BATMAN

The Play Arts Kai line from Square Enix is such a nostalgic collection for me because for years i got lots of theyr figures and theyr were pretty perfect for theyr time: fully articulated, heavy and huge. Tough the line die years ago thanks to theyr use of DC and Marvel lincence, pretty expensive characters that demanded up the prices of the figures, and even i stoped buying Play Arts Kai.

And i guess the very first step into theyr doom was theyr Batman Arkham Asylum line tough back then we didnt suspect it, we were pretty hyped about it and i was sure to get Batman first since he came in such a HUGE box that was spectacular, tough it was only for the size of his cape. Actually, Batman is really small...

It was at this point when Play Arts Kai started to shrinck on scale soo he was much smaller than previous figures (like Dante) wich was pretty odd. Aside of that, Batman can stand perfectly with his two big boots and thanks to his cape mostly and is really well articulated on the head, neck, shoulders, biceps, elbows, wrists, chest, waist, legs, knes and ankles as well as two extra articulations on his cape. All articulations work awesome and have a huge range of movement since the cape on his shoulders is made with soft plastic.

I think the best part of this figure is the cape actually, since is divided into 3: one soft plastic part over his shoulders and two long sections made with hard plastic. Theres two ball jointed articulations on Batman´s back well hidden by the cape on his shoulders and the long parts of the cape can be inserted in here and moved around giving it a huge range of very epic posing.

Despite being "short" the body shape on Batman is magnifiscent and manly and looks like a big beast with his strong legs and torso, pretty accurate to his Arkham Asylum design. The costume have a fabric like texture and many intrincate details like little wrinks and lines and even the bat on his chest in sculpted. His face is very accurate sculpt wise as well witha stoic look on his expression and pretty penetrating eyes.

The paint is were Square Enix had issues tough since they try to add a lot of washes to make it looks realistic but sometimes they actually ruined some figures (like Kratos), Batman is not such an extreme example since his face have the rigth amount of pink tones to give him a realistic looks but his suit have a lot of black shadows that are maybe too strong, giving him a pretty dramatic and almost "painting" look. His cape also suffer of the same weird combination of texture and paint that gives it almost a "wood" look tough this is not entirelly bad and maybe it was on porpuse.

His belt and the protectors on his boots and arms have a metalic finish soo they avoid this "pencil drawing" look the rest of the figure have.

His accesorys are a couple of open hands that can be exchanged easy and a batarang as well as his claw launcher pistol (i dont know its name, sorry). The batarang is pretty basic and follows the design of the game tough the pistol thingy have a pretty detailed sculpt with 3 claws and a good painting. Batman can hold the claw thing with one of his hands but ironically, his other hand cannot hold the batarang at all soo it keeps falling over and over.

Dosnt sounds like a lot of accesoryes for Batman, but he comes with another one that is huge: a third cape section. This section can be exchanged over with the rigth part of the cape and is curled around his leg. The sculpt is REALLY GOOD and the paint with heavy washes make it looks really dramatic. This way you can chose one from two cape options: one curled around his body, like he is agains the wond, or another fully open filiying around.

Maybe the paint on this figure looks a little primitive compared with modern figures, but the sculpt, articulations and spectacular cape make this one incrediblly fun and spectacular Batman to play with, i just wish he was on a bigger scale.