Look, Sephiroth got Sith powers!
Former Jedi Knight Dagan Gera emerged from
a bacta tank imprisonment motivated by betrayal, blaming the Jedi Order for the destruction that befell his greatest discovery, the hidden planet Tanalorr.
Not to spoil Jedi: Survivor or anything, but this is the big villainous threat of the game. Like, we don't know that at first when we find him in suspended animation, but we learn it by the time the cutscene is over, so it's not really a secret secret. And besides, you know we don't really spoil surprises if we can help it. ["Like when I saw an early screening of The Sixth Sense and vowed to never tell anyone the big twist at the end, where it turns out that Haley Joel Osment is Keyser Soze." --ed.] Perhaps the real Jedi Survivors are the 250-year-old Force users we found in a tube along the way!
Dangan Ronpa, here, is a gray-skinned humanoid with light hair, which makes him look like the modern "we're petrified of being accused of using blackface" version of Drizzt Do'Urden. He's apparently some kind of Arkanian, which is a race that appeared in the Old Republic comics - good choice for someone who hails from the High Republic era.
Back then (he went into storage about a hundred years
before Mae and Osha were running around, if you're trying to place the timeline), Jedi didn't wear simple tan smocks, and Dagan never had the opportunity to update his clothes, so he's wearing ornate golden tabard over light cream-colored robes. The emblem of the High Republic is emblazoned just above his belt, and a hood falls down against his back.
Dagan has slightly less articulation than your average Black Series figure, but there's a good reason for that: he has slightly less limbs than your average Black Series figure. (Technically "fewer,"
since that refers to a specific number, while "less" is about overall volume, but the joke worked better this way.) During his penultimate fight centuries in the past, he lost an arm, so this toy only has one shoulder, elbow, and wrist joint. The space where his right arm would be is covered by a folded sleeve that's tucked under his tabard. Unlike the Marvel Legends team, the Star Wars team chose to cheap out on thigh joints instead of shin joints, so the figure moves at the boots, but needs to have large swivel/hinge knees in order to turn his lower leg to the side. The hips seem to be sculpted minorly too large, so the legs stick out past the sides of ths pelvis in an odd way.
The toy wears a cape, but that's non-removable, so his only accessory is his two-part lightsaber. The hilts are very ornate,
with golden flares near the tips, and of course the translucent red blades can be removed. Before turning evil, his lightsaber was yellow, so they might have included a set of blades in that color, as well, but it's not like he uses that hue while he looks like this.
If you want a more symmetrical version, Amazon has an exclusive
that features a translucent blue Force arm, "Larry Niven's Gil Hamilton" style. Of course, that's only in a two-pack, while this one is available right now at Target. It does provide more possibilities for posing him with the lightsabers, admittedly.
Dagan Gera is a great big bad for the second Jedi Fallen Order game: he's a former Jedi who was so committed to protecting what he saw as right that he was willing to fight his entire society; that's an exact description of Cal Kestis, as well, so pitting them against each other... it's like poetry, it rhymes. This is a decent representation of him, and it was just exciting to see something other than a re-released Vader or Mando on the shelf.
-- 05/17/25
What other Final Fantasy characters should be adapted into Star Wars? Tell us on our message board, the Loafing Lounge.
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