I finally got this figure, listening to different people in the thread, and I customized it while looking closely at DMC5 Dante on my PS4. Moved the camera around him, tried to get the best possible shots from front behind and the sides, and it's clear as day that he's muscular and not slim, as I stated earlier in this thread. You can see he has wide shoulders and pecs in DMC5, so the only way to go and do him justice was using the M33 Phicen body.
The regular body Asmus used isn't as bad as I thought when looking at videos articulation wise, but he stands loose on his feets, and he clearly doesn't fill up his shirt and jacket.
With the Phicen M33 body, it looks phenomenal. Once you do it properly, it looks on par with some of the best Hot Toys, but I will come back on that later.
That said, as nice as it looks, you need to be extremely careful with the clothes. It's easy to remove the clothes on the regular body, but it's not so easy to adjust the clothes on the Phicen body.
I don't know if anyone here tried to make the clothes fit on Quiet by Limtoys, but that was hard.
Well I will say that making the Dante clothes fit on the Phicen M33 body is even harder.
The worst part is the t-shirt and the jacket. The T-shirt can fit absolutely perfect on the Phicen body but you need a lot of patience for it to extend properly. The Phicen body is so muscular I was afraid of tearing the shirt apart. Even when I managed to make it fit on the body, there were some problems with how the t-shirt fell on the pants, I had to extend it as much as possible so it would fall like it does in the game.
As for the Jacket, one of the straps around the shoulder area broke because of the tension. It's okay though you can glue it back no problem (it's already glued on, originally). But I had to be extremely careful with the jacket, it took me an hour to make it fall properly on the shoulders.
The pants were the easiest part, no particular problem, you just have to be careful with the belt and material to avoid damage, both look fragile.
Once it's complete, once you make the clothes fall properly, the result is phenomenal, looks exactly like Dante in the game.
As for the articulation, you can do more than with any other body, and Dante can hold any sword without falling down. That said, the Phicen body fills the clothes so much I wouldn't risk leaving him in a stressful position because of the material of the jacket. It's the kind of material that will show signs of wear if you don't leave him in a neutral position, especially with a Phicen body.
One real problem with the M33 body though is that Dante's head hole isn't made to go on this body. You can still leave the head hanging on there, but it won't fit unless it's customized. I will chose not to customize it just in case I have to sell it at some point. I rarely keep figures forever, so I might end up selling this one at some point, I don't know, as good as it looks.
I happen to be extremely lucky with my Dante because I don't have the magnet problem with Rebellion! Rebellion holds perfect on the jacket, I can turn the figure upside down and it won't fall. Didn't have to customize the magnet inside rebellion.
I will post photos if people are interested in seeing the result.
All around, it's a great figure, but you do have to customize it. The original body is okay, but it's not up to my standards, and it feels kind of ridiculous next to some other Hot Toys, Dante looks like he was on a diet for too long. But with the Phicen body, it looks so good.
I really love what they did with the jacket, very nice tailoring, extremely faithful to the game. The clothes are very nice overall, and the details on the weapons are insane, especially the Sparda sword, mindblowing.
The headsculpt is great, but I'm not happy with how the hair fall on the eyes. They did an amazing job with the eyes, and they're hidden by the hair. But they nailed the look, smirk, attitude, I have to say I'm impressed.
Great figure overall and certainly the best Dante figure we've had until now.
Now what I would love is a proper DMC1 1/6 Dante. If Asmus can top what they did with this DMC5 Dante, and using a Phicen body this time, it will be an instant buy, and I will sell this DMC5 Dante.
