Devil May Cry

デビルメイクライ

6.0(1)

OtakuDen

7.0(185,053)

MAL Score

Ranked #4982

Popularity #797

Action
Fantasy
Gore
Mythology

Episodes: 12
Duration: 24 min per ep
Aired: Jun 14, 2007 to Sep 6, 2007
Status: Finished Airing

Synopsis

Patty Lowell, the missing heiress of a distinguished family, is located at an orphanage and placed in the care of J.D. Morrison. Morrison turns to Dante—proprietor of the “Devil May Cry” office, where he takes on unusual requests—and asks him to protect her. Reluctant and irritated by what feels like glorified babysitting, Dante agrees to escort Patty back to her relatives.

Despite his laid-back, seemingly unreliable demeanor, Dante is a seasoned demon hunter—an expertise that quickly becomes essential when demons begin targeting Patty. As the attacks escalate, he comes to suspect the situation is far more complicated than a simple escort mission, and he leans on his lethal talents to keep her alive.

Otaku Consensus

The 2007 Devil May Cry anime lands as a stylish but divisive Capcom adaptation: Madhouse and director Shin Itagaki preserve Dante’s gun-slinging, demon-splattering cool through compact episodic cases, while Takeshi Hama’s main theme and score cuts give it a late-night action-horror texture. Its reception has stayed lukewarm, with a 6.96 MAL score and 66/100 AniList score reflecting the common criticism that the series functions better as a mood piece than as an essential, high-impact extension of the games.

Why You Should Watch

Watch Devil May Cry if you want demonic action with leather-coat swagger, gunplay, gore, and body-horror imagery without committing to a long shounen escalation cycle. Its 12-episode structure makes it closer to a supernatural case-file series than a sprawling fantasy saga, scratching a similar itch to Hellsing’s occult violence and Cowboy Bebop’s job-to-job cool, but filtered through Capcom’s stylish video-game antihero branding. Madhouse gives the series a polished 2007 late-night anime look, and the presence of multiple credited writers keeps the episodes moving as discrete encounters rather than one padded arc. It is best suited for viewers who want atmosphere, monster design, and Dante’s unbothered menace more than dense lore delivery or game-accurate set-piece intensity.

Key Characters

D
Dante
Dante is the reason the adaptation exists: a Capcom demon hunter built around deadpan confidence, guns, blades, and the kind of underplayed cool that fans either love or wish the anime pushed harder.
P
Patty Lowell
Patty works as the series’ tonal counterweight, bringing human noise, irritation, and vulnerability into a show otherwise dominated by demons, weapons, and Dante’s detached professionalism.
J
J.D. Morrison
J.D. Morrison is the fixer figure who makes Dante’s world feel like a grimy supernatural service industry rather than a heroic quest.

What Makes It Stand Out

1
Madhouse produced the anime during its high-output 2000s era, giving this Capcom adaptation a sharper late-night action finish than many licensed game tie-ins of the period.
2
The series is structurally episodic, a choice reflected in its AniList Episodic tag, and that format emphasizes supernatural jobs, demon encounters, and atmosphere over a single continuous campaign-style plot.
3
Takeshi Hama is credited with the main theme and nine tracks, anchoring the show’s identity in music rather than relying only on recognizable game branding.
4
The writing duties are divided across named episode writers, including Toshiki Inoue on episodes 1, 7, and 9; Shoutarou Suga on episodes 2, 5, 8, and 10; and Ichirou Sakaki on episode 6, which helps explain the anthology-like texture.
5
Its tag profile is unusually blunt for a mainstream game adaptation: Demons, Body Horror, Guns, and Gore are all prominent AniList labels, positioning it closer to adult action-horror than clean fantasy adventure.

Fun Facts & Trivia

Fun fact 1: Devil May Cry aired from June 14, 2007 to September 6, 2007, finishing as a compact 12-episode television run rather than a film, OVA, or long franchise series.
Fun fact 2: Capcom is credited as the original creator, making this an official anime adaptation of the video-game property rather than an unrelated demon-hunter project using a similar title.
Fun fact 3: The show’s database footprint is bigger than its score suggests: on MAL it holds a 6.96 rating from 185,053 votes, a rank of #4982, and a popularity placement of #797.
Fun fact 4: The production credits list both Toshihiko Nakajima and Masafumi Mima as sound directors, an unusual detail that points to sound being a significant production department on this action-heavy series.
Fun fact 5: Search results and web summaries can confuse this anime with Devil, the 2010 supernatural thriller associated with M. Night Shyamalan, but the two works are unrelated in medium, staff, and premise.