When you think of Dante from the Devil May Cry series, you'll probably think about his wisecracking or as some people call it "wacky woohoo pizza man" (and God forbid you think of the Adi Shankar DMC netflix series). Well for the better, this story isn't Itsuno Devil May Cry. This is a backstory for DMC 1 Dante, (and retroactively DMC 3). Hideki Kamiya's vision of Dante in the original game as a Melancholic soul is very much expressed in this novel. That meme version of Dante is nothing more than a facade that the man puts on himself.

Dante in the story is under the persona Tony Redgrave. After his mother died and his brother disappeared, Dante abandons his birth name, and moves to a new city. Tony becomes a mercenary and has run-ins with local mob bosses, carving a name for himself with his iconic sword. Tony had gotten new friends and acquaintances in this buisness (even somehow working with Enzo from Bayonetta). However this new life of his is constantly at risk from demons who want to kill him because of the inheritance from his father, the legendary dark knight who betrayed demonkind for humans. Sparda does not appear in this story but nevertheless still influences it. Tony has his own code of while doing mercenary work, so you can say he is a knight himself, taking after his father. The demons attacking Tony were always low level enemies (think hell pride from dmc3), but this all changes when a certain man with a katana shows up. Gilver ~~aka Not Vergil TM~~, is Tony's parallel in this story. While Tony is a merciful guy, letting someone off the hook 99 times; Gilver is a cold blooded killer. He starts out as competing mercenary with Tony

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but his real goal is to open a gate to the demon realm and kill Dante. Gilver is the main cause of the tradedies that befall Tony, practically getting everyone he currently knows and loves killed. Gilver for the majority of the story wears bandages on his face so his idenity isn't know, but if you somehow didn't figure out that Gilver is a anagram for Vergil, it is revealed in the end that Gilver is Vergil (weil a angelo clone of him) and Tony is distraught at the fact that he just killed his brother and got no real explaination for what has transpired. By the end of the story Tony Redgrave is gone, and Dante is reborn once more, and is waiting at his shop Devil May Cry

I skipped over most of the details, but this is story is the tradegy of how Dante got his famed pistols Ebony and Ivory, and is accompanied by beautiful illustrations that depict the scenes very well. This is by all means a side story but I would love for it to be adapted into a ova or movie. There are some minor continuity issues but that comes from DMC 3, The last couple of chapters are great, and should be implemented in the ones of the games as a flashback or dlc. This story is just infinitely better than having a story where Dante goes devil trigger and having a fight with vergil with Nero's theme playing in the background. Noir Dante is not only better but comes from its inception.

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