Devil May Cry 3; Code 1, “Dante” Manga Review

So far, this is how much cash I have in my Playstation 3 fund:

• $0.00

(be amazed at my banking savvy!)

And this is what I know for sure about Devil May Cry 4’s release date:

• Nada.
• Nothing.
• Zilch.
• Nihil.
• Zero.

However, I did decide to catch up on all those DMC manga and light novels since I can’t seem to catch up with the new game’s upcoming release or game console purchase.

This is the first time Dante has appeared as a manga; not counting the scant illustrations used in the light novels. A manga based on a video game starring the DMC devil hunter should be filled with action out the wazzu…

Plot summary

Dante lives the life of a gun for hire. But he’s only selling said gun to people who have issues beyond the scope of man. Yes, Dante only hires out his talents to solve problems of a demonic nature. By limiting the type of jobs he takes on, Dante is also limiting his cash flow. Something which bugs his ratty agent, Enzo, to no end.

Enzo has been trying to convince Dante to take on a job worth four million dollars. Problem is, it’s a boring job, and Dante likes to be challenged. After initially needing some time to think Enzo’s proposition over, Dante quickly decides to take on the job. Dante changes his mind to take up the job, not when the demon world gets involved, but when he faces eviction from his newly opened storefront.

To get his four million, Dante has to, “Bring back the person in the picture.” Traveling to a mansion that’s his only lead, Dante is sucked into a world that’s a demonic version of Lewis Caroll’s Alice in Wonderland – complete with Alice, Rabbit and Mad Hatter. Pity they’re all blood-thirsty demons that want to curl up in Dante’s hollowed out corpse.

Things go south quick for Dante when the person in the picture doesn’t want to be saved; not exactly. The rabbit hole of a mansion, that was already a dangerous place to begin with, turns into a death trap intent on destroying Dante’s very soul.

While Dante deals with an emotionally unstable Alice and a head-trip experience, forces are stirring that plan to usurp the balance of light and dark. A mysterious man tries to unravel the riddle of the locked gates at the entrance to the demon world. He wishes to capture the secrets and strengths of the demons behind the gates and will stop at nothing to obtain them.

Dante and this mystery man have a connection that’s not too clear, at first glance. Both have an interest in the demon world and both have amazing fighting skills. They both have business at the mansion and they both have something the other wants. Only time will tell what the bond is between the two.

Review

I almost didn’t read this manga. The first pages show Dante, half-nude with his fly undone. My Fanservice-O’-Meter about blew a fuse when I saw that. Not to be done in by half nekkid demon slayers, I soldiered through the intro and dug into the story.

That was actually hard for me to do. The art for the manga was distracting. It was too heavy, too dark, too weighted, and not too good, overall. The pages had a blocky feel to them.

On one hand, I figured that was what artist, Suguro Chayamachi, was aiming for: dark and trippy. But manga can be dark, trippy and legible.

The story was decent, albeit short and more of a backdrop for the action than actual story. Considering that the manga was intended as an intro for the DMC 3 game, it delivered in the action department but failed in the explanation department. No questions were answered, addressed, or even acknowledged. Dante did what he does best; destroy demons, save the day, get paid, and shoot off a few choice remarks in between:

“And I want a smaller dick. I guess we’re both assed out, huh?”

The demonic action scenes were chock full of gore, monsters and swords. It’s what we’ve come to expect when we even breathe the name Dante.

But, the manga is really only for people who know who Dante is. People unfamiliar with the star of the Devil May Cry games will be a little lost since there’s no intro to Dante himself. There is an intro, of sorts, but we’re left going “Who the hell is he?” after it’s done.

In the back of the manga are a delightful assortment of detailed explanations of who’s who in the DMC universe. Why weren’t these pages shuffled to the front of the book? If I had no idea who Dante was, and why he can do what he does, and why he even does what he can do, I’d be miffed that I’m only making sense of what I read after I read it, and not while I was reading it (say that ten times fast!). Details, I guess.

As a fan of the games, I enjoyed the manga. The art could have been better but I honestly couldn’t ask for a better “story”. If this manga was supposed to be a stand alone manga and not an intro manga leading into the third game, I’d be sorely disappointed. But this butt-whomping, devil-slaughtering action manga was exactly what I expecting and I wasn’t let down.

out of a possible four gummies.