The world needs more utterly ridiculous anime, which is what I’ve loved so far about the Devil May Cry series. It has slick animation and a soundtrack that takes me right back to the deepest, darkest era of nu-metal dominance. As much as I struggle to call Devil May Cry a good anime, I remain hooked on its over-the-top silliness of it all. Devil May Cry is an anime that succeeds both despite and because of its flaws.

Admittedly, it took a few episodes for the first season of Devil May Cry to really click with me. Not because it was necessarily bad but because I struggled to pin down exactly what they were trying to do. Was it meant to be funny? Or am I supposed to be taking this seriously? That was the question that kept popping into my mind as I watched. The show was inconsistent and irreverent, but I couldn’t figure out if that was intentional.

Then Season 1 Episode 3 happened. Dante raced down the freeway, killing demons on his motorcycle as Papa Roach’s Last Resort played. Suddenly all was made clear to me. Devil May Cry is a dumb show that revels in the absurdity of its action and its bewildering concept. Much like the original games, it is a parody of the kind of mindless action that video games typically provide. Through that lens, the show can be properly enjoyed. The over-the-top violence and life-and-death stakes are meant to be at odds with the inherent silliness of using a Limp Bizkit song in the opening credits in 2025.

Season 1 was especially good at this, partly because it focused on the wisecracking quip factory that is Dante. Season 2, despite having objectively better action and plot, struggles with the serious and brooding Virgil and an insistence on including an insert song in every single episode, to the point where it loses its effectiveness. If you cannot deliver a badass moment with Bodies playing over it, then you must be actively trying to be dull.

It is also hamstrung by adapting elements of Devil May Cry 2, which is one of the weakest games in the series. The villains are too ethereal and the stakes are too high while we’re trying to focus on the personal drama of two brothers reunited after years apart. Tonally, it doesn’t work as a continuation of Season 1.

Maybe that is why Netflix decided to randomly shadow drop the whole season on us earlier this year. No warning or build-up. Just an announcement that Devil May Cry Season 2 was streaming. It was very much thrown at us like an afterthought, something to briefly sate fans who were left wanting after the cliffhanger ending of Season 1. While Devil May Cry Season 2 isn’t good, it probably deserved a little bit more marketing than that.

But it's okay because we’re getting a third season of the Devil May Cry anime, and even though I’ve spent the past three paragraphs telling you that the show is intensely hit-and-miss, I’ll still be watching it. Why? Partly because I can’t help myself; I will never pretend to be so high-brow that I am above a good bit of terrible anime. A show can be insultingly dumb and still enjoyable to watch as long as it is loud and proud of its own limitations. When it works, Devil May Cry is silly fun of the highest regard. I’m just hoping that the third season, which has only just been confirmed to be in production, manages to hit the right notes on the third time around.

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