To Love and Be Loved in Return

This is just my excuse to ramble about my love for Nero, mainly in DMC4 (+Deadly Fortune) but I'm making it everyone's problem <3 Some of these are quite obvious but like I said, this is just my excuse to ramble about my blorbo.

Combo Animation Details

If you extract the animations for Nero's combo hits with Red Queen in DMC4, its very telling that Nero has a lot of raw strength, but its not refined. If you watch the animation carefully, you can see he almost loses his balance and struggles to finish the combo. He's using the sword more like a baseball bat and is more intent on hitting the enemy rather than using the sword as a sword. Its more akin to whackamole than the artistic flow we see from characters like Vergil, for example. It's why its so easy for Dante to wipe the floor with Nero because Nero's angry and trying to smack him, but not really paying much attention to what he's doing. Especially pay attention to the way he moves his feet after the initial slash in the gif-- you can see he kinda struggles to bring the sword all the way down again for the combo. It shows Nero's powerful, but untrained, which makes sense. There no real poise or style, he's just trying to smack things as hard as he can.

Easily Flustered

He has a little habit of rubbing his nose when he's nervous or flustered. He does it several times throughout the game but my favorite is when Kyrie holds his hand for the first time. The way he does the little smile, blush, nose rub, then looks away is adorable.

He Bites

Self-explanatory but yeah, he's nippy! He bites! He bit Dante's fucking gun... for some reason lmfao.

He's a Cryer

People still shit on these scenes but I think its important to note that a. Nero's a kid and b. these are life-or-death situations so yeah it makes sense why a kid is going to get overwhelmed and cry when he thought he died, or when he thought the only family he had died/was going to die. The scene after Agnus crucifies him is especially sad to me because him rocking back and forth on the ground, laughing before he start to cry alone is just... ugh.

He (had) little baby fangs!!

After he almost dies and subsequently awakens more of his demonic powers, he gets little tiny baby fangs! So cute!

He's an artist!!

Blue Rose has some really intricate details and art, all of which Nero did himself at 16/17, for no other reason than he wanted to make the gun "pretty," and the name has some symbolic meaning too.

Baby Gearhead/Engineer

The DMC van from 5 was something Nico and Nero pulled out of a junkyard and fixed up themselves. Nico's more skilled than Nero, but Nero's got talent of his own too-- he also did custom work on Red Queen.

He likes jewelry

In DMC4, he sports 2 rings on his left hand including an Order of the Sword ring and one with a rose design. He wears a thick leather bracelet too.

In DMC5, he wears a necklace and a different bracelet, which matches the rose ring he wore in 4.