RYU

 Another trip to the past, almost a decade ago, when SquareEnix just started theyr premium toy line Play Arts Kai, one of the very first licenses they pick was Street Fighter and unlike Tekken, they release an awfull lot of characters. My main interest is Ryu of course soo i didnt think twice on getting him. I didnt get my second favorite tough , Chun Li, and now i regret it since Ryu looks kinda lonely (i refused to buy the ape looking Ken).

He came in the clasic PAK box with windows all over and strokes of paint. He is on scale with the old PAKs, shorter than Chris and Dante and same size than the female figures, it seems he is actually short since all other toy companys makes him smaller than the rest of the characters. He can stand on his own perfectly tough i wish they give him a base for some dynamic posing but Square had a lot of issues with bases back then...

He is ultra articulated: neck, shoulders, elbows, wrists, chest, waist, legs knes, ankles and bandana, all balljointed and with a descent range of movement. I say descent because some of his movement is blocked by the material, he is made with very hard plastic and that prevent his arms to come together for example. But despite this he have a lot of poseability.

Also, the joints on his legs are getting very very lose with time, sometimes is hard to make him stand thanks to this and i seen photos of him or Chun Li loosing theyr legs. It seems this was a prevalent issue with production and all Street Fighter figures have this problem. I guess it can be fixed with some soft glue but is worth mentioning.

The sculpt is good, i mean his face is extremelly square looking but this is SF IV Ryu, the Ryu that looks like a caveman soo its faithfull to the character design. His feet and hands are HUGE, double or triple the size od Dante´s or Chris and both him and his outfit have sculpted textures to mimic skin and cloth. I am not sure i like this tough the skin texture is not as heavy and instrusive as it was with Chris Redfield.

The paint is good too, specially on his brownish eyes and his mouth  tough theres some brown of his hair mixing with his red bandana. Yhea... Play Arts Kai had some quality issues tough the price was low. The paint on his flesh is good, with some brown tones but not soo much and his white outfit have some grey tones as well, very simplictic.

His belt have some golden kanjis on it and the logo on his gloves are very good looking.

My biggest issue with him tough are, again, the articulations. While i apreciate them they looks pretty evident, specially on the knes and shoulder areas since they leave a big gap between the arms and torso. Also, his overall shape is not as.....sexy as other Ryu figures, i know this sounds odd but well, this is Street Fihter IV Ryu, not one of the best looking designs.

He comes with an extra pair of hands in pose for a Hadouken. Change the hands is EXTREMELLY difficult since the ball joints are pretty small and delicate and the lower half of the gloves get in they way. Really i dont know how i hasnt broke them yet...and still, achive the Hadoken pose is not as easy as one could guess.

His other accesory is an extra face plate. This face can be exchanged pretty easy and shows Ryu with a fierce look screaming HADOOOOKEN!! And the finall accesory is the actuall Hadoken, a blue transparent ball of energy that actually looks pretty watery. The sculpt is really good and the thing actually does have a base soo you can put it on Ryu´s hands or on the base, being shot by Ryu´s hands.

Back then this kind of effect was pretty neat and actually help this figure to be much more fun and good looking despite all its faults. Over the years theres been much better looking figures of this character but this guy is not bad at all and fits nicelly with the Capcom characters released by Suare.