Dance With Devils Fortuna - A Review

 Almost exactly three years ago, I wrote about the Dance with Devils anime. It was enjoyable. I wished I could've gotten the chance to play the otome game, because I would've liked to see more of the main love interests. However, the game was never localised, and even if my Japanese level was high enough to understand it, PS Vita game prices have gone up so I'll probably never be able to get it for a good price.

I had mostly forgotten about DWD, but I still listened to the songs a lot. The opening of the anime is actually one of my favourite anime OPs of all time. I also listen to the duet between Mage and Shiki too much. It'll probably be on my Spotify Wrapped this year.

Apart from the anime series and the otome game, there's also a live action DWD musical, and a movie. Last night, I spontaneously decided to watch the movie... And today I will give you my thoughts on it! I wrote this in a bit of a rush because I had a lot of thoughts to get down, so I apologise for any grammatical errors. If you want to see my original review of the anime, please direct yourself here. The post is old and a bit cringeworthy though.

It doesn't seem that this film even has an English dub nor a Western release, unlike the main series. I thought even the main series was pretty obscure in the West, until I saw the Blu-Ray in my local DVD shop. For me it was hard to even find an English subbed version online. The version I saw was subbed in Chinese and it was just on YouTube. I'm still not fluent in neither Chinese or Japanese, but I managed to understand the film pretty well. If you want to watch this version and don't have the best Japanese skills, don't worry. The dialogue's easy if you're already familiar with typical otome game phrases. 

DWD Fortuna doesn't have an original plot. It's just a condensed version of the anime's plot. Thirteen episodes of story is squashed into a one hour runtime! Most of the relationship development is skipped, the film mostly just spends time on the songs and the key moments of the story. If you hadn't already seen the series, you're not going to be able to understand this film at all. I think this movie was just made for existing fans, cause it's just going to confuse newcomers. It probably just exists so fans can see the songs on the big screen. But was this film even released in cinemas?

The plot is almost the same as the anime series, except for a different ending and some extra musical numbers. Well, I think it's almost the same. I don't remember a lot about the plot cause it's been three years. They don't even focus on the love interests except for Rem and Lindo. In the anime I think each LI got their own episode. Instead, they just play their songs. But they do it in such a weird way. They just take a break in the plot to show each character's musical number scene from the original in order. In the original anime there was background to these scenes, I think Ritsuka was hanging out with each boy and then the LI just burst into song. But each musical number of each character is just played consecutively, it's so disconnected. I can't really explain it that well, but it just doesn't fit in with the plot. It's like they just put on the DVD of the original anime and kept skipping through everything and only showing you the important scenes with no context. Maybe they were trying to make it like "this is what each boy wants to do if he has Ritsuka and the grimoire", but it just makes the movie feel like a DWD recap or Greatest Hits compilation and not an actual standalone film. Sometimes they don't have time to play the songs from the anime, so they're just played in the background during a scene. I didn't like it much when they did that.

There are new songs in this film, and they're mostly great! The opening song is cool, it sounds like something that should be sung in a stage musical. It's quite dramatic, and each main character gets their own lines. The vampire dude Jek gets a song this time around. I didn't care for him much before. All I remembered about him was that he slapped Ritsuka. His song is so good, his seiyuu's singing voice worked well here. I liked him more this time around, his design is quite cute actually. (In my review of the series from 2019, it seems that I did not like Jek at all...)

Lindo got a new song, I think. It was OK. The dancing cats were funny though. I like Wataru Hatano's singing voice a lot, but I don't know if this song really suited him. I think I enjoyed Lindo's character a lot more here, but I do have a big problem, one that I will talk about in a bit. 

In 2019 (I know it's only three years ago, but I've changed a lot since then!) my favourite boy was Shiki. I still like him a lot, but my favourite this time has to be Mage. He's so cool! I love him a lot, cause he seems a lot more fun than the other boys. I still think Rem is very vanilla, he doesn't appeal to me at all. 

There was a new character (or at least I think he's new, I don't remember him at all!), his name's Marius or something. He just serves to be the narrator, he never shows up in the plot. I dunno why he was there though, maybe I missed some important detail about him. He was still cute. Apparently he's also in the live action stage musical.

Here's a blurry picture of him so you can see for yourself.

I'm not going to talk about the plot, except the ending. I can't remember the ending of the original at all. I thought that Ritsuka ended up with Rem, but according to my review, she ends up with nobody. In the ending of Fortuna, Jek and these vampires sing a song and take Ritsuka to be a sacrifice for this vampire leader dude. Rem, Lindo and the others come to save her, but they arrive wearing different outfits. There's this big laser battle that I enjoyed, some stuff happens and Ritsuka defeats the vampire leader. 

In the final scene, both Rem and Lindo confess their love for Ritsuka, and they sing a song.

I was sure that our heroine was going to pick Rem, but nope, she went to pick Lindo instead. They sing a happy song, kiss, and live happily ever after.

Isn't Lindo supposed to be her brother/cousin??? Even though he's not actually her brother, aren't they still related by blood??? 

I used to just laugh this stuff off, but I find it super gross now. It's just weird watching Ritsuka and Lindo act all lovey-dovey and sing a happy song when it's incestuous. At least in otome games you can self insert and try to pretend that the LI isn't a blood relative, but in an anime like this it's hard to ignore it. Ritsuka had Rem right there to choose from, but instead she picked her brother/cousin. WHY? If they had just written Lindo as a non-relative from the start, it would've been OK. I really like him as a love interest, but why does he have to be a brother? He could've just been a family friend who Ritsuka grew up with and saw as a brotherly figure. It's not real life, the writers could've easily written it like this from the start, but instead they outright chose to make this incest. I don't understand it. I like onii-san characters a lot, just not when it's like this. Lindo could've even just been not a love interest and just a supporting character. His half-vampire thing is interesting though, I wonder if the games focus on it more?

The ending was disappointing because of that. Still, this film was an enjoyable watch. Most of the runtime consisted of musical numbers over plot, but it was fun. I enjoyed the songs and the characters, so I didn't mind if the story was rushed and glossed over. I would recommend this to people who are already fans of the series. If you've never seen it before, just watch the anime or play the game if you can. 

It's been a while since I've written about otome-related things here. Recently I've been watching a lot of otoge anime, and I'm slowly getting back into playing the games. This certainly won't be the last post I make on the blog this year. See you again next time!