LAU CHAN

Virtua Fighter 4 was known as the best fighting game when it was released, but sadly after the 5th game the series was ended by Sega and now rest along side Darkstalkers, Bloody Rar and Rival Schools. But the 4th game was soo strong at the begining of the century, even a game magazine did action figures of it; Gamepro.

Almost 20 years later i was finally able to get two of the 3 figures, the very first one Akira Yuki and the second one, Lau Chan, representing the side of evil (or should i say, violence?). Bothfigures came on very sturdy blister and i forgot to mention it, the cardboard can be open as a back and inside it have a review of the game. This is such a cool and unique touch only this Gamepro figures had!

Lau Chan is bigger than the standar size of figures from back then and he can....stand on his own!!! Even with the weird shape of his legs he can stand perfectly!!! Now thats weird!! He is articulated on the neck, shoulders, wrists, legs and knees and thats ir, and just like Akira, he is mostly a statue that can achive only a couple of good looking poses.

Its a shame actiony characters like this canot move too much, but that was the way figures worked back then. The yellow parts of his outfit is made with soft plastic and overall the sculot is really really good. The devilish expresion on his eyes, the wrinkles on his forehead, even his mouth have teeth and a tongue and the designs on his outfit are also sculpted.

The paint is also good or should i say OK? Its clean and detailed, specially on his eyes and mouth, but just like with Akira, it dosnt have any shades or shadows soo it looks maybe too much clean and "plastic". Yet i find him better looking than Akira, maybe because he have a stronger face expresion and his outfirt have more intrincated details, he is a little more realistic looking.

I have to say this is a susprise since i love Akira but not Lau Chan, i would have prefered a figure of his daugther, Pai Chan, but he is really good looking for such an obscure character and looks great face to face against Akira.

He comes with the same ugly base Akira had and a card with artwork and tips and tricks. The base looks much more uglyer this time given how good looking he is.

Despite the retro look of this figures, i wish Joyride and Gamepro had released more of them, at least Pai, Sarah, Kagemaru or Durall, but at least they released my husbando: Jacky Bryant. Pretty much the only figure i am missing and i have doubts i find him by now but if i find this two i guess anything can happen.

AKIRA YUKI

One of my favorite fighting games is Virtua Fighter, while the game design is really retro and totally lacks any sign of narrative, the gameplay has been fantastic on all its entrys. It even saw its pincale at begining of the century with VF4 on the PS2, and back then it was called to be the best fighting game overall, and after that it was pretty much totally forggoten, even SEGA forgot it...

Sadly, theres not a whiole lot of merchadise of the serires, aside of some really weird looking Figma´s, the only figures related to Virtua Fighter came out back with the release of the 4th game, developed by Joyride and Gamepro. It is weird that a gaming magazine was doing action figures, but it seems they focused only on Sega games and for that time standars they were very good.

Not a long time ago i was able to get two of the 3 figures in mint condition, inside of theyr blister. The very first one is Akira Yuki, the main character and one of my favorite and poster boy of the series, "Sega´s Ryu" soo to speak...and he is big, bigger than the etandar action fgures now day soo i guess back in 2002 he would be stuning!

Akira can stand on his own perfectly (i like this detail) and is not very articulated at all, ony his head, waist, shoulders, wrists, knees and an articulation on one of his legs, he is mostly a statue in a prefixed pose. With the help of the articulations you can change his look a little bit but is imposible to change the way hes body leans.

This may seem very static or lame, but it was the way they did it back then; NECA, McFarlane, Epoc, Kotobukiya, pretty much most figures had this useless articulations or were a total statue. The sculpt is good, very close to the Akira model in game tough some details are a little too soft, like his hair. Both his belt and bandana are made with softish plastic.

The paint is good and brigth and even his eyes are nicelly detailed, but the overall paint is quiet....plain and simple. Theres no shading at all  and the plastic have no texture either soo the paint looks kinda boring, unnatural, more like painted plastic than anything.

This is not a surprise since most figures were like this as well back then since the production wasnt as complex as now day, except for McFarlane, who added a lot of washes and shades to his figures fiving it a very realistic look. I never own a Joyride figure before soo my guess is the production of this figures was very standar.

Akira has no accesorys aside of his base - a very ugly base - with a plain and cheap rock texture and a sticker with his name. The base is useless since he can stand on his own and is totally ugly, soo is pretty much the worst part of the package. He also comes with a special card with artwork of the game on one side and tis and tricks in the other.

Just by looking at the card art is pretty evident how good the sculpting is but is a shame the boring paint (and maybe the plastic) didnt do justice to the character. But still, is good to have a figure of Akira finally, a better looking one than the Figma and i love how good he fits with my older figures of Tekken and Street Fighter.

CONRAD & SLAN

Getting figures of the God Hand wasnt something i was expecting at all. Art of War released statues of them decades ago but they were way too expensive and rare to count and Figma show his prototypes for 4 years i thinkl!!! I was sure they had cancelled them but now they are in here in all theyr glory.

After getting the spectacular and at the same time kinda dissapoiting Femto, is turn for the incrediblly strange and grotesque Conrad as the first FigFIX figure i get from Good Smile Company. He comes packed in a HUGE box along side Slan and is pretty obvious why.

When my parents saw him they asked “Wath the fuck is that?” something any sane person could ask if they dont know this character. Conrad, as the most silent member of the God Hand and the bearer of gluttony and greed, looks extremelly strange. He looks kinda like a baby with big cartoony and cute hands but from the back, he looks like a huge insect, tough his legs are tentacles?

I wonder wath was Kentaro Miura thinking when designing this thing….

He can stand on his own and he is actually pretty heavy. Specially consideroing hes totally hollow, the plastic materials are of very high quality. Hids head and hands are huge compared to human anatomy, yet he is the smallest of the Besererk characters.

The sculpt is sharp and pretty well defined, specially on his shell. The esferic design on his back really looks like insect part and his tentacles are all in a different pose, is almots like hes walking with them. While he is supposed to be black, he have some soft tones of dark blue to high light his strange anatomy.

His head, tentacles and hands have a suft pink/purple tone than makes him looks like a fresh cadaver. The lips and the closed eyes with blue tones, the veins on his neck and cheecks, looks like a dead body that is strunggling to breath.

His only articulation is on his head. This FigFIX concept is pretty bizarre actually, i dont understand why produce tiny statues like this. I mean, hes not going to dance polka with that anatomy of his, but it would be extrmelly easy to just articulate his tentacles and arms.

I dont know if anyone would buy this character as a stand alone mini-statue, but as an accesory of Slan, hes pretty good and a great deal. His bizarre design make him a lot of fun to look at and hes one of the big five after all, a must for a Berserk fan.

While Conrad was fun, the true meat of the second God Hand package is Figma Slan, one of my most hyped figures of this year. She´s one of my favorite characters and i was extremelly interested to see how Good Smile Company would produce her. An action figure of Slan is something soo unique.

Unlike any other Figma out there, she (and Conrad) comes in a big and totally enclosed box, full of pictures that hide her nipples. I am not sure why are they soo shy with her…

She is the same size as Femto, soo she is taller than Caska. The anatomy comparision with Caska is pretty extreme since the human warrior looks almots like a little kid compared to Slan huge…huge…everythings. Even Slan shoulders are much bigger than Caska´s.

Slan ca stand on her own thanks to her huge wings that support her perfectly, but still she comes with the awesome Figma base of allways. Slan is really really simplistic in both color and sculpt. her skin is smoth and perfect like a doll, toug her front is extremelly generous as well as her back side. She have probablly the biggest and more round ass of all Figma figures.

Her skin is really pale, almost ghostly pale and her fingernails on her hands and toes are both sculpted and painted. Her hair is simplstic in color - aqua blue - but it have many layers to make it looks chaotic.

Now i have kind of an issue here. Her nipples are sculpted but they only have a pale blue tones as paint and she has no vagina. I dont want a plastic vagina on my desk, but she was REALLY EXPENSIVE and the japanese toy stores are full of horrible and nasty and obscene hentai figures, but they fell concerned sculpting a vagina?

I got many Devilman Lady figures with both a sculpted and painted vagina, i got Sirens too and Micos and Psycho Genies…i got a Satan figure with a penis!!! Why didnt Good Smile sculpted a vagina on Slan and defined her nipples more? Her body details are soo… vague and soft and that makes a strange contrast with her corse.

The corse piece on her torso and her neck are both very detailed sculpted and painted with ject black and purple tones and they dont stop her waist to freely move.

Her wings are the biggest piece on her design and they looks a lot like Femto´s wings, with the golden line in the fingers and the H.R. Giger design. The strange shape of this apendages makes it evident that they are more decorative than usefull.

The wings are really heavy and yet they dosnt keep falling apart over and over again like Femto´s and they dosnt block any of her movility. You can pretty much toss them to her back and move her freely and the articulations on the wings dosnt broke any of the fluidity of theyr shape.

Her articulations works fantastic (like always) and she comes with many hands to play with. She even have hands to hold a weapone, tough she dosnt have any. Aside of that she also comes with 3 different faces: a serious one, a smiling one and a horny one.

The paint on her eyes is really perfect and well defined, tough i wish they give her yellow pupils to looks more like a snake. Her blue lips are beautifull tough my favorite detail is her tongue. Her tongue is blue, something that high lights shes not human at all.

Her wings also have purple lights.

Shes pretty empty in the accesory category, tough she really dosnt use any and if we count Conrad as her accesry then things are better looking. Still, both are too small to bear the price tag Good Smile put on them. This are trully over priced toys.

The “suggested” nipples and female parts make her looks extremelly elegant and i have conflicts with that. Shes not supposed to looks elegant, but slutty and vulgar, this is the Whore Princess of the Uterin Sea…

FEMTO ~ EGG OF THE KING ~

One of the many reasons why i like Berserk soo much was because of the monstruositys Kentari Miura design. Berserk population is mostly grotesque and bizarre and the jewel of the crown of course, is the God Hand. The demon kings and main antagonists, designed to be both elegant and disturbing, mixing perfectly Clive Barker and H.R.Giger influences and fitting perfectly into a medieval era.

For years, God Smile Company has shown lots of prototypes of this characters and it was pretty obvious they were going to stay like that, prototypes. Until now.

In the very moment they opened the pre-oders, i ordered the first God Hand member, the Blessed King of Longing - Femto. And i got the special limited edition one, the called “Borth of theHawk of Darkness” version. This is by far the most expensive Figma figure i ever got, but i HAD to get him no matter wath.

His box was HUGE onlly because of the single accesory that make this toy soo expensive: the King´s Egg - the Crimson Behelit.

This thing is….magnifiscently done. The base of the egg makes it looks like some kind of cup sovered in red veins/rots or tentacles. I am tempted to put this thing in some kind of altar with canddles, it fits perfect for such imaginery.

The egg is just….beautifull, with a stone like texture and a crimson red paint all over it with dark hues and a wet and slimmy look, it looks alive…pulsating and pretty bloody as well. The hiddeous grinn have each teeth sculpted at different sizes and some pretty fleshy looking lips. The eye is hypnotizing and stands out magnifiscently with those intense and vibrant blue tones.

The inside of the egg is sculpted as well with veins and a strange “bee hive” like texture on the floor, its looks too much like a biologycal entity of its own. From the inside it have this “petals” tendrils that looks like a flower, but they actually have a purple/pink tone with veins. Its obvious its actually a membrane and i love how this toy turns something soo disgusting into something soo elegant looking.

The way Femto fits inside this egg is extremelly simplistic and works pretty well. Once he is posed crawiling in all four, his wings needs to be removed from the side and the middle wing´s bottom part needs to be removed as well. The egg also comes with a pair of extra “unevolved” wings that are closing around Femtos body.

With this new wings he ends up looking like a purple onion and can be placed in the middle of the egg with a peg on the side wall. The “egg face” is a separate piece soo it can be removed to make things easyer. You moves Femto´s neck soo he looks up and that it, hes now coming out of his egg like in the cover of volume 12.

Its fun to pose him like he is coming out of the egg but i am afraid to broke some pointy edge of the egg like that.

This thing was really worth the price since is such a beautifull and yet horrible vision to witness and still, this is only one accesory, the real figure is a treath of its own.

It took years to Figma and lot of strange prototypes to finally release the Blessed King of Longin, Femto action figure. One of the most expensive Figmas to date given the inhuman of his design and his wings, i knew i HAD to get him no matter wath and i even got Caska a year ago soo Femto dosnt feel alone.

Femto comes in the standar size of all Figmas, a not specially tall action figure that is a little bit taller than Solid Snake and Archer. And to my surprise, he can stand on his own pretty well. His entire body is fully articulated and while his legs are thing and feet have…a strange shape, he can maintain every pose and keep his balance nicelly.

Still tough, i prefer to use that magnifiscent base all Figmas have, the mechanical arm conected to his back.

All those details found on his birth egg are not here. He has no texture at all and comes in only two tones of paint: dark blue and some light blue. This is not Good Smile´s fault but is his original design. He dosnt looks organic actually…looks kinda robotic.

His body is “muscly”…i never noticed before, he looks like human with no skin, only raw tissue and muscle tough they are all blue and the wet look dosnt help at all. His face is clean and beatifully designed, a separate piece from his helmeth thingy, his llips have a pretty femenine pink tone and his eyes are sharp and perfectly painted with red pupils. He is one of the prettyest ladys i ever got on figure form, tough he has a penis.

No, really, he ACTUALLY have a penis sculpted between his legs. Is imposible to see thanks to the dark blue but he have a sausage shaped thing actually sculpted and thats extremelly disturbing.

Now his wings, the sourse of all his succes and failures. The wings are extremelly good looking, no way to deny that. They share the same wet look and dark blue tones with only some small golden details. They dosnt looks too much like bat wings or a falcon, but they looks like roach wings. Actually, the whole Femto looks more insectoid than anything in close inspection…like a winged Xenomorph.

The wings comes in 3 different sections, two attached to his shoudlers and one to his back. And each wing have a middle articulation. This is extremelly cool since once posed rigth, they can give an extraordinary feel of movement. And even in a pasive pose, the wings give to this guy a very spectacular and elegant look.

Most people have complained about the “broken” look they have. I dont have problem with th fragmented look, but my problem comes with the fact this guy NEEDED more wings!!! There is always two big empty spots on his sides in between the wings, and this brokes completelly the ilusion.

Two more fragments of wings are needed or a way to open up the wings of the front soo the things can cover him completelly. Also, some articulations in the upper shoulder pads are needed too. If i move the left wing up, the middle wing just pop out and fall or the rigth wing too. One way to fix this could have been make the wings with soft plastic soo they dont restrict the articulation and poses, but instead of that Figma made them with hard plastic. They are heavy and actually…very difficult to pose.

Move his wings in a way they have a flow motion look AND at the same time cover the empty spots between them is incrediblly tricky. I cant even pose him with his wings fully opened or fliying. This was a good chance for Figma to give him an open giant wing for the high price he have but they missed the chance.

I am very happy with him, even if his wing are such a letdown and are not dynamic at all, the figure itself and his giant egg make this a great deal. Plus, aside of his base he comes with a toon of multi posed hand gestures to play with as well.

Pairing him up with Casca is a lot of fun as well tough i am not that evil as to recreat the movie. My Casca will have a happy ending this time.

I am was fully hyped to get the Whore Princess of Uterine Sea - Slan, my favorite God Hand member a few weeks after but i still dont know if i will be able to complete the whole collection…