Some characters just effortlessly exude coolness without even trying. As a half-demon clad in a red trenchcoat and wielding an ominous-looking sword, Dante could easily be a solid villain, and yet he isn’t. Whether he wants to be or not, Dante is a demon-slaying hero with a backstory of family issues and a visual spectacle of deadly style.
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Conception
Dante debuted in Devil May Cry, a game originally intended as part of Capcom’s Resident Evil franchise. Series creator Hideki Kamiya rewrote the story, taking inspiration from Dante Alighieri’s epic, Divine Comedy. Dante was originally going to be a Western policeman. His early name, Tony Redgrave, served as a reference to one of the characters from Resident Evil, Chris Redfield.
According to Kamiya, the title character of Buichi Terasawa’s Cobra manga series was the basis of Dante’s personality. To give the character “stylishness”, he dressed him in a long coat to make him “showy” and made him a non-smoker; Kamiya saw that as “more cool”. Dante wears red clothing which is the traditional Japanese colour for a heroic figure, in contrast to Leon S. Kennedy, a character Kamiya created for Resident Evil 2, who wears blue.
Kamiya said that he saw Dante as “a character that you would want to go out drinking with”, someone who was not a show-off but would “pull some ridiculous, mischievous joke” instead to endear people to him. Kamiya’s keywords when describing the character were “composure” and “ambiance”. Although Kamiya was not the main writer of the first two Devil May Cry novels, he saw Shinya Goikeda’s later depiction of Dante as similar to his own.
Devil May Cry was designed from the ground up around Dante’s acrobatics and combat abilities. Kamiya gave Tsuchibayashi freedom when designing Dante, though there were concept arts Kamiya did not accept. Tsuchibayashi produced the 3D model based on other staff member’s clothing. The Devil Trigger form gave him difficulties to the idea of giving him wings and altering his face, resulting in the artist creating many different sketches. Alternative designs for older and younger versions of Dante were produced over the years, with many seeing aspects implemented in the games themselves, and Dante aging from game to game over the course of more than two decades.
After the success of the first Devil May Cry game, Capcom inserted Dante into a game already in development. This necessitated the maturing of his characterisation. Dante’s change to a more-taciturn character was a decision made by a producer who disliked his previous incarnation. The staff aimed to make him look older, well into his thirties, rather than his teens or twenties, implying that something dramatic had happened to change his personality. Dante’s age would fluctuate between releases.
Though Dante’s image would alter over time, his brother Vergil was always intended to be a visual contrast. Where Dante would always use the longsword, Rebellion, and wear red, Vergil was made to wield the Japanese katana, Yamato, and wear blue clothing. Dante’s Devil Trigger forms were designed by Kazuma Kaneko of Atlus. The Capcom staff was impressed with Kaneko’s work, and felt that it was not difficult to model.
Story: The Divine Comedy
With Dante’s story spanning multiple forms of media and its third decade, his tale chronicles a long life of hardship, beginning at an early age. Dante and his twin brother Vergil were born to the legendary demon Sparda and his human wife Eva. The family lived in a remote home near Red Grave City. As young children, Sparda would train the boys in the art of combat. For much of Dante’s early childhood, and the boys didn’t realise their father was a demon in human form.
Before their eighth birthday, Eva gave Dante and Vergil each one half of the Perfect Amulet, which their father had used to seal away the demon world eons past before eventually giving it to Eva. Eventually, Sparda died under mysterious circumstances, leaving Eva to care for the twins alone. Sometime later, the family were attacked by demons and Eva was killed, and though both Dante and Vergil survived, the twins were separated, with Dante believing that Vergil was also dead. Dante followed his mother’s last wish and took up a new identity to hide from the demons, adopting the name ‘Anthony “Tony” Redgrave’. In time, Dante began to resent his father, seemingly blaming him for the fate that befell their family.
Some years later, Dante found himself under the care of a woman posing as his mother on Morris Island. He befriended a young boy named Ernest. Dante and his “mother” were forced to leave when a demon hunting him attacked and burned down the town. Years after the Morris Island incident, Dante became a mercenary and frequented an underground bar called Bobby’s Cellar, still using the alias Tony Redgrave. He partnered up with a man by the name of Grue, with the two taking on jobs together. At Bobby’s Cellar, he befriended a local gunsmith named Nell Goldstein, who would go on to craft his signature handguns, Ebony and Ivory.
After working with Grue, Dante was paired with another mercenary, a mysterious masked man by the name of Gilver. Following a mission at a demon-infested sanatorium and the death of his partner Grue, Dante retreats to Nell Goldstein’s house, unaware that Gilver was in fact behind it all. Gilver proceeded to convert the patrons of Bobby’s Cellar into demons before attacking Dante. While Nell lost her life in the ensuing battle, Dante managed to defeat and fatally shoot Gilver. He was horrified to discover that Gilver had the same face as his twin-brother Vergil, unaware that he was in fact a clone of Vergil created by Mundus, lord of the Demon World.
Following these events, Dante returned to his true name and stopped using his ‘Tony Redgrave’ alias. He also began sending Grue’s surviving daughters money to help care for them after the death of their father. Now having returned to his true name, Dante opened up a business, selling his services as a demon-hunter. With Dante’s then-unnamed shop still just opened, his old associate Enzo Ferino, an information broker, offered him a job; a four million dollar reward for the return of a missing child named Alice. Despite his initial reluctance, Dante agreed to take the job.
Dante tracked Alice down to a demon-infested castle, and learned that Alice had run away with a demon known as the White Rabbit, which had possessed her beloved rabbit doll. The White Rabbit revealed that Dante’s brother Vergil was still alive, and offered to arrange a meeting between them, an offer which Dante refused. The White Rabbit soon revealed that he was the one that gave Dante the job to track Alice down, telling him that he wished to see “the legendary son of Sparda” in action. Before Dante left, the White Rabbit offered to buy his half of the Perfect Amulet, an offer which Dante refuses.
Dante returns to his shop only to find Alice waiting for him. Alice steals the amulet and leaves a map for Dante to follow. He follows the map to an old church where he meets an associate of the White Rabbit known as the Mad Hatter, followed by his long-lost brother, Virgil. The two brothers speak for the first time in years, and Dante is shocked to learn that Vergil intends to raise the Temen-ni-gru and open the way to the demon realm. Vergil takes Dante’s half of the amulet and the two fight, with Vergil defeating him. Despite needing the amulet to open Temen-ni-gru, Vergil returns Dante’s half, declaring he can take it from him at any time.
A year after his last encounter with Vergil, Dante is visited in his yet-to-be-named shop by an associate of Vergil’s named Arkham. Arkham offers Dante an invitation to the Temen-ni-gru on behalf of Vergil. Dante is soon attacked by a swarm of hell jailers. Dante effortlessly kills them all, and heads to the tower in search of an “interesting time”. This would be the opening chapter in a near-endless duel between the two brothers, with the victor differing in each encounter.
Dante’s life would see him battle Virgil many times, along with Mundus, his late-father’s nemesis, and with several demon lords who would seek Mundus’ throne and dominion of both the underworld and human world. Dante would find many allies in his quest, including a demon hunter known as ‘Lady’, a beautiful shape-shifting demon woman named Trish, a young woman with angelic powers named Lucia, a mysterious demon summoner known only as ‘V’, and a young warrior named Nero who possesses similar powers, abilities and a demonic bloodline.
Relationships
When asked about the relationship between Dante and Trish, Kamiya said their bond was superior to love. Their relationship is intentionally ambiguous to encourage players to speculate. It is up to interpretation, yet the evidence of their bond is certainly there. Dante’s relationship with Trish has evolved into a friendly rivalry to be the bigger hero, with Trish living with Dante but regularly taking on solo demon-hunting jobs. The pair clearly love each other, but share a brother-sister-like bond.
The pair are aware of each other’s attractiveness and do playfully flirt with each other from time to time, yet they are not lovers. This arrangement likely stems from the fact that Trish is a Cambion demon, meaning she can shapeshift, however her default form is that of an engineered perfect clone of Dante’s deceased mother, Eva, which would mean a romantic relationship would border on incestuous. This is a line that neither seems prepared to cross.
Rumours would also circulate after seeing Trish’s friendship with Lady in later games, with some wondering if the three had a polyamourous relationship, yet there’s no evidence to suggest this is true. Lady does consider Dante a friend and ally but prefers to keep their relationship strictly a business arrangement. After Dante became an established demon hunter, he and Lady parted ways, with Lady going off on her own but calling in Dante for jobs she couldn’t handle solo. She often makes time to visit Devil May Cry to check up on Dante, ensuring his business still runs by helping him with the bills or giving him jobs, while also recovering Dante’s substantial debt to her.
Despite her initially harsh treatment of Dante, she’s not without affection for him, often placing complete trust in him when it comes to doing the right thing in their line of work. She respects him enough even after acknowledging his flaws, and in turn, Dante respects Lady as much as he respects his other confidants, both understanding their roles instead of conflicting one another. Her relationship with Dante is both sweet and ironic, with her seemingly accepting his demonic heritage despite her hatred for demons.
Vergil is Dante’s twin brother and one of the main antagonists of the Devil May Cry franchise. Following the death of their mother as children, Vergil and Dante went their separate ways, with Vergil rejecting his humanity and embracing his demonic heritage, in contrast to his younger brother’s embrace of humanity and initial rejection of their demonic heritage. Stoic and reserved, Vergil displays a willingness to do anything in his quest to obtain the true power of his father, Sparda, even if it means augmenting his own body to become even more demonic.
Surprisingly, Dante does care for Vergil and was visibly upset when he believed Vergil was either seemingly killed or lost in the underworld. Dante and Virgil appeared to be locked in an eternal battle for petty supremacy, with one claiming victory in their duels only to be defeated in the next. The pair have now finally formed a truce after the intervention of Dante’s nephew and Vergil’s son, Nero, forced a reconciliation.
Legacy
Dante was voted the favourite Capcom character by popular vote on the Capcom website, in celebrating Capcom’s 40th anniversary. Gaming publications, including the 2011 version of the Guinness World Records Gamer’s Edition, described Dante as one of the greatest gaming characters. Game Informer called him “one of the most bad-ass characters around” when he was introduced, citing the contrast between his character and those previously seen in the Resident Evil series. GamesRadar+ said that despite Dante’s multiple characterisations, “he’s a guy who you’ll always have a hell of a time playing with.”
In promoting Devil May Cry 5, Capcom produced replicas of the character’s jacket as limited editions for Japanese gamers. In another promotion, Sony used Dante’s image alongside Morikawa’s voice to promote pizza. Dante appears in other media based on the Devil May Cry games, including two light novels by Shinya Goikeda. In 2019, Tomio Ogata authored a manga that features Dante’s actions in Devil May Cry 5 as he meets V. In the upcoming 2025 animated series, Dante will be voiced by Johnny Yong Bosch, who also voices Nero in the games.
Ninja Theory took over development of the franchise in 2010 after Devil May Cry 4, creating DmC: Devil May Cry, a reboot of the series. Dante was completely redesigned by Italian concept artist Alessandro Taini (known as Talexi), in response to comments by the Capcom staff. Capcom told the Ninja Theory staff that he needed a redesign to appeal to a younger demographic. Although the original Dante was designed from a Japanese perspective, the new version was made from a Western perspective.
Motohide Eshiro said that this Dante was completely different from the previous ones, which was expected to generate criticism. While DmC: Devil May Cry was critically acclaimed by reviewers, Dante’s redesign and revised backstory received heavy criticism from fans, with a significant number boycotting the game. With feedback taken on board, Capcom would consider the reboot a failure and retcon its narrative, returning to the original timeline and the signature Dante in Devil May Cry 5.
