of this too having suffered the same losses as Dante did. But his issues differed a bit because he also grew up mistakenly thinking his own mother prioritized Dante over him.

Edited by M84 on Oct 26th 2021 at 10:04:02 PM

Visions of V show that was on Vergil for thinking like that. Granted, I'm not entirely sure what kind of mindset a child would have if he had been stabbed by a demon just to be miraculously recovered to retaliate against them.

AFAIK, they still haven't shown how Dante knew that aspect of Vergil.

We all want to be Dante

but we don't want to live his life.

Or something.

I think we can all agree, at the very least, Dante's a more complex character than casuals would perceive. And I don't mean "casual" as a pejorative, cause I'm casual as heck.

We all want to be Vergil too, but we really don't want his life.

I'd just settle for their coats.

$8000 coat

Dante spend less money on red leather coats

Remember when they were selling limited edition replicas of said coats?

Yeah, that was a thing that happened.

They weren't cheap either. The Dante coat replica cost £6100 (~$8000 as mentioned), the V coat replica cost £4000, and the Nero coat replica cost £5000.

See, this is why he can't pay utility bills in-universe.

Edited by M84 on Oct 27th 2021 at 10:59:36 PM

That was precisely what I was referring to

I wonder how many of those got sold

Maybe Dante should take up leatherworking and sewing, it's not like the smell will be bothering many people when he keeps to himself

Edited by VutherA on Oct 27th 2021 at 11:00:22 AM

I bet the only reason they didn't offer a Vergil coat too was because they didn't want to spoil Vergil's appearance in the game yet.

Dan Southworth definitely would have at least bought it

Which is a bit ridiculous. I have a really nice leather coat, made to resemble the Van Helsing one, but it was only like... £400, £500? And that was from a specialist shop (I have no idea if it was made to order or they just finished it when they got size measurements, but hey, nice materials and quality).

Video Game Merch is almost always overpriced.

But it is amusing knowing Dante goes the extra mile to get his own customize coat jacket.

The animated series adaptation of Devil May Cry, by Castlevania's Ali Shankar, is still alive! IGN has coverage on the project, with Nibellion providing the following bullet points:

• Season 1 scripts are done, 8 episodes, multi-season arc
• Vergil and Lady confirmed to make appearances
• Capcom supports the show (Shankar works directly with Hiroyuki Kobayashi)
• Chris Pratt will not voice anybody