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On to the recap of topics! This particular topic has been on my mind recently, as this seems to be a pretty unique bit of news out there in the entertainment world.
Adi Shankar has been a known quantity for a few years now, considering his writing portfolio, between Castlevania and a few other franchises. His prowess with the pen is certainly admirable, but he suffers from a deep seeded spiteful streak against organized religion, specifically Christianity, race commentary, and American politics. He of course denies this vehemently when people levy that criticism against his works.
This holds true with his latest work, Devil May Cry, however, the situation, in my perspective, isn’t so clear cut. When it comes to stories from the Devil May Cry franchise, there’s a lot of social commentary that rides along in the background, and that commentary is very difficult to pull out when it comes to people that are not established fans of the series.
In fact, in Devil May Cry 2, there’s a whole set of cutscenes where a government of the DMC world decided to invade Hell, and start to try and cut down demons. In the animated series that Shankar wrote, it was, in fact, American forces invading Hell, with the excuse of blaming Russia for the incursion. Over the top and ridiculous is the name of the game, in that, and it seems like a backhanded comment from the writers. Add to this, the story in the animation seems to identify that demon-kind is simply an alternate evolution of humanity that populated an alternate dimensional space, seeming to add to the commentary on immigration, as well as adding another franchise to the list of creating ‘relatable, misunderstood villains.’ This is a concept that I’ve grown tired of. Some storytelling simply requires a villain to be evil, and not for any other reason than to be so.
The topic of religion in the DMC universe, though, is something far simpler, and in this case, I cannot lay malice at Shankar’s feet… not entirely, at least. DMC was written years ago, by a Japanese developer during a time in his life that he knew almost no English, and when he created the game, he chose to use virtually no dialog for it’s narration. Add to that the fact that the game was originally meant to be a sequel to Resident Evil. In this first game, he used a lot of Christian iconography as part of the game’s designs. In later releases, he fleshed out the back story using actual narration as his own grasp of the English language grew. The story included an organized religion, using similar iconography to Christianity, that worshipped one of the Greater Demons of the game’s lore, Sparda. In the lore behind that religious group there was deep seeded corruption, where many religious leaders would betray humanity to be granted a small measure of demonic power from other evil demons, or for other various reasons. So this religious corruption is an existing concept. This fact does not exonerate Adi Shakar, however, as you can look at most of his works and see this particular theme woven into virtually every single work he has his hands in.
As I said, this particular news has some interesting facts, and they tie together in an interesting way, but ultimately, it is on the fans to decide whether they feel Shakar is just openly bashing things he opposes. Or is he remaining true to the lore? Don’t forget though, Laggin’ Out Legion, two things can be true at the same time, and this is more my stance than anything else. I’ll leave you folks to decide on your own what you think! Let us know your thoughts in the comments below!
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