The aesthetics of narration in the devil may cry video games generated to novels, mangas , and animated series

Abstract

Devil May Cry is a video game that was released in 2001 by a Japanese company named Capcom. They would later develop four other titles of this series, all of which would be released in both English and Japanese. This action role-play game features a storyline for players to go through across twenty separate missions. Shortly after the release of each video game, Capcom would also publish a novel. The Devil May Cry novels are an extension of the video game’s story, and contain a separate story from that of the game. At the release of the third title, instead of making a novel to accompany the video game, Capcom made a manga. They would also make another manga for the fifth game on top of the novel, making it the only title that comes with both a novel and a manga. The saga has even featured an animated series in 2008, released under the same name Devil May Cry. This dissertation examines the aesthetics of narration, the tools, and techniques used in each separate media and compares them. Each narrative media narrates different stories with different plots yet with the same protagonist. All the media share the same universe and spin around the same characters in various and different situations. Since the Devil May Cry games are oriented towards being action RPGs, all other media follow the same genre as the game and will be action and drama oriented. The first chapter of this dissertation consists of a literature review, creating the foundation for the following chapters by studying the terminology, the history, and the rules of the narrative media that are being tackled in this research. Chapter two analyses the tools of narration used in the Devil May Cry video games and that of the novels and a comparison between the two, stating the differences and the similarities between the two media narratives. The last chapter tackles the Manga and the Animated Series respectively, and compares the narrative between each one of them with the video game and the novel, as well as with each other.