Dance With Devils (The Anime) - A Review

Today I am very excited to review an anime that I've been watching this past week. I know, you may be thinking, "Misty, you don't even watch anime, and this is a blog for games!" but this series just happens to have an otome tied to it, making this post 100% thematically relevant to this site.

From the title, you'll know that today's review candidate is Dance With Devils. I didn't actually know too much about this series until a few weeks ago, when I stumbled across somebody's review of the Vita game. For those who are unaware, I'll give a quick little rundown of what it's all about, except the plot, of course. I'll be touching on that a little bit later.

So, what is Dance With Devils? Well, it was first released as an anime by Rejet in 2015, I believe. Not long after that, the otome game was released on the Vita, with a fan-disc soon after. You may think that the game was only made because the anime was popular, but I'm quite sure that they thought of both at the same time, but just released the animation first as an advertisement. I may be wrong on that, so please don't hesitate to correct me.

I don't really have many facts about the game to tell you, except that it has never been localised, and that it uses the exact same art style as the anime. I intend to purchase it at a later date, but I just watched the anime first to see if I liked the story.

The anime has twelve episodes in total, and it even has an English dub, if you're into that sort of thing. Most episodes are around twenty-two minutes long, and each one tries to have at least one song in it. Yes, Dance With Devils is a musical. Well, the anime is, but I believe the games aren't.

You're probably now thinking "I don't care how long the series is, just tell me what it's about!" Dance With Devils is basically the lovechild of Diabolik Lovers and your favourite boy band, except everything's a lot less sadistic and there's more of an actual plot.

I know I shouldn't compare everything to DiaLovers, but I have a reason to this time! This series is made by the same people, shares a lot of the same voice actors and has the exact same animation style! Even one of the characters looks very similar to Ayato!

I suppose you'll want to know what the plot's all about now. I'm not going to go into full-on summary mode, but there are going to be a lot of spoilers down below. If you haven't watched this series yet, I would suggest not reading this unless you like knowing the plot before you jump in.

Our heroine (who is also the MC in the games) is a "normal high school girl" called Ritsuka Tachibana. I keep getting her name wrong even though it's repeated so many times throughout the series. She lives with her mum and goes to this fancy school that looks like Hogwarts inside. She even has a cute brother named Lindo, who lives in England. In case you were wondering, yes, you can date him in the games.

She's quite pretty, isn't she?


But one day, her whole life is ruined when her mum gets kidnapped. She also gets the attention of the student council, who all happen to be devils. I'll go into their characters later. They all thirst after her because she contains the power of the forbidden grimoire, whatever that is. I think it's like some magical power thing that lets you control the world, so that's why all the demon people want it. This grimoire helps her push away any boy who tries to harass Ritsuka, but it doesn't actually do that much in the fight scenes. Nobody really knows why she has this magical power at first, but in one of the final episodes, it's revealed that her father is actually a demon king. Nobody really reacts to this news, they're just like "Oh, ok" and then move on.

A lot of stuff happens, but I'll just keep it all quite brief. Each demon boy gets their own episode in the spotlight, like the DiaLovers anime, but it doesn't really go too deep into their characters. They all follow the same plot normally: the boy takes Ritsuka away, they try to act sort of romantic towards her, then they try to get her powers, the grimoire pushes her away or someone saves her, rinse and repeat. I suppose Rejet were again trying to give us viewers a preview of each route, saying "Do you like this boy? Want more romantic scenes of him? Buy the game then!" (I feel like I wrote a sentence almost exactly the same as this in my DiaLovers anime review...)

I'm going to go more into detail with the plot after I've talked about the characters, but first I'll give my basic thoughts on it. I actually liked the story quite a bit. It wasn't anything groundbreakingly new and original, but it was fun and interesting. It didn't feel like they had to rush it to fit into twelve episodes. The only problems I had were that the ending and the main romance (I'll say more on that later) were both rather rubbish, and that there wasn't enough focus on the main boys. I suppose I'll just have to play the game if I want better romance and character development...

So, let's discuss the characters. First, we'll start off with our heroine. I feel like a lot of people will like her, because she's not just a canvas to self-insert onto. Ritsuka actually fights back and sometimes does stuff in the battle scenes, instead of just standing around to watch. She doesn't let the boys push her around, and I think she even slaps one of them actually. When her brother goes a bit yandere and locks her in the house, she actually breaks out with a crowbar! The writing people even gave her a proper backstory and stuff. For me, even though I literally just self-inserted myself into the anime in real-time whilst watching it, I still appreciated Ritsuka as a character. She isn't my favourite heroine or anything, but she was fine. But most Western fans will probably appreciate her, especially if they decide to play as her in the games. I've already seen YouTube comments saying "Ritsuka's way better than Yui Komori!"

Now, let's go onto the boys. The "main guy" of this series is a pretty blonde boy called Rem. He's the one who gets to fall in love with our heroine this time. I don't know how close the anime follows his route in the game though. There's not really that much I know about him except that he's some rich demon boy who runs the student council and that even though he seems cold, he's actually nice? Rem just reminded me of Ruki from DiaLovers.

Personally, I found Rem a bit boring. That was probably because of his design. He doesn't really stick out to me, unlike the rest of the cast. His romance with Ritsuka also just felt a bit off. I just thought that they had no chemistry really. I don't know why Ritsuka fell in love with him really. Yes, I know he was nice to her, and they had this romantic dance together, but still... I just wish that they had developed it a bit more. At the end, after this really epic fight scene, they had this romantic duet and Rem asked Ritsuka to live with her, but she said no and they left each other. This was super disappointing for me. Yes, I know you don't go off and live with someone straight away, but they just parted ways even though they were deeply in love! Isn't an anime supposed to have the equivalent of a good ending in an otome? If so, it feels like they gave us the normal ending here, the boring normal ending where even though the MC and her boy are in love, things don't work out and they just part ways. I know Ritsuka did want to go back to her normal high school life after all the grimoire drama, but why did she have to leave Rem? Or did they actually just become normal boyfriend and girlfriend, and just visit each other for dates every few days? I hope this is explained in the game or a second season.

I tried to find a picture of Rem for this bit, but all I can find on Bing and Google are spoilery screenshots from the games!

During the ending, I kept thinking that Ritsuka would be much better off if she dated Lindo instead. Lindo is her brother who is romantically in love with her, but the writers show you that it's technically not incest, because he's actually her cousin instead! What is it with otome game companies and dateable brothers? I'm not complaining, it's just funny how it seems to be a popular enough trope for them to keep using it.

Lindo also happens to be slightly yandere. I won't know where exactly he falls on the Yandere Extremeness Scale without playing his route, but he shut Ritsuka in the house and put padlocks on the windows, so that's quite extreme, right? I don't think that he'd go as far as caging her up, however.

Other than being a very protective brother, he also has some more interesting traits. It turns out that he's actually an exorcist, and that's why he really hates Rem and the other boys. But he's not just an exorcist, he's a half-human, half-vampire exorcist! It turns out that Ritsuka's aunt had kids with this scary vampire king who looks suspiciously similar to Karlheinz from DiaLovers. This vampire king also happens to be the final boss everybody has to fight at the end of the series.

This really horrible vampire bloke somehow produced a really nice (and hot!) son. Honestly, I really love Lindo. I think I just like protective older brother types because I've never had a sibling before. Or maybe it was Period Cube that made me like them? He's always there for Ritsuka, and even travels all the way from England to be with her when her mum is taken. Of course they wouldn't make him the main love interest in this anime, because casual viewers would probably be put off if the romance is incestuous. If he wasn't related to Ritsuka, he'd be prime boyfriend material for her. Oh well, if she can't have Lindo, at least that leaves him for the rest of us.

He does actually confess his love to Ritsuka, but she doesn't have time to say anything before Rem comes in and they have an epic musical battle for her heart. She does have plenty of chances to respond afterwards, but she just thinks about it once and then forgets.

Before I talk about the rest of the boys, I'd like to give an honourable mention to Azuna. She was Ritsuka's female friend before she got killed by vampires. I actually liked her quite a bit, so much that I hope she's in the games.

There are four more main demon love interests, but they don't really get much spotlight compared to Rem and Lindo. Each one pretty much fits into a common otome trope, but I don't really mind.

First we've got the flirty playboy, Urie. I had no idea that he shared the same voice actor as Subaru Sakamaki until I read it online! Often it's easy for me to recognise some seiyuu voices, but Takashi Kondo does a good job of actually sounding different in each series!

Urie was quite cute, and had a decent solo song, but I didn't really find myself being that interested in him. He was just your typical flirt, complete with his token group of rabid fangirls. I think he was even the one who got slapped by Ritsuka, so I suppose that's cool.

The tough guy of the group was called Mage, who came with an added bonus of referring to himself as "ore-sama". I actually really liked him, because even though he was a bit vain, he was also quite adorable. In his episode he took Ritsuka to a random beach and he even got a bit awkward and blushy! In most of his singing parts he rapped, which was also cool. I'll go more into the songs later, but I just have to say that his character song, while cheesy, sounded really good!

This character didn't really have as a big a part as the others, but he's still one of the main love interests. His name I had more difficulty remembering, so sometimes I just called him Dog Boy. I don't know what the correct way to spell his name is, because the English subtitles spell his name as Loewen, yet the Japanese art spells his name in romaji as Roen! Anyway, Loewen/Roen has a great design, with really pretty blue hair. His magical power is that he can turn into a cute little Pomeranian!

Here's a GIF I made from his musical number. It had these singing dogs in it that I just thought looked hilarious.

Loewen's a bit more douchey than the other main boys, because he works for this big bad demon boss who I believe might be Ritsuka's father? He doesn't really get too much screen time, so I don't know too much about him yet. Still, I do like him, and the fact that he turns into a cute dog is quite cool!

I've saved my favourite boy for last, Shiki. He's probably what some of you would class as a "trashbundo", but I don't care. According to one review, his route in the game is absolutely terrible, but that just means that I'll probably really enjoy it...

Shiki is a very sadistic fallen angel who's really hot. I've had a thing for fallen angels ever since I read Hataraku Maou-Sama all those years ago. (It was actually only three years ago, but it feels like it's been a decade!) I think I heard somewhere that he gets very crazy in his own route, meaning that he probably treats Ritsuka horribly and locks her in a cage or something. But he's cute and I love him and I would probably buy his merch in a heartbeat if I had plenty of money. Why do I always love the worst characters?

Each boy treats Ritsuka fairly well, although some do have their moments. Luckily Ritsuka tells them to bugger off whenever they do try something on with her. Only the villains really hurt her, like that hot vampire boy Jek. I was hoping to like him, but then he slapped Ritsuka, putting me off for good. I bet he has a secret route in the games or something.

Even though Rem gets the heroine's love in the end, all of the boys eventually thirst over her, not just because she has the grimoire power! I don't really know why they did, because some of them she hardly even interacted with, but this is a reverse harem otome anime, so I knew it was coming. They even bicker over her a lot during the series! Actually, in the final fight against Lindo's dad, there's this grand musical number where every boy suddenly confesses their love for Ritsuka, and at the end they all tell her "You'll be mine one day!" even though she literally just stated that she was in love with Rem, meaning that she's not single anymore! Well, I suppose they are devils, so snatching another one's lover probably isn't beneath them. (Fun fact: In primary school I stole someone's boyfriend right in front of her, and then wondered why she hated me afterwards.)

This post is so long, and probably a good chunk of it is just me fawning over the characters! I suppose I'll briefly touch on the art now. I'm 99.99% sure that Dance With Devils is animated by the same studio who did DiaLovers. It makes sense, seeing as they're both Rejet properties. With DiaLovers, I initially disliked the style they used, mainly because I was used to Satoi's wonderful CGs and sprites in the games. This time I actually didn't mind the art as much, probably because this is the only way I've seen the characters. There is no Satoi-level artwork to compare the anime to, and even if I did play the games first, the art's exactly the same there too!

Still, the art's nothing special looking. It just does the job, and that's it. I've seen screenshots of the games, and I don't think that style really looks as good being used for static CGs and sprites. I'm sure I'd get used to it, however.

Finally, I'm going to talk about the songs! They were mostly all really good, with a few meh tracks here and there. The only issue was that sometimes they felt shoehorned in, and feeling really out of place with what was going on. It sort of felt like watching an intense drama, but then you sit on the remote and the channel suddenly switches to MTV and now you're watching an N-Sync video.

Actually, now that I think about it, if you switched to MTV halfway through, it would be showing a terrible reality series instead of pop music, so my comparison was pretty rubbish.

My personal favourite song was the opening theme tune. That song is just excellent, so much that I keep playing it during my Swagbuck grinding sessions.

Each character's solo track was released as an official character song, except that the full-length versions I heard had the same backing music as the anime copy, but with different lyrics. My favourite solo songs were probably Shiki's, Urie's and Mage's. So basically most of them were my favourites. Some of the group songs were great, like the ones they played during the fight scenes. There was this one Lindo and Rem sung whilst literally fighting for Ritsuka's heart, it was awesome, and another great one called "EMO LIAR" where all the boys called Rem out for denying his crush on our heroine. The ending tune was also great. I always laughed when the credits came on because they used these strange looking dancing men silhouettes behind them, and for some reason I thought them funny.

In case you don't know what the songs are like, here's a video of Lindo's song, where he contemplates his forbidden feelings for his sister. (Note for people viewing this years after this was initially posted: this video may have been taken down from YouTube.)

So, in conclusion, I really enjoyed this series. At least now I know that I definitely want to play the game! In this review, I feel like I should've gone more into the plot, but this post was already really long. Well, I am much better at discussing the characters and stuff, plus I don't want to spoil it too much for people!

Since I keep comparing it to Diabolik Lovers, you're probably wondering which one I like better. Although I'm already quite obsessed with Dance With Devils, I still probably prefer the other series, but that's just because I like the characters a bit better. It was nice to discover something new for one, and now I have new character songs to listen to instead of playing Q.E.D again for the five billionth time.

I actually think that the two series could be in the same universe. Maybe there will even be a crossover at one point? You wouldn't even need to hire as many voice actors for that, because both franchises share quite a few of them! When I was in the shower last night, I wondered about how that would go. I thought of one idea, but I completely forgot Ritsuka existed and only considered Yui.

My basic plot idea was that the Sakamaki brothers kick Yui out (even though they love her blood too much to let her go), and she goes back to her old school. This school just happens to be where the Dance With Devils boys go, and she gains their attention and.... I never decided what would happen past that point, because I realised that it would just be really similar to the MORE, BLOOD anime where Yui moves in with the Mukamis.

Anyway, Dance With Devils is a really cool series. If you haven't checked it out yet, please do! Well, only if you're interested, of course. There's also a stage musical you can see, which is originally how I found out about the franchise.

Maybe soon I'll even get a copy of the game to review for you all!

Goodbye........