The “rampant poverty” that Devil May Cry show creator Adi Shankar saw around him while growing up in Kolkata influenced the art style for Episode 6 of the Netflix animated series, he said in a recent interview, drawing flak from Indians, particularly Kolkata residents.

Many slammed Shankar for sharing a stereotypical opinion of India, widely sold by the West.

Born in Kolkata, Shankar, now an American citizen, said he was acutely aware of the economic disparity surrounding him from a young age.

“Anytime you go anywhere, you look out the car window, and you just see kids that look like you, but they’re living in the streets,” he said in an interview with TV Guide when asked about the introduction of a new art style in the sixth episode.

Growing up in such an environment left him with lingering questions about poverty — questions that, he said, no one around him could answer.

Shankar’s latest show, Devil May Cry, adapted from the beloved Capcom video game franchise, premiered on Netflix on April 3 and received a 94% critic score on Rotten Tomatoes and a solid 74% audience score.

“Wait a second, when you think about Kolkata the first thing that comes to your mind is poverty and not the vibrant culture, the food, the art scene? Come on now! What games are you playing in the west brother,” the official Instagram page of Delhi Poetry Slam commented.

Another social media user highlighted that “nothing sells like poverty” and urged the interviewers to ask Shankar whether he has visited Kolkata in the past 50 years.

“What's he talking about? Are there no poor people in America,” asked a fan in the comments section. “If the first thing that comes to your mind when you think of Kolkata is rampant poverty and not its cultural richness, I'm sorry but you are not from Kolkata,” wrote another user.

Described by Shankar as a “melancholic rock & roll Shakespearean tragedy”, Devil May Cry is set at a time when sinister forces are at play at the portal between the human and demon realms. In the middle of it all is Dante, an orphaned demon hunter for hire, who is unaware that the fate of both worlds hangs around his neck.

Shankar clarified in the interview that he doesn’t view his birth city as a dilapidated place. “My memory of India was not that it was dark—it was a sweet place with sweet people. This happened to them. They didn’t create this,” he said, pointing out the historical exploitation that Indians went through during colonial times.

The 40-year-old Indian-American filmmaker is best known for his dark and gritty storytelling in the video game-to-screen adaptation of Castlevania and the remake of Sylvester Stallone’s Judge Dredd titled Dredd.