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Topless Toy Chest: Devil May Cry Dante by NECA


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Devil May Cry is maybe the last game I really had time to play for hours and hours, and beat twice, as I accumulated more and more special demon moves to fight monsters. With gameplay like Resident Evil with a lot more ass-kickery, it was a title that appealed to me immediately when I got a free demo…in a Resident Evil game. Those always were the best way to hook me.

Time has passed Dante by, but NECA has been trying to get this figure approved and made for seven years, and they finally succeeded. Was it worth the wait?

Dante comes in a faux-video game box, of the sort NECA usually packages their pixillated repaints of movie characters in (like those, he also costs a little more, with a suggested retail of $24.99). It has a plastic hanger hook attached to the back, to easily hang on toy racks. The front of the box has a flap fastened with velcro that can easily be opened to display the figure inside.

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Meanwhile, the back describes the game in flowery language straight from the original release, because it’d be too simple to say “a guy with demon powers, guns and a magic sword goes to an island and fights everything he finds there.” It also notes that he has 30 points of articulation, which is the most significant change from the originally proposed figure in 2008.

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If you’re careful at removing tape and a few twist ties, Dante’s package could be described as collector-friendly – it’s not hard to get him in and out of the plastic tray, and get it in turn back in and out of the box.

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He comes with two pistols, a flintlock gun, two muzzle flashes, a sword, and two sets of hands, depending which weapons you choose to pose him with.

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The hand ball joints are tiny, but the hands pop off quite simply, and it’s easier to put the weapons in them first before popping the hands onto the body.

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The wind-blown trenchcoat is a bit of a hold-over – as mentioned, Dante was originally going to be more of a pre-posed figure in a dynamic battle stance. Now that he’s fully articulated in every other way, it can look strange, and can unbalance him if you’re not careful, but it is possible to stand him up straight.

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If you happen to have a flight stand, you can get him into a more perfect pose to match the flow of the coat.

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(That’s a Fewture Devilman figure, BTW, if anyone asks. I’m a bit short on jester marionettes with ax-hands.)

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Dante’s an odd scale – height-wise, he fits in with NECA’s normal movie figures, but proportion-wise, less so, as he’s inhumanly thin and has a small head. If you were hoping to have him realistically fight Rocky or Rambo and not look alien, it may not work, but against monsters of any kind, he’ll be fine.

Face-wise – there may be no kind way to say this, but after all the Caitlyn Jenner pictures that have been going around lately, Dante looks like he could be transitioning, or at least thinking about it. It matches his look in the game, but made to look slightly more “realistic,” it feels unusual. Maybe he’s just a big Bowie fan.

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I can’t imagine Devil May Cry fans will want a better figure than this – he’s fully playable, and the detachable muzzle flashes make him nicely displayable, though I’d suggest picking up a stand that can display him in a suitably Matrix-y mid-air pose. The only change I might have made, if given absolute power, would have been an interchangeable lower half of the coat so he can stand in a neutral pose, but after seven years of fighting for approvals, I understand why NECA wouldn’t make that a sticking point. And if you’re a customizer looking to make a modern Vash the Stampede from Trigun, he’ll be a great base.

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