Star versus The Forces of Evil Season 1 Review

This was requested as I recently completed watching Season 1 of Star vs FOE along with a friend.

I want to quickly explain the way I rate everything on a 5 point basis:

5/5: Very likely my favorite in it's genre. Potentially my favorite in the medium. Something I greatly enjoy, that has great intellectual and emotional resonance with me. I would view this again and again by myself. I would style my own work after the ideas in it. If someone loves this work, I would be instantly companions with them in some way.

4/5: I really enjoyed the work. Something I might recommend to people and would view again with other people or after a long time. Has at least a few elements that I absolutely loved and might try to replicate. If someone loves this work, I will chatter with them about it and have fun.

3/5: I thought it was enjoyable enough. It fills the time and serves it's purpose though I wouldn't go out of my way to call myself a fan or go to defend it. Glad I viewed it once but probably won't again. If someone loves this work, I will see why but I won't have much to say.

2/5: Generally meh. I didn't find it very entertaining or it has some good elements but they are too diluted for my to really enjoy. I kinda regret using the time on it, though I won't argue with someone who likes it or whatever. If someone loves this work, I will be a bit confused why, but will leave them to their enjoyment.

1/5: Actively angers, annoys, or offends me. A work that I actively avoid talking or thinking about when possible. A work I will only view if I have to. If someone loves this work, I will try my best to stay quiet so as not to show my disdain for it.

I judge everything by this metric, although primarily art. I also judge sub-sections by these metrics. So let me analyze various sections. In particular, I judge 5 sections in particular: Characters, Plots, Aesthetic (including World when applicable), Mood, and Genre.

Characters:
The two primary protagonists of Star versus The Forces of Evil are Star Butterfly and Marco. The Standard Magical Girl Formula for Female and Male Leads involve a Girl with one particular Virtue and her character being backwards built to emphasize the point, and the Male acting as the counterpoint by being a contrast.

Star Butterfly's particular virtue seems to be her dynamism, as it were. Star is introduced as a fun, extroverted girl who shakes up and disrupts broken systems. She brings excitement and enjoyment to other mundane or dark situations. Marco act as her counterpoint, a calm, rational, vaguely introverted boy who is proficient in a discipline form of combat (Karate) as opposed to Star's more emotion-based magic. I found them an enjoyable pair of protagonists....

The biggest fault of Star vs. FOE so far is where most MG Shows falter...which is villains. he primary villain most of the season is Ludo who is entirely a joke, and not one I found funny. Most of his henchmen I didn't find particularly memorable save for Buff Frog who has a substantial and enjoyable part of the climax and has a small character arc within the last set of episodes. Near the end Ludo is temporarily replaced as Villain by Toffee. Toffee was a marked improvement as a villain, having drastically more menace, an interesting gimmick (hating magic), and a slightly more interesting arsenal (increased intellect and regeneration). That said he was only main villain briefly, and more could have been done with his character as very little is shared of his backstory and while his personality is a dimension ahead of Ludo's, it's still 2 dimensional really.

The minor characters are for the most part enjoyable and make for a well-defined world. Marco's Parents are fun to watch and it's good to see a marriage on screen that is still clearly loving, passionate, and romantic, especially considering the one other on-screen marriage is Star's parents. Speaking of which, Star's parents are surprisingly developed. With few exceptions, the parents of the main Magical Girl tend to be either A: Comically Perfect, B: Never mentioned. While I didn't like the introduction to Star's parents which them made out to be 1-dimensional archetypes of a manipulative angry overly strict mother and a bumbling wild father (the classical parents dynamic), they showed more character then that eventually. Particularly in the last episode. (Star: "You're mad at me." Star's Mother: "I'm just glad you're safe." DAWWWWWWWWWW, also total Chibiusa and Setsuna flashback.). Jackie is a cute love interest for Marco, though we don't really know much about her. Brittany, I'll be honest I'm pretty tired of the rich b*tch stereotype for personal reasons. Alfonzo and Ferguson are just sort of there. I'll be honest, I find the Earth-based characters less interesting. Though the angry teacher figure Miss Skullnick, is surprisingly in-depth. (The American Magical Girl is more respectful to the Sensei character. Go figure). Star's got a Magical Friend called "Flying Princess Pony Head", who is basically exactly what the name sounds like. I was pleasantly surprised that she was not the standard trope for these jealous old friend types who tend to turn out to have changed a lot and become a villain from jealousy. That's where it looks like it's going initially but she turns out to be more heroic then expected. The Laser Puppies are just adorable. Their are other characters but these are most of them, ones that appear in multiple episodes.

In general, the characters are fun to watch with clearly defined and entertaining personalities but tend to be overtly simple, doing pretty much exactly what you'd expect.

4/5

Plot(s):
A lot of the episodes in Star are (or at least seem to be so far) one-shot filler. I'll be honest, I'm a pretty big opponent to filler, preferring overarching plots.

In terms of individual episode plots, they vary greatly like most shows of this type too. The lowest rating I'd give any of the episodes is a 2 (my least favorite episode so far is "Lobster Claws" which I felt was confusing, had unclear motivations for the characters, and didn't have a while lot of laughs or interest) and the highest is a 5 (Freeze Day which is an absolutely beautiful piece of art which shows the relevance of Star and people like her, explains her virtue in a way that is both meaningful and understandable, has again beautiful commentary on the nature of time and perception and repetition and featured a binding of the universal and the personal which is truly the moments I watch Magical Girl shows for). If you were to watch just one episode of the show I would definitely recommend Freeze Day, it doesn't even need the preceding episodes because it shows the characters so strongly.

It's hard to talk really about overall when the plots are of very different natures, which is another reason I dislike filler.

3/5 (it's pretty close to 4/5 though)

Aesthetic:
Star versus FOE has a hypergirly aesthetic.....there are two female aesthetics imo, hyperfeminine which is more exaggerated, extroverted, youngish and involve classical female symbols, examples in Star include Laser Puppies, Star's Unicorn Obsession, The Rainbow-Based attacks etc. Their is also the more subtle feminine aesthetic which tend to involve long panning shots of peaceful areas, costume design, classical archetypes that such as the moon, water, mother earth and nature, etc. Star has a little of that too (like the panning shot when it shows Star's dress in Blood Moon Ball) but for the most part it's more of the former due to the show's energetic nature. Neither is better or worse mind you, it depends on execution.

I'm happy to say Star pulls of the aesthetic well imo. They symbols are used often enough to be motifs but not so often that they become overtly cheesy or expected. When I say that Magical Girls involve the feminization of power, and the users of feminine power, Star really does emphasize that with attacks and power specifically using female imagery Star's various outfits are all very cute and emphasize her open, adventurous, optimistic and bubbly personality. She also wears devil horns which I suppose is to emphasize her mischievous and chaotic (though benevolent) nature.

The worlds Star visits are also very well realized, Everywhere from Olga's Reformatory School for Wayward Princesses (Princess Jail) to The Plane of Time, to Marco's house is fleshed out and feels like a real tangible environment, even though they are fantastical and really quite imaginative, for the most part.

If I have any real complaints it's on the lack of visual cohesiveness. It's not a huge problem but a lot of the character designs, location designs, equipment, powers and so forth feel like they were designed in isolation. If you look at Ludo and his henchmen, they all look really different even though they (or at least some of them) are from the same world? Their is a sort of chaos in the design of everything from city design to Character outfits, with mismatched colors and sizes (thought Star's outfit is still adorable). Thematically this might be to further the feel of Positive Chaos that Star represents but it reduces a bit the level of iconic-ness that can be had. Although I suppose points for originally that they didn't take the easy route of just copying designs like is common in Japanese Magical Girl Franchises.

Also Musical Aesthetic quickly. The Opening theme I go on a bit of rollercoaster from "THIS IS FUN!" to "OMG THIS IS GETTING REALLY LOUD AND SUGARY FOR ME". It varies I guess how much I like the OP, though the "GOOD TIME" part and the story behind that remains crazy cool to me. The Ending theme has remained consistenly good, being much calmed which still a good reflection of Star's character (Particularly "I think that strangers are just friends you haven't met.")

4/5

Mood (Comedy):
Star vs FOE is a comedy, in what we Japanese might call a "Bubblegum Pop Comedy", as in a high-energy sugar-ball kind of comedy. So for the mood category I have to judge how good a comedy it is. And it is for the most part really funny. I will give it that. It's not the funniest thing I've ever seen but it's got good quotable lines. It's very good at keeping it's style of High-Energy going without ever becoming tiring which is a real threat when dealing with so much excitement.

It hasn't tried to be really serious much, but it has been pretty effective particularly in the last episode with 1 very badass moment ("No."), 1 very saddening moment, and 1 very heartwarming moment. Hopefully it can keep up the ability to sparingly use it's seriousness for real dramatic weight.

4/5


Genre (Magical Girl):
Star vs FOE is a Magical Girl show, a genre I have personal great investment in. You might think I'm biased towards loving with Magical Girls in it, or you might think as a true connoisseur I'm more picky about my Magical Girl entertainment. The truth is kind of mixture, I will be forgiving of faults if it's in the package I love, but I will always want it to be better, to push the genre to new heights. So how does it do as a Magical Girl show?

Star vs FOE is at the start of it a TEXTBOOK case of Cute Witch subgenre which is a tried and true formula (first Magical Girl Anime ever was Sally the Witch and was one of these) with the only real difference being that she got into real fights to save the world with bad guys and stuff like a Magical Girl Warrior would. But their seems to be more going. This time it doesn't seem their is a "good" and "bad" dimension as you usually see in Magical Girl Shows but instead a vast multitude of dimensions, and the villains actually come from Star's dimension, having been the original inhabitants before being pushed out. This is a very interesting idea but not much has been done with it. I'm not even sure the monsters realize that Mewni is their home dimension.

Beyond that it does a lot of the usual Magical Girl stuff (including formal dance with mysterious masked boy that makes your heart swoon and your eyes glitter <3) and it does them well. It's femininity is more in your face then normal which is enjoyable so long as it's not overdone. Star fits the mold of Magical Girl Protagonist well with her primary virtue signaling her role in changing the world (pretty much vital to an MG series), The Wand serves as a fine magical macguffin to fight over (and their always is one), etc.

Star does have some problems but a lot of it is things that are emblematic of the Magical Girl Genre. Magic and Powers not being very well explained allowing for whatever the plot needs, villains that don't act as real threats, protagonist-centered morality, etc. but as a Magical Girl show itself it shows the strengths of the genre more often then the weaknesses.

4/5

Conclusion:

Overall I'd probably give Star vs the Forces of Evil a 4/5

What is a Magical Girl, and why do people enjoy it?

I had a discussion the other day about what a Magical Girl series and I have seen confusion before about the appeal of the genre so I thought I'd give my thoughts as someone quite interested in the genre. 

What is a Magical Girl:

For such a simple question, you'd think there would be a very simple answer. While many Magical Girl fans like me have a sort of intuition as to what is and isn't Magical Girl, actually trying to find a hard and fast rule is difficult to say the least.

The question is twofold....what is a "Magical Girl" Series and what is a "Magical Girl" character archetype? After all you can surely have a Magical Girl character inside a non-Magical Girl work....can't you? Well....it's not quite that simple. In that case what separates a Magical Girl from a Magical Girl Homage or Reference or Parody? But let's start off with analyzing the name....

Magical Girl contains two words, both important, "Magic" and "Girl".

Magic is a term for generally any supernatural power, although often separated from "scientific" powers and powers based on human potential like Chi or Spirit, as these are seen as being part of the natural universe, just based on rules we don't understand. However this is a distinction unhelpful for Magical Girls. There are Magical Girls powered by technology (like Tokyo Mew Mew). However I think it's note the dearth of Magical Girls powered by ideas like Chi and Spirit, natural Human potential. Likewise the Technology that Magical Girls wield is generally magic-like being so advanced and often not fully in their control but instead bestowed on them.

"Girl" is a term for a female person. Alright so a Magical Girl must be a girl right....Nooooooooooo. Oto x Maho and Is this a Zombie? both feature males in their civilian forms that turn into female after transforming and are both Magical Girls. Mahou Shoujo Ore features a girl who turns into a Male after transforming. This isn't even getting into more "standard" Magical Boy series like Cute High Defense Earth Club LOVE!

So analyzing it by parts doesn't make sense but there is another way to consider the term "Magical Girl"...in particular considering the terms describing each other. "Magical Girl" would therefore be about Feminine Magic and the magic of girls specifically. This to me gets to what a "Magical Girl" series is. A Magical Girl series is a series about Magic, and consequently power, that is feminine in nature as well as female characters who through their femininity can wield said magic. This gets into the primary difference between Eastern Female Empowerment and Western "Feminist" Female Empowerment, and also why I get confused when Magical Girls series are considered "Feminist" in the west. Western Female Empowerment is about specifically androgenizing power and tropes, based on the Western Feminist Thesis that differences between Males and Females are socially constructed, etc.

Conversely Eastern Female Empowerment is about the celebration and veneration of the things uniquely female specifically. It is almost opposite in that it makes the genders as different as possible but associates the feminine with power, although most Magical Girl works are not in any way disrespectful or demeaning to males and masculinity. You will notice that the Male Figure of Authority in a Western Female Empowerment work is often the villain, while in Magical Girl works is generally a helpful ally. Making your strong central villain a male devalues the concept of associating power with the feminine, which is why Eastern Female Empowerment doesn't do that.

As any form of Empowerment, even just blatant fanservice wish-fufillment empowerment, Magical Girl works have a heavy focus on the idea of transformation or as we call it in Japan "Henshin". The change from the flawed Child Self to the Heroic Adult Self with the series acting as the adolescence. Most Magical Works feature an element of general transformation from the civilian self to the superhero self that occurs regularly, but all of them have in common this Transformation and general empowerment of self, and what makes it a Magical Girl work, is that this empowerment comes from discovering oneself as a girl and later a woman.

If a Magical Girl work is about female empowerment via discovering the feminine power or "magic" within, then what is a Magical Girl Character Archetype? Can you have a Magical Girl in a non Magical Girl Show, as opposed to merely homage, references, and parodies. Well I'd say yes hesitantly. To be a Magical Girl, requires theoretically that one uses a supernatural power of the feminine, as opposed to being a more general "Superheroine". If you have a character in a verse and their power could just as easily be used by a male, and would be used in the same general way, it's probably not a Magical Girl.

To better explain the Magical Girl genre, I want to explain the appeal by also explaining the strengths and weaknesses of the genre.

Strengths and Weaknesses of the Magical Girl Genre:

Let me start with the Weaknesses of the Magical Girl, because as much as I love the genre, I do understand there are pretty noticeable weaknesses.

1: The Emotive Problem (The Central Problem):

This is the main problem that most problems come from. Magical Girls are a female genre, which means that when making it the writers tend to appeal back to an old standard that said males liked logic, women liked emotion....this leads to much of the Magical Girl Genre to be based on appeals to emotion rather than trying to change the audience viewpoints....the Magical Girl genre is a genre that is almost intrinsically a female fanservice genre...even deconstructions and parodies work within that framework, explaining why this is not what you ACTUALLY want, making it's out to be a monkey's paw.

Now I love this fact about the genre, I love the hyper-femininity of the genre, but I can't deny it leads directly into the biggest problems of the genre, which are its overuse of the appeal to emotion. Things don't have to make SENSE in the genre, so long as it's emotionally satisfying. And yes, watching it is very emotionally satisfying, but it is also is lazy writing in some sense. he Magical Girl Genre is rife with protagonist-centered morality, making up the world-building as you go along, BLATANT deus ex machinas, etc.

2: Villains:

It's no revelation if I say most Magical Girl Villains are pretty uninteresting. Magical Girl Anime Villains tend to be complete jokes without any menace, Magical Girl Manga Villains tend to be one-note, and of course in both series you can have villains that are just both. It's like you have one of those "pick two" things. Threat, Depth, Villainous: Pick two. That's not to say the Genre doesn't have any good villain characters. Sailor Galaxia is one of my favorite villains of all time, and you also have characters like Phantom Ace, Michel, Zagato, The Wolkenritter, etc. But for the most part Magical Girls do best when they are fighting eldritch abominations, more dark forces of nature then people.

3: Shallow Action (Subjective):

I can easily imagine a Battle Shonen fan trying Magical Girl Warrior and being disappointed with the fights for a single reason....they are much shorter. Significant fights in Magical Girl Manga only tend to last maybe 10 to 20 pages at most. Really big fights, like at the end of an arc, will last about a chapter. These fights tend to lack tactics for the most part, with both sides just throwing their strongest magical attack at each other and the stronger side winning.

Magical Girl Anime is similar, with a standard monster of the week tending to have a maybe 3-5 

minute fight near the end of an episode. The longest Fight in Magical Girl Anime to my recollection was the Sol Senshi fighting Sailor Galaxia at the end of Sailor Moon which lasted about 4 episodes (halfway through 196 to halfway through 200). These have only slightly more tactics then their Manga counterparts. Despite the drastic variety of powers Magical Girls have they rarely use it in any complex way in fights, which I can very well understand causing a more fight-happy fan from Battle Shonen or even something like Superhero Comics or High Fantasy or whatever to be disappointed by.

However fans of the genre like me do tend to appreciate the inverse that these very short, rather simple battles provide which is sheer emotional intensity. The longer a fight is, the harder it is to maintain any intense emotion over the entirety.

When the mindwashed Captain of the Guard Lafarga attacks a helpless Umi and Fuu causing Hikaru to take the attack for them before, despite being bloodied and bruised, charging him declaring her that even at the cost of her life she will not abandon them creating sword blows with Lafarga so powerful as to sweep the battlefield with powerful wind....

or when twin brothers Gackto and Kaito engage in psychic battle, Kaito fighting to protecting his love and his adopted people unwilling to believe that only one sentient species can exist and Gackto angrily fighting thinking Kaito has abandoned their people leaving them to die for the sake of another people....

or when Kishi launches a surprise attack and engages in a teleport duel with his own Overlord the Planet-Destroyer Deep Blue because despite her mean-ness his affection for Ichigo was true after all....

You just can't maintain that intensity of emotion through long in-depth battles. That's why Magical Girl fans like this combat form, though it may be relatively disappointing to a non-fan.

Strengths of Magical Girl Genre:

The Magical Girl Genre does things that other genres have seemingly great trouble doing, often from similar sources that their weakness come from. In general Magical Girl works....

1: The Merging of the Personal and the Universal:

When we view of talk about other works of similar natures to Magical Girl works we need to distinguish between the "Magical Reality" and the "Mundane Reality", even if the work takes place in a separate universe with its own rules like High Fantasy or Far Future Science-Fiction. By this I mean that basically any Non-Realistic Fiction Universe is distinguished by being Essentially "Our Universe...+ These Elements". And at first glance it would seem that this is the ONLY way of doing it....after all you can't very well create a universe without new elements or it would just be our universe, right?

Well maybe but Magical Girls do sort of have a way of skirting around that....In Magical Girls works, the actual magic while important serves as more a connector between two real forces, the realms of the mundane and the realms of the universal. Because of their emotive nature, Magical Girl works I would argue have more in common with poetry then they do with literature. Indeed Magical Girl stories often carry much in common with the epic poetry of the classical age.

Magical Girl works are at their best generally when they are merging the realms of the personal and the universal, extrapolating the natural beauty of the human condition and human drama onto the greater workings of the universe...

When Chibiusa is harassed in her mind by a Grim Reaper representing Death and her own fear of the inevitable failure and death after the trauma of witnessing her City and people being destroyed , and 

Sailor Moon asks Chibiusa to believe in her, giving her the strength to defeat the monster, we are witnessing a dramatization of the process of the traumatized coming to believe in people and their ability to help them again, that tragedy need not be as inevitable as it seems if people believe in each other's abilities.

(MADOKA SPOILERS) When Homura goes back in time over and over again to save Madoka, obsessing over her and fighting off the feeling that she might not be able to save her at all, which builds up the Magical Power in Madoka to the point that her wish allows her to become an abstract concept and change the rules of existence, what we are seeing is a dramatization of the personal become the impersonal based on need, the way a person can become an impersonal law if that is what they are needed to be by a dear one.

When we see Star's history of constantly trying to seize new experiences and adventures contrasted with Marco's history of doing the same thing over and over and finally Father Time's history of doing the same thing in isolation for all eternity, what we are seeing is the human drama played out even with the abstract concept of Time as well as the human problem of falling into a stagnant rut played out on the cosmic scale, also perfectly showing why a person Star is needed, even on a mundane scale to introduce an element of change and prevent stagnation.

Magical Girl Works at their apex are about the relation of the human elements with the universal elements, both of which being real tangible things in our world, with the magical elements acting more as a mechanism to relate these two things. In this way Magical Girl works can allow for great scope, and the growth of wisdom in both character and viewer, all the while remaining human, understandable, even relatable.

2: Innovation:

For whatever reason, there seems to me no genre more prone to innovation, to a vast variety of elements, styles, and themes then the Magical Girl genre. Magical Girls really really do not rip each other off. Even when they use the same elements they use them in entirely different ways. "Being a princess" is a common element for instance. It's handled nothing alike in Sailor Moon, Mermaid Melody, Sally the Witch and Star versus FOE (Sally the Witch and Star versus FOE seem similar at the start but Star seems to be growing in almost the exact opposite direction).

There is almost nothing I can think of that just doesn't exist anywhere in the Magical Girl Genre. It's such an expansive genre, where the works can be so very different. Even things you think are in every work just aren't. There aren't transformation scenes in Cardcaptor Sakura for instance. On the other hard Cardcaptor Sakura has Mon elements to it, Magic Knight Rayearth (and to some extent Nanoha) have Mecha Elements, Kamikaze Kaitou Jeanne has Theological Elements in it, Panty and Stocking with Garterbelt stars primarily a Psychopathic pair of a Nymphomaniac and a Sweets-obsessed Goth and is heavily inspired by western cartoons, Ai to Yuuki no Pig Girl Tonde Buurin involves the Heroine turning into a Superpowered Pig in a Cape. This is a genre that heavily encourages creativity and innovation. There are no 2 Magical Girl series that are really alike. There are HENTAI Magical Girl series that are more innovative then certain really well-known anime series airing now, and also have better endings (Mahou Shoujo Erena ends with basically an Evangelion rip-off but you get the idea).

This is connected to a bigger reason, but the reason why this genre has so much innovation is because people need a certain level of passion. I don't mean this in an arrogant "other genres are filled cash-grab soullessness". What I mean is that regardless of talent, making a proper Magical Girl work requires some level of emotional investment from the creator. Magical Girl works are works that are heavily emotional and as such take a significant emotion to properly write, direct, or animate, if only because the emotions of the character will necessarily rub off on the creator.

Because of this, the emotional investment leads to a person trying to make their work different, influencing it with their particular personal style....this leads to a more innovative work. None of this is necessarily good, it's perfectly possible that emotional investment could make a worse actually worse than generic if the writer's tastes are poor or they are not talented in expressing what they want, but in my personal opinions it's quite enjoyable to see such a wide versatility and innovation.

3: Interconnected Complexity and Simplicity:

I want to go back to my comparison to Poetry made earlier. Poetry as a medium often has a "less is more" mindset, as often it is one of the mediums with the shortest amount of time to tell a story then other mediums, As such it is often built so the themes are layered rather than separate, with lines containing more symbolic depth than other mediums which can be done do the fact that poetry is allowed more freedom to jump around in space, time, and mood.

Magical Girl works seem to me to accomplish the same effect due to its nature of connecting the personal with the universal....it can layer itself giving messages about psychology, society, daily life, and the universe at large all at once. This is due to the fact that it is a genre so good at connecting things through the idea of "magic" and "emotion".

Conclusion:

Magical Girls are works that are Female Empowerment of the Eastern Model, by associating power with the feminine, this being the idea of magic. As a Consequence of this it become a highly emotive work with various strengths and weaknesses, often having relatively simple conflicts (and consequently villains), but layering those conflicts with depths of emotions and connection to greater impersonal archetypes and concepts. Because of its emotional depth it causes a highly personal effect that allows for great innovation and appeal to a wide audience myself included. 

Death Analysis: Dante Alighieri

On March 10, 1302, Italian Poet Dante Alighieri was sent into exile from his home city of Florence by his political enemies. In the anguish of his exile, Dante created the Divine Comedy, a work that is part beautiful poetry, part political treatise, and part theological exploration. It is considered one of the greatest and most important works in all of literature.

On February 4, EA decided to see how far you could deviate from a source material while claiming to be an adaptation and proceeded to make Dante's Inferno, a God of War-esque video game which reimagines Dante as a Crusader violently beating up the forces of Hell.

This blog will take information from the EA Video Game, The Animated Film based on it, and the 6 Issue DC Comics Mini-Series, as Death Battle regularly uses a composite of some sorts of the character they are using. In terms of canonicity, the film is quite obviously not canon as it directly contradicts the game at several parts. The Comic Series on the other hand is very, very similar with few contradictions and often recreates the scenes and dialogues from the game. It is mostly the same story told from the perspective of Beatrice (also has the best writing of the 3 versions). It might be canon. Regardless, the majority of the big feats occur in the game, with the Film and the Comic Series giving essentially a few extra abilities. Unfortunately I can't access the comic so forgive that my citations for that are nonexistent, there are only 3 notable feats from it, and only one of those is a real game-changer.

Dante's "Physical" Form:

...about that....Dante doesn't have a physical form. See, for nearly the entire game, Dante is dead. In Medieval cosmology that this is based on, what you are playing would be technically called an "Astral Body", a part of a greater series of cosmology based on the idea of the 7 planes. The essential idea is that when our body dies, our consciousness instead uses our astral body, our soul. This astral body inhabits a world of astral locations like Hell, Heaven, and Purgatory and contains inhabitants like Demons, Angels, and Ghosts. While our physical plane is made of matter, the Astral plane is made of emotions, passions, and will. As such, a person of great passion in the astral plane can exhibit superhuman feats, no longer limited to matter. This is likely how Dante performs his superhuman feats, strengthened by his intense desire for redemption. How superhuman, let's look:

Strength:
Dante is even stronger then his muscular structure would betray. He is strong enough to push Charon's head and his basic mechanic for regaining health and mana is to destroy stone fountains with his bare fist. Drawing on his raw passion he was strong to open even the gates of Hell. The strength contained in his fists is so great that a collision between him and Francisco created a sizeable explosion as an after effect.

This strength extends to his legs, allowing him to superleap over a minotaur or stand unaffected in extreme winds.

But of course his most impressive feat is overpowering Lucifer himself. Lucifer in his weaker form required the massive chains of Judecca to hold him, chains which went all the way to Lust, the second circle of Hell.

Durability:
Dante's raw durability is similarly impressive. He tanks a massive fall so large that upon impact he creates an explosion, and was able to survive close range level 3 Sins of the Father from Alighiero, which is one of his strongest spells. From the first level he was able to survive powerful shots from Death. For comparison Death's mere presence causes the land to fall away and created his own dimension to fight Dante in.

Dante also has great pain resistance. He sewed the cross into his flesh while he was still a mortal being. In both the film and the comic series this is depicted as a much faster process. In his fight with Francisco he lets a sword slice him to gain a tactical advantage.

He has also shown a number of durability feats against heat. Dante tanks being inside the City of Dis, which is superheated so that the "iron is hotter then it need be for any craft". For the record this would mean heats of at least hundreds to thousands of degrees. He also survives a massive fiery blast from Infernal Beatrice.

One last note on durability, I have asked a number of my peers whether being an Astral Body means we should assume Dante has intangibility to physical attacks as he never actually comes into contact with a physical enemy in the series, merely astral ones. The general consensus seemed to be "no."

Speed:
Dante is fast enough to battle Lucifer or multiple arch demons at once. These should be comparable in speed to the Angel Gabriel who quickly flew down into the 8th Circle of Hell, Fraud, which should be hypersonic to massively hypersonic speeds. He might also be much quicker given Lucifer is apparently a universal threat.

Redemption:
Dante can harass his intense passion and will to be redeemed into bolstering his astral form surrounding him with a red aura, bolstering his strength, speed, and making it so he feels no pain. He can also use this to transform into a living flame.

Equipment:

Death's Scythe: 

Dante has two primary weapons. The first is his scythe taken from Death itself when it tried to get him. The Scythe can expand and contract from being basically a sword to being a spear. Despite it's size, Dante wields the Scythe fast enough for it to be a blur. Death's Scythe is, as you might guess, very good at killing. One stab of Death's Scythe killed Cleopatra. Cleopatra for reference was powerful to make a giant penis tower rise and create a giant storm around the entirely, coursing with electricity. The Scythe hurts Phlegyas, who could easily survive in the River Styx which would kill Dante. The Scythe was strong enough to destroy the aforementioned chains of Judecca which held Lucifer, and most impressively killed Death which shows it can hit on the conceptual level.

Dante has a number of unholy techniques with his Scythe. The full list is here, but the strongest of them are:

• Abominable Slam: While in Air, Dante smashes himself down to Earth, creating a strong impact which stuns enemies and breaks defenses
• Diabolic Guillotine (Diabolic Ascension Tree): Dante slams his enemy with the Scythe repeatedly knocking them to the ground and stabbing at them, his final attack sweeping to nearby enemies and capable of scarring the ground
• Soul Shatter (Soul Stabber Tree): Dante pushes the opponent down with Scythe attack before throwing them into the air
• Vile Hurricane (Vile Wind Tree): After a series of attacks, Dante Charges forward before creating a large arc slash with his scythe capable of flinging enemies

Dante has a few other tricks with his scythe. Once it penetrates an opponent, it can damn them to hell, which gives Dante unholy power. The Scythe can deflect energy blasts from Lucifer. In Issue 5 of the Comic Series Beatrice states that the scythe bends space and can cut through dimensions. He can also use the Scythe to cast unholy magic. These includes:
Sins of the Father: Dante summons up to three jewel-encrusted upside-down crosses that track his opponent and tear into them. Example.
Lust Storm: Dante creates a localized version of the storm Cleopatra cast around her tower. This storm deals damage to all nearby enemies and can deflect ranged attacks. Example.
Suicide Fruit: Dante slams a fruit from the Suicide Woods into the ground, stunning and damaging nearby enemies. Example.
Putrid Voice: DLC power. Dante vomit acidic vomit similar to the Gluttons.

By end of game, Dante was so accomplished with his scythe that he could damage Lucifer. While still trapped Lucifer was able to create a giant entrance to Hell.  Statements from Lucifer include "I'll make the earth tremble, shake kingdoms, and leave the world a desert!" (which is going to be Country to Continent Level), "I was the Morning Star, the brightest in the sky", and "Soon we shall all witness the end of the universe". He has also claims that his ascension will make "all the is good will be gone from the universe" and that he would "plunge the cosmos into chaos".

Beatrice's Cross:
Dante's other primary weapon is his Cross given to him from Beatrice. Beatrice's Cross is special because it contains a thorn from the crown of Christ. In Issue 2 of the Comic Series it is shown that the very presence of the Cross pains and repels the Damned. Dante can use the Cross to project holy energy to harm his foes. Dante has a number of holy techniques with these energies. The Full list is here but the strongest of them are:

• Holy Devastation (Holy Blast Tree): A Series of 4 Holy Energy Attacks, with the first being a single holy blast, the second being three holy blasts, the third being a stronger three holy blasts, and the final being a wave of holy energy
• Sacred Justice (Sacred Judgment Tree):  Dante releases an holy wave and then raises his cross high drawing all enemies near, before slamming down creates a holy blast that stuns his enemies before finishing launch enemies into air

The Cross can do a number of other things. It can put out hellish fire, allowing Dante to attack beings he couldn't otherwise. Dante can use his cross to free souls of their torment. This actually involves the absorption of their souls, so that Dante can use their power and hopefully redeem himself, redeeming them in the process. This will be important later. Dante can also use the Cross to cast Holy Magic. These include:

Righteous Path: An Icy Charge attack that can hurt both Marc Anthony and Cleopatra at once.

Divine Armor: Creates an Armor made of Light and Angel Wings for Dante. This Armor heals him, makes him invulnerable (*cough* game mechanics *cough*), and blinds enemies briefly.

Martyrdom: A Spell that allows Dante to exchange some of his health for lots of direct damage.

Heaven's Embrace: DLC Power. Creates Icy Shards which act as mines.

The Cross also has one more unexpected trick. If necessary, Dante can use the edge of the cross as a slashing weapon strong enough to gauge the eyes of the damned.

By end of game, Dante was so accomplished with his Cross that he could damage Lucifer. While still trapped Lucifer was able to create a giant entrance to Hell.  Statements from Lucifer include "I'll make the earth tremble, shake kingdoms, and leave the world a desert" "I was the Morning Star, the brightest in the sky!" "Soon we shall all witness the end of the universe!". He has also claims that his ascension will make "all the is good will be gone from the universe" and that he would "plunge the cosmos into chaos".

Other Weapons:

Dante has two other weapons, although of not particular use. At the start of the game Dante has a halberd, which he used to fend off a ton of prisoners while still a mortal. With this halberd, Astral Dante harmed and beat Death. In both the Film and the Comic Series Dante also has a sword. Mortal Dante has used this sword to fend off wild animals and in Issue 1 of the Comic Series he used this sword to defeat and slay Death (this is the largest contradiction between the Comic Series and the game for the record).

Armor:

Dante wears some kind of Plate and Chailmail everywhere but his chest, although this is likely not physical armor but some kind of astral soul armor. This may seem like it wouldn't provide much protection at all, but in fairness, it's more conventional armor then most of his peers wear (like half-naked Kratos and hair-wearing Bayonetta) and even at the end of the game after his fight with Lucifer, the armor still seems pretty well-undented.

Relics:

Dante can collect a number of these relics, which give him magical boosts. Gameplay wise he can only use 4 of them at once, but also going by game-play he can switch between them at any time. *shrug* Feel free to interpret that as you like. The full list is here but here is a general list of the relics that are A: Useful in one-on-one combat like a Death Battle, B: Not just gameplay mechanics (like can block any attack)

• Lord's Blessing: Increases Cross Damage
• Death Blade: Increases Scythe Damage
• Arrow of Paris: Increases Grab Attack Damage
• Demon's Wing: Increase Aerial Damage
• Medusa's Call: Increases Ranged Damage
• Tristan's Desire: Increases Magic Damage
• Panderer's Whip: Increases Putrid Voice Damage
• Francesco's Forgiveness: Protects Dante from Damage
• Crown of Carthage: Protects Dante from Ranged Attacks
• Eye of Alighiero: Absorbs a certain amount of damage
• Ciacco's Bile: Mana Regeneration
• Stone of Wrath: Reduces Cost of Magic
• Wasted Gold: Increases Redemption Meter after Hits
• Anthony's Standard: Increases Redemption Meter Regen

Dormant Souls:

Dante has one last resource. He has absolved many souls, absorbing them within, their redemption dependent on him. Due to his kindness to them, in freeing them from the inferno, he can call on them to aid him, these souls can heal wounds and seal beings in ice, even Lucifer himself.

Mental:

Dante is an extremely skilled warrior, having served in the crusades for three years. He is skilled enough to duel multiple damned crusaders at once. He's also not just skilled but rather intelligent. He was able to figure out Lucifer's stupid puzzle and knows how to read signs and omens. This is aided by his superhuman senses, particularly his hearing.

Weaknesses:

Dante can't use more then 1 magic at once (though he can use any of them with redemption), and he has no armoring on his chest. Also he is a very very flawed human being as I will explain

Personality:

Dante is a sinner, indeed objectively the worst sinner of all time according to Lucifer since "only you possessed a soul black enough to free me". But despite it all Dante has a noble desire to redeem himself and his sins, and to become a better person...due to his love for the innocent Beatrice, representing the part of even him that is still good.

Summary:

• Tier 12, possibly higher
• Country Level DC/Durability, Possibly Much Higher (Killed Death and Defeated Lucifer)
• Hypersonic to Massively Hypersonic, (Comparable to Angels and Demons) Possibly Much Higher Speed (Lucifer was apparently a universal threat)
• Manipulation of Holy and Unholy Magic
• Magic Resistance
• Elemental Manipulation (Fire, Lightning, Wind, Ice, Light)
• Spatial Manipulation
• Conceptual Manipulation
• Logia Intangibility
• Energy Deflection
• Absorption (Souls)
• Summoning (Souls)
• Sealing
• Healing
• Likely Immortality (Types 1 and 7)
• Enhanced Hearing
• Highly Skilled and Intelligent Fighter

Potential Match:

Dante vs. War (Darksiders): 

Both of these guys are Newer Spectacle Fighters taking place in a Judeo-Christian Inspired world. I don't know War's relative power so I can't say how even it would be but it would definitely look cool if nothing less. You could do Darksiders Death instead but that would lead to a lot more confusion since "Dante already killed Death!". 

Next Time:

Next Time I am going to be doing the Mysterious Queen of the Old Moon Kingdom:

Moon Mamma!