What is the Devil May Cry anime?

Devil May Cry: The Animated Series is a 12-episode anime by Madhouse, directed by Shin Itagaki, which aired on Japan's WOWOW network from June 14 to September 6, 2007. It sits in the timeline between the first game and Devil May Cry 2, and it is deliberately small-scale: Dante, broke and in debt to Lady, takes protection and retrieval jobs out of the shop while a low-level demon named Sid works a season-long scheme toward the power of the ancient devil Abigail. The show's signature creation is Patty Lowell, a young orphan heiress Dante is hired to guard in the first episode, who appoints herself the shop's resident child and stays.

The production kept the games close: Bingo Morihashi, writer of the third and fourth games, was among its writers, Devil May Cry 4 producer Hiroyuki Kobayashi supervised, and Dante is voiced in Japanese by Toshiyuki Morikawa and in English by Reuben Langdon, credited as Justin Cause. Unusually, its episode titles were released in English: the run opens with "Devil May Cry" and closes with "Showtime!" and "Stylish!", the style ranks as episode names. It was announced for North America by ADV Films at Anime Expo 2007 and passed to Funimation in 2008 amid ADV's financial troubles.