Devil May Cry Showrunner Adi Shankar: 'I Am Absolutely the White Rabbit'

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"Hold!" 

That's the first word spoken in Devil May Cry Episode 6, more than 16 minutes in. For most of "The First Circle," the animated series based on Capcom's video game put its boisterous style on pause. Gone are the kinetic action scenes and the splashy needle drops, like of Papa Roach's "Last Resort" roaring as Dante (Johnny Yong Bosch) chases after the demons' ring leader, the White Rabbit (Hoon Lee). Instead, the subdued Episode 6 reveals the pasts of two children: the White Rabbit, and demon hunter Lady (Scout Taylor-Compton). It's when the adult versions of these characters come face-to-face in the present day — with the White Rabbit on a mission to save innocent demons, and Lady on a mission to kill them — that Lady yells the first line of the episode.

Showrunner Adi Shankar said the lack of dialogue was absolutely intentional. "Devil May Cry is very maximalist — it's loud, it's brash, it's cocky," he told TV Guide about the video game. "I wanted to capture that in the show, which is Episodes 1 through 5, 7 and 8." But Episode 6 was designed to be something different: "I wanted to subvert all of that and go quiet. Turn down the volume." 

Shankar also expanded on why it was important to share the backstory of the White Rabbit. "The structure of [Devil May Cry] is that of an action blockbuster from 1998 to 2003," the showrunner explained. Citing films including Mission Impossible 2, Underworld, and The Matrix, Shankar said his love for this genre was a huge reason for joining the movie business. "But one of the things I found when I watch[ed] those movies is the villain was, not necessarily one-note, but they didn't really reflect my experience of life where I found that everyone is the hero of their own story," he said. "The villain has a story going on in their head, in which they are the hero. They are sometimes a victim — sometimes not — but they are the hero. And I'm like, why don't these blockbusters ever explore that?"

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And so the seeds for "The First Circle" were planted. Over the course of the 20-minute episode, viewers make two game-changing discoveries. The first: Devil May Cry's antagonist, whose goal to open the portal between the human and demon realms would guarantee humanity's destruction, is a human and not a demon. The second: His reason for opening the portal — and for having smuggled demons into the human realm for years — is to save people who embraced him with open arms, after he was scorned by his own kind.

"It was a process of, I'm going to slowly reveal to you this story of this hurt kid," Shankar said. "And by the end of it, I want you to understand that the biggest enemy in your life is also a hurt kid, just like you."

Devil May Cry Episode 6 was personal to Shankar for another reason. Asked about the introduction of a new art style six episodes into the series — beginning with the moment the kid White Rabbit stepped through the portal into the demon realm, or Makai, the showrunner opened up about his upbringing. "I was born in India, in Kolkata, which, if you know anything about Kolkata, it's a lot of rampant poverty everywhere," Shankar said. "This is the environment I grew up in — anytime you go anywhere, you look out the car window and you just see kids that look like you, but they're living in the streets, and it's so overwhelming."

He recalled a question he frequently asked as a child. "'Why are there so many poor people?' No one gave me an answer, and it really bothered me," Shankar said. The images stayed with him after he immigrated to the U.S. "As I got to leave India and come to America, live out my dream, I kept realizing, oh my God, I have this paralyzing guilt and I don't know where it's from," Shankar continued. "Then it became clear — oh, it's survivor's guilt. You were born in the right side, you were the part of the 0.00 — whatever, you were just so lucky you won the lottery, you got to leave. You weren't born in the slums."

That guilt, coupled with rage, were the emotions driving Devil May Cry Episode 6. And they informed the aesthetics of the two realms. "The conventional choice would have been, the demon world, make it really scary and dark. And Makai, it's evil, ooh devils! And the human world is cute and sweet," Shankar said. "And I was like, nope, to me, it's the other way around." In this episode, while the demon realm is illustrated with simple lines and bright colors, the human realm is mostly portrayed in grays and with realistic depictions of gore.

"My memory of India was not that it was this dark place, it was this sweet place of sweet people," Shankar said. "This happened to them. They were colonized, they were strip mined, and then bad people took over."

After hearing this response, Bosch, who voices Dante and was with Shankar during his interview with TV Guide, made an observation. "You are the White Rabbit," he said. It didn't take long for Shankar to agree: "I am absolutely the White Rabbit."