GUTS

Years ago when i saw the Guts Figma i wasnt very interested on him. To be honest, it didnt looked that great, it was small and had a weird cloack soo i let him pass. Years later things changed; Good Smile released The God Hand and i could not get them if i didnt had Guts in my hands.

And the price of that Guts was obscene then, a fantastic number beyond Hot Toys or Play Arts Kai. Gladlly, GSC released Guts all over again and saved my collection.

Guts is not specially dynamic looking in here, it take some time to notice but he is using the first black armour he used on the manga and not the later armour with protection on his legs, soo he is kinda simplistic looking. Even with that, the details are pretty good for such small scale and things like his pouches or the chain that holds his sword are great looking.

His articulations are awesome and works pretty good except on his shoulders since the armour gets in the way, tough he can stand perfectly with or without his amazing Figma base.

The details are soo amazing he even have the brand on the back of his neck!!

I am not sure if there was some kind of re-sculpting on his head, but it looks really good on both faces. The standar one looks good, tough i think his mouth is a little bit too wide and the fierce looking face is the best, you can even see each one of his teeth and the wrinkles over his nose and at this small scale, that gives him a HUGE bost of realism.

Aparently they changed his skin tone to make him darker but i think it suits him. The color on all his body is good and have a good quality and the work on his face is pretty spectacular. A trange detail is the way the details on his face are painted… somehow, the details looks grainy…it almost looks like his face was drawn with a pencil.

Is hard to explain this effect on words but it looks like a 3D pencil drawing, wich is pretty amazing if they planed him to be closer to the manga.

He comes with some extra hands and a special canon hand was well as a little nice bonus and his Dragon Slayer sword. The sword looks great and as iconic as always tough sometimes is too heavy for him to carry it.

The sword fits perfectly on his back but it also cancels the posibility to use the base since it covers the hole on Guts back. This is kinda weird… is good he can stand on his own but still, not be able to pose him jumping with the sword on his back is a big drawback for such a detailed toy.

Now his cloack. Its trully AWFULL. The top part around his neck is made with hard plastic and the rest is made with black paper. The difference in materials is horribly obvious and the paper part is soo horriblly stiff….

Then, figure out how to put the cloack with the sword on his back was a huge challenge. It seems the cloack needs to be bent backwards soo the sword can fits in. The result is Guts with a HUGE hunchback and of course, the cloack also gets on the base´s way.

I dont know how long can last this cloack since is soo thin and a lot of manipulation can break it. Its soo cheap looking.

I am very happy to finally get this guy, one of the most horriblly over priced Figmas to date tough the cloack make him looks like a cheap happy meal toy, hes an important part of my collection.

Then again, i am fucked up since i wasnt able to tet Void/Ubick…

ISAAC CLARKE

Dead Space was one of my favorite videogames from the last generation, it managed to trully scares me and build an interesting and arresting world around the Necromorphs and i also liked the third one. Dead Space 3 dumbed down some elements (like the weapons system) but it still managed to build a fantastic homage to The Thing and In the Mountains of Madness and was much better than any Resident Evil from that generation.

And i also got a special liking to his protagonist, Isaac Clarke, who was pretty empty in the first game but builds up to be an actually normal and realistically hunky man.

I wasnt unsure wich one of his figures get, the Play Arts Kai or the Kotobukiya statue but in the end i had the chance to put my hands on the high end figure from Threezero. This figure is REALLY expensive and i always had plans to save money for him but i was lucky enough to find him half the price!!! The bad part is: no box and he is missing 3 of his extra hands.

I dont care for the box and the missing hands were a tough choice, but he have the hands to hold his weapons soo i guess it was a good deal for the very low price i get him.

Isaac Clarke is HUGE. He is as tall as Guts and the Hot Toys Predators, tough he is not very heavy and can stand on his own perfectly (this adds him lots of points).

His helmeth is really amazing looking, with a pretty realistic copper and metal texture and paint and some white marks. At first i tough this white was missing paint sports, but is actually snow since it got a soft texture and is placed in a totally natural way.

His suit is INCREDIBLLY sophisticated, with lots of embrodiment and details like the cord in zigzag between the metal plates leave me in awe given how tinny they are. While with a limited color palette, this suit is really fine tailored beyond belief. The metalic parts are not metal, but they are with soft plastic. The whole metal texture comes from the amazing paint aplications they have and this means they are pretty resistant.

The suit looks dirty, really dirty and ancient (just like in the game) with “snow” placed in a pretty natural way (on his shoulders for example) and this gives him an uncanny and trully realistic looks. My favorite detail is deffinetly the fur on his neck tough, since its made with very high quality and yet is also covered with snow.

All the mechanical parts are made with plastic soo they can be moved a little bit to fit his limbs to a certain degree and the screen on his chest is covering a zipper. But even with the zipper, the suit cannot be removed tough he have a pretty cute sweater under the suit.

The screen on his chest is actually pretty anoying but game acurate, and it got green designs on it that makes it looks like a radar or a map. The back side tough is even much more amazing that the front thanks to the perfectly reproduced design on his back life support.

The “skeletical” design on his back is amazing to see at such small scale and the different fabric, leather and textures used in the suit is astonishing.The little puches on his back cannot be opened but they are the only part made with hard plastic.

His boots are also brillantlly done and they looks metalic and really heavy with the spikes on the base to be used in snowy and rocky enviroments. This spikey parts are made with plastic too and they keep the whole figure in balance soo i hope they resist enough to not broke. Also the actual boots under the metalic sections are made with rubber and i hope HOPE this materal resist the test of time and dont start to broke on my (the looks of the boots are the only clue that this figure is used and kinda old).

The mechanical sections of the boot in the front and knee opens for no reasons but to help the cleaning and to keep things insanelly realistic.

I dont have the closed fists and one of his open left hand but i got the hands meant to hold his weapons. Both hands are made with hard plastic but they sculpted wrinkles and dirty colors makes them visually consistent with the rest of the suit. Change them is actually really tricky tough given how his slevees with plastic parts keeps sliping over his arm.

His only accesoryes beyongd the hands are his Plasma Cutter and his Riffle. The Riffle looks, heavy, dirty and like a weapon that has been forgotten for the last 100 years and looks great. The Plasma Cutter is fantastic and my favprite of the two since the “head” is articulated soo it can shoot vertically or horizontally.

And overall, the Plasma Cutter have an amazing and intrincated sculpt and paint that makes it a piece of art.

Here is the downside of this figure: he almost cannot move. While his neck and knees are free to move around, the rest of his articulations are very restricted by the thick suit he is using. He dosnt have many choices to be posed aside of the “walking” natural stand. He cant point his Plasma Cutter too far up and making him hold his Riffle is very difficult too.

The suit, while extremelly good looking, is actually heavy and make the articulations of his arms and legs a little lose. He is as limited as the Hot Toys Naked Snake soo hes not specially fun to play with.

To counter this he have his own light!!!

By removing the back part of his helmeth you can find a tiny switch that turns on a blue LED on his brain and under the fur of his cuit he have a second switch for green light on his life support system and oxygen metter.

This three ligts looks TRULLY FANTASTIC and spectacular and give him and kick ass and creppy look with in the dark. The intense blue light coming out of his helmet looks eerie and the intense and vibrant radioactive green light on his back looks soo science-fictionish i have a hard time desciding how to display him.

The lack of movement on his articulations is really dissapointing, but this figure is soo beautifully crafted is hard to hate it. Threezero did an amazing job with the LED lights as well and as long as this guy i seen as a mixed media statue with limited articulations (like Sideshow), he is really fantastic addition for the collection.

Having Isaac Clarkee lurking on some corner of the room with his helmet iluminated is a testament to one of the greatest (and now probablly dead) survival horror ever created.

KLAUS V REINHERZ

Getting ready to watch Kekkai Sensen & Beyond (i want to watch it on Blueray), last year i pre-ordered the Figma Klaus. And while it took him some time to arrive, i am very happy to see it was worth the wait.

Klaus comes in the very standar size of all Figma figures, a little bit smaller than a Kenner toy. This is probablly the only thing i dislike about Figma, how tiny are they, but this also means he is really easy to stand and very light (and as a bonus i have to say, the box was redesigned and is smaller than ever, wich is a shame because it means it dosnt fits with the boxes of the other Figmas). He is the same size as Lancer or Archer but givn his big frame, i have the feeling Klaus should be much more taller than them (like Guts).

He is articulated on the head, neck, chest, abs, legs, knes, ankles, feet, whoulders, arms, elbows and wrists. Even the end of his shirt is articulated too it dosnt block the movement of the wrists. All this articulation works excelent to give him any kind of extreme pose, full of action or to give him soft and small movements that gives him life. Its pretty neat how full of life he looks just by tilting his head or his hips.

My only complaing over the articulations are the one on his shoulders, mostof the time you can see a big gap in between his vest and his arms, this articulations is the most obvious and i very anoying from sides view. I wish they give him extra pieces of shirt to cover up this big gap sinxe he is pretty hollow inside. Also the articulation piece inside his hip is a little bit fragile (or it looks like it) soo i would be extrea carefull to not play too much with his hips.

Everything visible is made with high wuality plastic with a really nice texture and the vest and hips are made with soft plastic soo they dpnt get in the way of the arms or legs. His proportions are really good, with big shoulders and a thin waist and long legs. When i saw the prototype i was worryed about the proportions but in the end they looks really good and sexy even in a somple walking pose.

He is an anime husbando, soo he dosnt have any abitious texture and the paint is extremelly clean and make hims look very 2D and is only applyed on the parts that need small detailing (like his eyes).

He comes with 3 face plates: one smiling (sorta...kinda...). another menacing and serious look (with visible eyes over his glases), and another one roaring. The face change is really easy and while the happy face with no eyes is a little...simplistic, the other ones have great detailing on his small blue eyes (dont forget the faces are really small).

His other accesoryes consist on a bunch of different hands to give him personality. All the hands can be exchanged really easy and some of them have a glove with cross design on his fingers. There is also a fist with the metalic cross he uses to punch vampires and both the paint job and sculpt are perfect.

He also comes with an extra arm!! Never saw a Figma with something like it before. His entire arm can come off in the elbow articulation and exchanged by the extra arm, with the torn apart shirt and the metalic red arm protection with a big cross. Of course this is only meant for heavy battle displays and while the arm exchange needs to be done carefully, its a great testament over how detaied are this Figmas.

His last accesory is, of course, his cell phone. A really tiny small little piece of flat plastic with a painted screen and a button. Its a shame theres nothing on the screen but is crazy the miniature detailes on it and hoow good and cute look on Klaus hand.

Then there is the base, the same perfect and simplistic arm base all Figma have BUT i have a complaing in here. He have a hole on his back for the base and another one on the vest on top of his back. The peg of the base needs to penetrate both but the vest hole is rarelly aligned with the hole on his back, soo put the base on him is actually very tricky and very risky to broke the figure or the base. In this case i really wish the vest and the torso were one solid piece with one single hole.

Really, is imposible to not be happy with him, aside of the base detail this guy is just perfect, with great articulations and details and a lot of fun accesoryes and since i am not interested on Leonardo Watch, i can say my Kekkai Sensen collection is complete...until i get the Nendroid Klaus.

CHUN LI

One series i been collecting on the past few years is Bishoujo series from Kotobukiya and while i am not fond of the DC and Marvel women, i am crazy for female fighters from Tekken and Street Fighters. Sadlly, i missed a lot of them, specially from the Tekken side and i am still regretting not getting Poison from Street Fighter since she is pretty expensive by now.

Soo to avoid any kind of regrett, i get myself Chun Li with her new design for SFV. I really love the original version on her blue costume since her pose is more dynamic than slutty, but this new version is just stuing beautyfull.

Designed by Shunya Yamashita, this time around the box dosnt have the name of the sculptor but he did a great job translatting Yamashita´s illustration to 3D.

The materials used here are really amazing, very light and easy to clean but with an strange organic transparency that really gives her a fleshy texture (and this times around, theres A LOT of flesh showing) and still the texture on her dress is like silk.

The figure is big and heavy mustly for her hair, an amazing piece that flows perfectly with the movement of her dress. The golden details gives her a pretty elegant look for an otherwise whorish looking dress.

The anatmy on the muscles is trully amazing, each muscle on her leg is perfectly shaped and things got even more detailed on her back. Her back is that of a serious heavy lifter.

Her smile is soft and sweet and her eyes really detailed and sharp, tough i kinda miss her red make up around her eyes, without it is a little hard to tell who this character is.

The base is as pretty and amazing as always, a transluscent coin with the option to put the Street Fighter logo on it or Shunya Yamashita´s art, and while she stands with no problem, i am afraid to broke her leg some how. I really hope the plastic is resistant this time since her legs is supporting her entire body (and heavy hair) but only time will tell.

I would have liked this much more if it was Hot Ryu on a slutty pose but still, this is an impresive looking piece that abuse a lot of the sexual side of the character but manages to look elegant and classy at the same time and is a pretty fresh design for such and old and classic character.