While most mainline Devil May Cry titles feature characters who adopt a single Devil Trigger form, the first Devil May Cry and Devil May Cry 3: Dante’s Awakening are unique in that Dante and Vergil have multiple forms that change depending on what weapons they have equipped. According to DMC 3 Devil Trigger designer Kazuma Kaneko (famous for his work on the Shin Megami Tensei series), the demonic forms were his answer to an issue he had with the transformation scenes often seen in anime and tokusatsu, like the Super Sentai and Ultraman series.
According to Kaneko, he always found it weird whenever tokusatsu and anime heroes transformed fully clothed, as setting-wise, the power to transform would lie in the character themselves, and not their clothes. To resolve this pet peeve, he designed Dante and Vergil with the ability to incorporate parts of their clothing (that were in contact with their bodies during the transformation) into their Devil Trigger forms. Therefore, the coats they wear in their human forms turn into demonic armor, while the coattails and hems become wings.
Dante and Vergil’s Devil Trigger forms were based on Capcom’s original designs for each weapon. Dante’s Rebellion Devil Trigger has plates that function like a coat (much like his human form) and can also spread out to allow him to glide short distances. Vergil’s Yamato Devil Trigger has a sheath on his left arm that allows him to store his katana (the sheath is noticeably absent in his Beowulf Devil Trigger form).
Kaneko also took liberties with certain parts of his designs. Aside from Dante’s and Vergil’s coattails influencing how many wings their Devil Trigger forms have, he also wanted to highlight the visual differences between the twin brothers. As a fan of the franchise even before working on DMC 3, he thinks all of his designs look “really cool.”
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