niriaveil

[niriaveil]

the sponsored ad at the top of mobile being to apply for $10k lgbtq+ grant for school lmao. girl that's bait to give up ur info and out urself to info collectors

[niriaveil]

The media banning is really starting to ramp up. (Source: Japanpower.com, Mar 23, 2025)

Maybe they won't arrest you for owning Persona 5 on Steam....but let's say you go to a protest or make some noise in public that's anti-government, or you just annoy someone in power (by, possibly, simply existing). And your house gets raided, your 'inappropriate depictions of a minor' get found, and now you're in front of the judge for child porn and people are not running to your defense because gosh, well, um, you're kinda making the movement look bad, you know?

Oh, and don't think anyone will be let off on technicalities - even if all the characters are above 18, if they *look* like minors (have you ever seen an anime or one of those waifu dating sims?), then it counts.

Yes, yes, more important things to worry about, real problems, blood being spilled, all true, all true but

You know. Just making conversation.

[niriaveil]

okay yeah. i know i've reblogged a lot of points but like. here are my own. negativity abt the show below. sorry.

things that bothered me immensely besides the obvious militarization of everything.

lady's characterization + kalina ann + arkham's whole purpose being nuked.

arkham and his lineage have the blood of a priestess who is tied to temen-ni-gru. he wants to become a god. he willingly sacrificed his own wife and used his own daughter in his endeavors to reach godhood. he's a cunning manipulator and an intellectual scholar. that was not there in the show at all.

kalina ann being a basic ass military weapon is so fucking shallow and removes ALL of the fucking depth it had to lady's character (not that there was much respect for her character anyway, the story being what the fuck it is).

vergil's characterization

i'm sorry but vergil would never work willingly under mundus, are you fucking kidding me. even when he was trapped in the demon realm, he fought mundus and had to be stuck as nelo angelo until dante freed him in dmc1.

vergil literally lost his soul and became enslaved to mundus because he pushed away his only family and tried to separate his humanity from himself. he thought embracing his demon side would give him the strength he coveted so badly. that's why dante and nero always win, because they have the capacity for love.

vergil's whole thing is that he wants demonic strength because human frailty failed him. honestly this whole post talks about my issues with vergil's character arc in the show.

also what they did to bury the light was criminal. how dare you.

(also on the topic of music, how fucking dare you use devil trigger fro dante's transformation - THAT IS NERO'S SONG. dante HAS his own theme, it's SUBHUMAN. WHY ARE YOU USING NERO'S THEME!!!!!)

whatever the fuck they were trying to do with the demons

honestly i don't know if i can sum this up at all in my own words. they were very much trying to make real world connections of the bush era + iraq war with the demons and darkcom in this show.

the fact that fucking "american idiot" plays while the american military invade makai/hell while the demons are portrayed as hijab-wearing arabs being subjected to war crimes by jingoistic soldiers who wave the american flag and pose for selfies! wow!

what they did to dante.

for a show that was marketed for dante, to be about dante, in his titular series and him being reduced to just prop up lady (honestly if you wanted a lady anime spin-off, i'm so certain many dmc fans would've wanted that instead of whatever the fuck this is). they lean way too hard into his wahoo wacky pizza man persona and not the fact that dante tries to cover up everything with humor and jokes because he's so crippingly lonely and depressed after the loss of his whole family and his struggles with his demonic heritage, to the point where he doesn't want to be around humans because he hates his demonic blood! not that he doesn't love humans, because he LOVES humanity and wants to do right - but the fact that his very nature is so grotesque to him and his identity that he just shoves it down, down, down.

not to mention that they just. oh my god theres more but its 130 and i am just so. i LOVED the animation and the voice acting but holy shit that was. im just gonna go replay the games.

[niriaveil]

Okay I told myself that I was done discussing the Netflix anime. After this, we go back to never thinking about this again.

I was just glancing at a few different social media sites to see which way the fandom's opinion was going on the anime, and I saw this Reddit post that gave me a realization. This ties into the "I believe the show is bad on its own merits, not just bad in comparison to canon DMC" point I made in my last wrap up post about the show

The White Rabbit's entire plan is just... completely stupid and counterproductive. I'll put the rest under the cut for spoilers, and be warned I'm actually going to be engaging with the refugee allegory the show tried to set up.

So here's the part of the Reddit post (titled "The political commentary in the anime is a mess") that made me think about this:

Dante very correctly in universe points out that "tearing down the wall" i.e. allowing mass demon immigration, would lead to the genocide of humanity. Needless to say this has a whole host of troubling implications regarding the political metaphor it's going for. It basically reads as being an endorsement of the white supremacist idea that immigration is "white genocide" or will "destroy the west" or whatever. The nature of the human/demon conflict as it's presented just does not work as an immigration allegory unless you concede this, which as I say is troubling.

Source

I agree with this poster completely. I couldn't put it into words, but that entire exchange with Dante left me with a very uneasy, icky, uncomfortable feeling as I was watching. Because I agree with the message that refugees are not monsters and they deserve life and stability and happiness just like anyone else... but Dante is actually right about needing to keep demons out of the human realm. The show itself doesn't even try to dispute it, because in the .05 seconds the barrier is down at the climax, humans start getting absolutely annihilated by numerous extremely dangerous demons.

I could get into all the reasons why I think this fails as an allegory for xenophobia, but that's not really the point of this post.

The point of this post is that the White Rabbit's plan makes no sense.

I find it very odd that the argument between Dante and the White Rabbit was so binary. The conclusion was basically "Mundus is making everything terrible in the demon world, so either you let us all into the human world or you don't and we all die". At no point did anyone posit the solution of just... getting rid of Mundus? The guy causing the entire problem for the demon realm in the first place? Nope it's just "barrier, or no barrier". There is no secret third option of "keep the barrier and get rid of Mundus".

I actually think this could have been an incredible Dante scene as well. White Rabbit and Lady are representing two ends of an extreme, two all-or-nothing solutions. Dante is literally someone who exists with one foot in both sides of this conflict, as a half demon/half human hybrid. He was in the perfect position to go "hey, wait a minute, why are we fighting over the barrier? Why don't we just go kick this Mundus guy's ass?" But instead he just sides with Lady and they close the barrier.

And then it made me think... what exactly would tearing the barrier down do for the people White Rabbit is trying to save? Because if Mundus is the one making the demon realm suck, and Mundus can access the human realm... why wouldn't he just make the human realm suck too? White Rabbit's plan does nothing to address the actual core of the problem, and so the problem would just be doomed to repeat itself.

I'm trying to be fair and look at this from all angles. The best Devil's Advocate counterargument I can think of is that maybe White Rabbit didn't intend to keep the barrier down permanently. Being able to take the barrier up and down at will would make it easier to move refugees. Maybe his plan is to open the barrier and let all the good demons through, then close it again to prevent them from being followed by the bad demons... but that is demonstrated in the anime itself to not work.

We see what happens when the barrier goes down and then back up, and it's that all of the demons who didn't pass through one of Rabbit's tears seem to just phase back into the demon realm. That's what happened in the .05 seconds the barrier was down. A bunch of demons terrorized humans, and then the second it went back up no matter where they were standing or what they were doing they phased back out of existence. They only seem to "stick" in the human realm if they were already in the human realm when the barrier went down.

So his plan has to be to just remove the barrier entirely and let Demons flow in freely. In which case, Mundus would just expand his rule and there would be nowhere safe for anyone to go. They would all just be back exactly where they started, except humans wouldn't exist anymore or would be enslaved or something I guess.

You could maybe argue that the annihilation of humans is White Rabbit's ultimate goal... but uh, that wraps back around to what the Reddit poster said here. It comes off as far more white supremacist if the character representing the side of the refugees is just actually genocidal and doesn't care about the safety of the refugees. Which completely destroys the allegory they were likely going for.

So yeah, I'm comfortable saying that this allegory just wasn't very well thought out and didn't receive the deft touch required to make it work. It results in something that is nonsensical and counter to the intended narrative. Which means we wasted an entire season on going down this pointless rabbit hole. That's just bad writing.

Imagine a world where the Netflix adaptation actually has Dante, Lady, and the White Rabbit realize they've all been stupidly fighting each other despite the real threat being Mundus, and so they all team up to stop the demon king

[niriaveil]

girls after they watched the dmc netflix show

[niriaveil]

Making the whole theme of the DMC Netflix show that "demons are actually the victims of jingoistic American military imperialism" is such a fundamental antithesis of the entire beating heart of the Devil May Cry franchise. Honestly it's exactly what I expected from a cynical western production.

The Devil May Cry series is about how humanity is superior because humanity is capable of love. Demons may have power and strength which allows them to assert their will over the world and cause suffering. But humanity will always overcome, humanity is capable of more than demons ever will be. Because devils never cry. Only humanity has the capacity for love that allows them to feel sorrow at the loss of their loved ones. Only humanity has the drive to self sacrifice in the name of protecting those we cherish and value.

The reason Dante and Nero are the badasses that they are is because of their human genetics, not their demonic blood. Vergil loses because he tried rejecting his humanity and just embracing his demonic lineage in the name of striving for more power. Vergil loses his soul and is enslaved and humiliated because he pushes his only remaining family away, he forgot that the very reason he became obsessed with power is because he wanted to be able to protect Dante the way he couldn't on the day they lost their home. And Vergil is only redeemed when he is reclaimed by his son, and has familial love forced onto him whether he wanted it or not. The theme song of DMC5 is called LEGACY for a reason, because the ties that bind for better and for worse will always be a part of you. And it is the characters HUMANITY that makes that the case.

Family and love is the FOUNDATIONAL theme of the Devil May Cry series from the very beginning. This isn't even very depthful literary analysis, the games are incredibly blunt with these themes.

This is incredibly surface level reading. And yet somehow the creators of the Netflix show either didn't get it, or deliberately disregarded it. Either way, god awful show. If you enjoy it, you CANNOT say that you also enjoy the video games. They are mutually exclusive. What exactly do you like about the games, if you derive ANY enjoyment whatsoever from this show that uses the source material as toilet paper?

At least have the integrity to admit you just think the video games are stupid and the show is superior because it isn't a video game. At least then I could respect that. Don't try and pull this "I enjoy both" bullshit. Bullshit as in you're fucking lying.

[niriaveil]

loved the animation and the voice-acting but the whole uh. the whole direction of the series is uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.

[niriaveil]

mr may cry my gorgeous

[niriaveil]

I think part of what makes the Netflix show so frustrating is the fact that there's definitely blind spots in the original lore that could allow for a deeper discussion on a demon's capability for love and goodness, but the show itself just did not seem interested in actually exploring those ideas.

I've seen some posts going around about how demons not being inherently evil was already established in the games, and I think that is true. The gameverse has a bit of a strange philosophy when it comes to demons and their capacity for good. On one hand, the original two games act as though the only way for a demon to be good is to actively distance themselves from their demonic heritage.

Dante telling Trish and Lucia that "devil's never cry" actually feeds into the idea that demons are inherently evil and that they aren't actually demons because they are capable of goodness. In those games, this is played straight. However, in later entries, they seem to recognise this for what it actually is - the rhetoric of a man who is projecting his own self loathing in regard to his demonic half onto the people in his life who are dealing with similar problems.

Vergil and his core beliefs around demonic power being the only thing to keep him safe when human fragility failed him is the first time Dante is forced to confront a flaw in his worldview. Vergil is technically correct in that their heritage is what has kept the two of them alive up until that point and that in order for Dante to stop his brother and Arkham, he'd need to embrace that power too. Dante seems to internalise this as the idea that his power needs to be used as a force for good - "with great power comes great responsibility," style, but still retains that he is good in spite of his demonic power.

Power in DMC is not inherently evil, the folly of the villains in the series is that they seek it to fill a hole that should have been filled with love instead. On some level, Dante recognises this, but is often too burdened by his self loathing that he has a hard time excepting and seeking out love himself.

In contrast, Nero is able to acknowledge what is truly important to him, allowing himself to be vulnerable when he gives and receives love, while also fully embracing his demonic side and the power it gives him. V also has a similar revelation, although his is just as much about learning to love life itself and rediscovering passions so he can have a better coping mechanism that isn't more power.

These core character arcs clearly indicate that the reason humanity is seen as morally superior in the games is their willingness to love and willingly give. To gain more out of life than just power (it's also what makes the power hungry human villains so evil, they want to throw away what makes them human for the chance at being powerful). Whereas demonic power means that demons live in a perpetually dog-eat-dog world where there is no incentive to love or create, you can only ever take. But when demons like Trish are given the chance to grow from that, they are just as capable of love as any human.

This then opens up for the line of questioning, well, if environmental factors are what's making demons so power hungry, then wouldn't exploring how being shut off from the opportunity to grow in the human world be an actually valid idea for the Netflix adaptation to explore? It could have been! Genuinely!

However, the writers were not interested in exploring that concept, not really. The need to fit established DMC lore into the shape of a narrative about how the Iraq war and the US government intensionally otherised Arabic people meant that those ideas couldn't be expanded upon because of how that would have impacted the portrayal of a very direct analogue of a real life group of people.

This is often the problem central to the fantasy racism trope, because it's a direct reference to a real group of people who's only actual differences from any other ethnic group is appearance and culture, any discussion of how physiological differences may impact the way they live and experience the world very quickly become a minefield.

The demons in the games are often one of a kind or a species with entirely alien biological incentives, trying to make them seem like their way of life would be no different from the average human is actively contradictory and just plain boring. It's part of why the demons that were taken from the game look so out of place compared to their more human shaped counterparts.

There is the potential in examining a demon's ability to love in the gameverse version of the lore, and it wouldn't have been a problem for the anime to explore that. That sort of exploration would have had to focus on how love can come in many forms, how a fundamentally different way of perceiving the world around you doesn't mean your perspective isn't valid. However, because demons are an exact reference to a real life group of people now, making them out to be anything other than just like any other human is risking a lot.

So that's the crux of the issue for me. I think trying to force the demons from the game lore into an Arabic shaped hole is kinda a bad idea. Hell, if they were desperate to make the US government into the big bad then there would have been precedent for it. DMC2 and DMC4 both concern powerful groups in society abusing demonic power for personal gain, the idea that a government would do the same isn't too dissimilar in my opinion.

To be honest, I feel a lot of the criticism of the anime has only been scratching at the surface of the actual problems so far. I'd appreciate it if the pre-existing fandom could recognise where problems existed in the source material before jumping to complaining about the adaptation, even though there is a lot to complain about...

[niriaveil]

sorry not sorry for being dmc brainrotted on main its gonna happen

[niriaveil]

# game over!

[niriaveil]

the wacky woohoo pizza man himself is back

it’s up on my inprnt!

[niriaveil]

mr. strawberry and mr. blueberry

[niriaveil]

the whole enemies with benefits thing too all started when celene outed luxanne's teacher as a warlock and a corrupt noble during the onxyian cleanups and helped the guard crack down on the warlock presence in stormwind. luxanne wasn't even upset her teacher died, she just wanted to be the one to do it and she hates being shown up more than anything - but also that celene's position as the arcane advisor in the keep poses a real risk to the warlocks in stormwind, so luxanne then uses her nobility to press against the presence of the mages (because magic is what Onyxia used to dominate minds. checkmate.)

meanwhile all the shadow priests in the cathedral district are just like

[niriaveil]

it's important to note that:

celene will organize all her books by alphabetical order of title, not author or genre. she's also one of the most powerful magi in the world and frequently spends her free time at the orphanage to play with the kids. she also can't fish and cries when she's mad.

luxanne raises and breeds rabbits and her second estate is out in Westfall so she can tend to her animals there. she also frequently does use real people for her pacts and rituals but like, they're robbers (assumedly) so like. it's fine. she's not evil. she has to feed her demons too.

subjects you to my warcraft wives.

left: celene faranthor. archmage of the kirin tor and lionguard of stormwind, also basically adoptive mom of anduin (she's existed since classic).

right: luxanne hawthorne. first of the black harvest. she's the newfound leader of the warlock coven and returns to her original base of operations in the slaughtered lamb.

celene and luxanne have always been enemies because mage vs. warlock (arcane vs. fel), but also celene treats them as "break in case of emergency" weapon where you don't want to acknowledge it unless you have to - whereas luxanne wants proper respect from the mages because fel magic is just another aspect of cosmic forces

there's a lot of kirin tor politics at play between them and they're very much constantly enemies with benefits because outside of their respective classes, luxanne is apart of the house of nobles in stormwind and celene is the arcane advisor to the king and celene just has a constant distrust of the house of nobles given everything that's happened since onyxia. its fun to me.

[niriaveil]

subjects you to my warcraft wives.

left: celene faranthor. archmage of the kirin tor and lionguard of stormwind, also basically adoptive mom of anduin (she's existed since classic).

right: luxanne hawthorne. first of the black harvest. she's the newfound leader of the warlock coven and returns to her original base of operations in the slaughtered lamb.

celene and luxanne have always been enemies because mage vs. warlock (arcane vs. fel), but also celene treats them as "break in case of emergency" weapon where you don't want to acknowledge it unless you have to - whereas luxanne wants proper respect from the mages because fel magic is just another aspect of cosmic forces

there's a lot of kirin tor politics at play between them and they're very much constantly enemies with benefits because outside of their respective classes, luxanne is apart of the house of nobles in stormwind and celene is the arcane advisor to the king and celene just has a constant distrust of the house of nobles given everything that's happened since onyxia. its fun to me.