The First Circle

I was not expecting that at all. Wow. I thought the show was good so far, nothing special, just a demon slasher with an OP / comic relief main character. Had its pegged as a low 7/10. Something to watch that was good but not memorable. This turned everything around. Iv never played the games so I can't speak on the lord of the show but man this was solid. Netflix are cooking lately.

This episode was amazing. Few words spoken but the back story was incredible. Now I don't know who to root for. Who are the real devils in the story? It's like Attack on Titan all over again, there's no right answer.

First episode Iv rated as well, definitely well worth the watch.

This episode changed the whole way I was watching the series. The Alluring visuals perfectly achieved the point of the whole story.

From the sudden shift of animation style to the back & forth between the backgrounds of characters at play really starts to make you question the point until, you reach the end. Then you sense a bit of uneasiness because the summery starts to creep in on our real world dilemmas. And the soundtracks, those hit hard especially the 'Afterlife'.

Not everything is black & white and I believe the director knew exactly how to bring the rabbit out of the hat (No pun intended).

To be honest I think the show is mid at best.

The design, the animation, the poor writing and dialogue makes it a 5 stars in my opinion.

But this episode is really what redeemed the show for me.

Great music, great esthetic, almost no dialogue (which is a good thing), and great story telling that bring some depth to what was a very 1 dimensional show and characters for the most part.

If they could bring more episodes with that level of quality, I would enjoy watching more of DMC.

I think the show needs to learn more from the likes of castlevania TV series which strikes a better balance between the humor and seriousness and had an overall WAY better animation.

Simultaneously the worst and most important episode of the whole series. I am all four alternative forms of story telling and experimenting with art styles and visual story telling, but this is like a 30 minute anime AMV in the dumbest way possible. This is one of those YouTube videos your little cousin would watch in 2011 and be like "wow it's so cool it's so deep it's so edgy". It is 30 minutes of dramatic techno/dubstep music mixed with two kids being like "wow my life sure is rough".

Conceptually I can see how this would've been been cool on paper but it was genuinely cringe inducing to watch. I literally wanted to skip it more and more as the entire thing went on. The episode then ends by explaining the main villains entire motivation and goal, which is insane that they make you sit through a 30 minute dubstep music video to get to. It's almost insulting.

"We'll tell you what his goal is, but you have to listen to our playlist first".

Amazing visuals just like every other episode. But this should have been a 5 minute story, cue title screen, and get on with it. I cannot stand the trend of TV shows dedicating an entire episode of there limited run to these side stories. This is an episode I wish I could have watched on 2x speed as there is hardly anything of consequence beyond some wick flashbacks. In fact, this could have been like a preview they uploaded on YouTube in between seasons to keep people excited. But this is not an episode worthy of an entire 20+ minute runtime as it relates to the story, and maybe I don't know, DANTE.