HAOHMARU

I was saying the Tomb Raider figures are the oldest of this blog, but this one is older and still, not the oldest since some Devilman are from the 80s. At the begining of the 90s, SNKmade a game called Samurai Shodown 64, a game that never came out in any home console and never came out from Japan either, making it a game only a handful of humans play or even knew. Ironically, such obscure game give birth to a series of OVAs and action figures, pretty much the only ones of Samurai Shodown.

The serires was made by Epoch, a japanese company that used to focus on fight game characters and did some impresive figures for Guilty Gear Tekken, Dead or Alive or even Vampire Hunter D. The serires for Samurai Shodown had 4 figures: Haohmaru, Hattori Hanzo, Nakoruru and Shiki. My goal was, of course, Haohmaru and took me quiet a lot of troubles getting him.

He is on scale 1/10 (between Figma and NECA) and was sculpted by Yasufumi Matsuda. He can stand on his own perfectly tough comes with an oval and very simplistic black base and is articulated on the neck, shoulders, biceps, wrists, wasit, knes and ankles, tough most of this articulations are totally useless since they dont move a bit. I am not sure if they are glued or just stuck, but i cant move his shoulders, waist, ankles and knes soo the only working articulations are on his neck, biceps and wrists.

But despite this the articulations would be totally useless anyway since he is sculpted in mostly one pose, like a statue with very little movement, the standar for figures back in the 90s.The sculpt is actually good in the face and his body, his muscles are really really sexy and have lots of volume and his face have the rigth shape, tough other areas are a little plain, like his hands with sausague fingers, or how his outfit is not made of different sculpts but just one single piece, wich makes it looks really plain.

Paint is the same, really plain and boring on the cloths but much more defined on the face. If you look at the character design shets from Samurai Shodown 64 is easy to see this figure have the same eyebrows, eyes, the same smile, scar and beard. Tough despite this half of his face is completelly hidden by the tuft of hair on his forehead.

The tugth of hair is really thick and not only covers half of his face, but it also gets in the way of his neck articulation. This is something to be spected given his design, really, that hair of his is troublesome to draw it makes sence is even more troublesome to sculpt. The big ponytail on his back can be removed tough it also gets in the way of his head movement. Really, Haohmaru is soo incrediblly hairy.

Aside of his base he comes with two extra accesorys. One is his sword and i cant say too much about it, both the sculpt and green paint are OK and dosnt stand out but arent bad at all. The katana fits on his hand and he is supposed to rest it on his shoulders, tough thanks to his hair the katana never fully rest. I guess this is OK since the same hair covers it.

His other hand is in a very weird pose, i think he is supposed to be hiding his waist but i cant fit the hand in the rigth spot, but his second accesory is gladlly, a second hand. This second hand is holding a sake bottle with a soft plastic rope. Its easy to swap the hands and this second hand looks much much much much better.

The sake bottle is nicelly sculpted and have a big red kanji that stand out in between all the black and white, also the soft plastic rope rest perfectly on Haohmaru´s shoulder and makes him looks really good.

Overall, the quality of this figure is pretty inconsistent, some sections of the sculpt are really good, some other not soo much, some sections of the paint are great and some other not soo much, and still, thanks to the pose, face expression and accesorys, this figure ooze Haohmaru´s personality and given how difficult he is to get and how this is the only action figure of the character, makes this piece a very special one.

I am not interested in Nakoruru and Hanzo but i would love to get Shiki as well but my ain concern was this guy, the Haohmaru Husbando, who in the end of the year will have a brand new action figure from Storm Collectibles.