DEMITRI MAXIMOFF

Some brands really knows how to stand out by giving to the fans wath they always wated, like McFarlane introducing the figures of horror movies to a hungry market or NECA and Sideshow with Gargoyles or Predator and Storm Collectibles is deffinetly leaving a big mark behind, first for theyr great quality figures of Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat, and also for giving us figures of classic games that didnt had any kind of merchadise in the last 20 years. 

Street of Rage, Tekken, Samurai Shodown, Golden Axe and in this case, Darkstalkers. Toybiz take care of the Darkstalkers back at the end of the last century producing a bunch of characters in a very descent quality. SOTA would try a few years later but despite producing really good looking base models, they cancelled the series. Now more than a decade later Storm have the brand and IS ACTUALLY making the figures.

I would lie if i say i wasnt crazy hyaped by this and it took five extra months to the first figure to arrive to my hands, the Prince of Darkness Demitri Maximoff. He is big, much bigger than Ryu and a little taller than the Street Fighter or King of Fighter characters soo he is really tall and heavy, perfect for him. He can stand n his own perfectly tough a base wuold have been extremelly helpfull for his lvitation poses but since he dosnt fight on the streets, he dosnt have the luxury of a base.

Just like all other Storm figures, he is articulated on the head, neck, shoulders, biceps, elbows, wrists, chest, waist, legs, knes, ankles and half foot and given his design, nothing get in the way of the articulations, he have full freedom of movement to tilt his head and torax to any direction tough he cant rotate his legs, wich is odd since that limit his lower half a little bit, he cant join his legs for example. Despite that detail, all articulations work perfect and are pretty strong and sturdy.

The entire cast of Darkstalkers is much more closer to cartoon style than reality, given how they can distor theyr entire body like a Tex Avery cartoon and on illustrations the anatomi of each character is really off, for example Dimitri have a tiny head and HUGE hands, feet and an extremelly thin waist. This is all part of Capcom trademark style, wath make theyr characters stand out. But wath looks good on 2D, dont always does it on 3D.

Storm redesigned Dimitri to keep his huge frame but in a more realistic way, adjusted size but keep the volume soo he can fit perfectly with all the other figures from Tekken or Mortal Kombat, he looks huge but with good proportions, really good goood proportions i say since his costume dosnt hide any detail of his musculature soo this is the only figure to sport such perfect and impresive legs and chest.

the face sculpt is really good, with his chiseled face features that almost looks like sculpted on rock. His "Vegeta" like hair style have mre detail than we seen on the illustrations and i love the velvet texture on his entire body, it feels almost like peach. The inner red shirt and outer jacket are made with soft plastic soo the texture is really nice and dosnt block any of the articulation. But the best detail on the sculpt is deffinetly the handkerchief and poofy cuffs.

The cape is made with the same nice soft plastic and flows nicelly tough i got the feeling is kind of short....i wish it was longer and i wish it could me posed with a wire or something but real clothe cape woul look kinda odd on this scale soo this plastic cape just fall behind him but looks really integral to the sculpt.

The paint is minimum like always, all the pieces are cast on the dominant color of that section soo the color is really consistent all over the piece and the paint is aplied just in some small details, like the buttons on the sides of his pants, the red side of his cape, the cuffs, his hair and eyes and each section is painted perfectly. I specially love his eyes since they looks like shiny red jewels.

My only compalign here is the tone of his body suit, i always expecte something darker, like navy blue, but insted is a gray/blue color.

His accesorys consist on a bunch of extra hands with different gestures, 3 pairs to be exact aside of the closed fist and are really expresive. The hands can be exchanged pretty easy and the puffy cuffs dosnt get in the way (unlike Ryu´s). The other accesorys are a pair of extra heads that can be exchanged perfectly easy as well. One head have a sigtly open mouth showing his fangs and anothe one a huge smile.

The fierce looking is good for battle poses, but the best one is the smile, is really terrifying and monstruos and the inside paint and piranha fangs looks terrific. This is soo different to any other fight game character.

Then there is the effects and he have two: both for the same attack Chaors Flare. The Chaos Flare is a big yellow and orange fireball with not much detailing. Is big but completelly hollow and kind of soft but the transluscent effect is really nice and once you attach it to the base Dimitri can shot it from his hands.

The Chaors Flare DS3 version have the shape of a bat. The sculpt os really nice and the wing span is big. With no paint at all, the bat s cast on transluscent yellow and orange plastic and use the same base as the other Chaos Flare version. The base arm can be extended to adjuts the height of both effects.

An the last item is Demitris scenario, the Feast of the Damned. The impression is of very high quality and despite being really pixelated, it highlights the amazing artistry of Capcom with pixel art since every single character in the Feast stands out. My only complaing is that the backgrounds fall s alittle short compared to Demitry heigth.

I wish his legs have an extra articulation and his body suit was darker, i wish his cape was a little bit longer but despite those small issues, this figure is really amazing and deffinetly one of my favorites of Storm along Haohmaru. The wait was soo long to finally have Darkstalkers figures and Morrigan will come next to form the evil pairing. I just WISH Storm dosnt stop there and gives us more characters since a collection with this level of quality would be hard to belive.