WARNING! THE FOLLOWING REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS OF BOTH THE DEVIL MAY CRY 3 VIDEO GAME AND THE DEVIL MAY CRY 3 MANGA!
The way the makers summarized the manga on the front and back covers of it, they made the reader think that it was a manga adaption of the video game. But really, it was a nice little prequel to the 3rd game. It gave some cool {slightly irrelevant} facts that give you more insight on the game, like how the Temen-Ni-Gru came to be by seals being broken. However, there were a lot of problems with it.
Story: The story starts off with Dante taking demon hunting jobs, as the game had suggested in the beginning. He has a dunk “sidekick” named Enzo, who doesn’t really do anything besides get drunk and take money, and who wasn’t in the game. The story kind of drags on until Dante takes a job to retrieve “Alice.” Yes, Alice in Wonderland. And here’s where the story started to not make sense. A lot of STUFF happened during whatever fight. What, exactly, I couldn’t tell you. All I know is that Alice had a stuffed white rabbit that came to life, and Alice had a thing for wanting to grow up and turned demonic. The manga creator brought in half of the mad tea party cast {the hatter and the rabbit}, and you start to wonder if it’s going to be an Alice in Wonderland parody. But after the action died down, the story reveals that Dante was hired by the white rabbit, and after that, some more confusing stuff happened. Alice goes back to normal, Dante leaves, then Vergil and Arkham come into the picture.
After this, the story starts to follow the game again, talking about the Temen-ni-Gru, focusing on Dante and Vergil’s amulets, and the scene with Vergil in the library, looking for a specific book. At the end of the first volume Dante gets ready to set to the streets, and you get a close-up and names of his weapons.
The manga starts to look as if it’s going to start focusing on Vergil, and at this point, I was pretty disappointed with the first volume, but I hoped the 2nd volume would redeem the mini-series. It sort of doesn’t. You get to see a walk through some nameless halls of skulls, and the spark between Vergil and Arkham’s mutualism. There are some more neat little facts, a past dream of Vergil’s, and then it focuses on Dante once more, he doesn’t do much aside from find a picture of Mary and go to a bar. Back to Vergil – or rather Arkham and the TNG, they talk about the seals and Dante’s importance, how he won’t participate, then Arkham tells Vergil to leave Dante to him. Back to Dante, Alice steals his amulet, the Mad Hatter from Alice’s tea party invites Dante to a church and hires him for some demon hunting. More crap happens, then Dante and Vergil have a mini fight. The ending was pretty anti-climactic, Vergil gives back the amulet that was stolen, then walks off saying that he can “get it any time he wants,” and proceeds to start a ritual. Presumably to erect the TNG.
Based off of the ending and the way the two-volume series barely followed the game, this can only be chopped up to a prequel, I’d say. 6/10 because I have such a love for Alice in Wonderland and I like the idea of it being a prequel.
Art: The art was mediocre. The art in the panels seemed to jump a lot. Some panels looked really nice, with an interesting style. That style was pretty consistent throughout the manga, save for a few panels where the artist seemed to switch to realism. Then there were some panels with crappy shading, no shading at all, and some nicely done panels.
A few things that bothered me, though was that the way Enzo was drawn, didn’t really fit the rest of the style. He kinda looked like he belonged in One Piece. The artist also left some extraneous lines around the main lines to make it look like they didn’t clean up their sketches. The action scenes also weren’t really action-y to me. I noticed that Dante’s hands seemed to grow bigger in random panels as well. But overall, the style really fit the tone of the manga and the game. I would’ve rather it be drawn like this than a style like Bleach or a Shojo style.
Characters: As for the characters, Dante was done quite nicely. He didn’t do anything out of character. Arkham was his usual creepy, nasty self. Vergil could’ve been done better, I feel like he was smarter than they made him out to be in the manga, but he was still very cold towards his brother and life in general.
The downfall of the characters was Mary and some of the Alice in Wonderland characters. First of all, the makers of the manga were inconsistent with the game storyline when it came to Mary. Mary was supposed to meet Dante for the first time in the game, but {if this were an actual prequel} Mary followed Alice to Dante’s house, snooped around and hid in Dante’s shower. And then that’s all you see of her character. They made her seem so specific and key, only to let the readers down and focus back on Dante. The Alice in Wonderland characters weren’t very in-character. The White Rabbit just basically stood there, Alice drifted in between being demonic and a little girl. She had a thing for growing up too fast, and I feel like Alice {in Wonderland} would have a Peter Pan complex and not want to grow up at all. The Mad Hatter was the most in-character out of the three. However, much like how the game sort of implied that Arkham was Jester, the manga implied that Arkham was the Mad Hatter. I’m a little indecisive on whether I like that or not…
Overall, I think this manga is something to pass the time with. Definitely something to pick up if you’re an avid collector of the Devil May Cry series. It’s a nice consideration of a prequel to the 3rd game, but it’s not something to take seriously, don’t expect too much out of it. I recommend it for anyone who loves Dante’s character or has a Lewis Caroll complex like I do, and wants something quick to read.
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