KAZUYA MISHIMA

When Harada visited the SquareEnix many years ago it was evident they were not going to make a game together but something else, a merchadise colaboration, action fiures from the Play Arts Kai line and the posibilitys were really exciting. A year later they were released the Tekken Tag Tournament 2 line with two initial figures, Kazuya Mishima and Jun Kazama.

This figures were kind of rare back then since i didnt see them pretty often and now i seen many looking for them since they are seeling at very high price. Thats the magic of the Play Arts Kai line and theyr awesome looking big box full of HD graphics.

Kazuya was a really impresive piece, he is from the medium size PAKs and fits with the Street Fighter IV figures perfectly. He is tall and actually really heavy and can stand on his own perfectly despite having a PAK base....ugggg those base....consist on an hexagonal plataform with an arm and a clap that fits on the figure waist. The base take a lot of space thanks to its awkard shape and is not always usefull.

This guy is fully articulated on the neck, abs, waist, shoulders, biceps, elbows, wrists, legs, knes and ankles and thats it strongest point. All ball jointed articulations works really really good and thanks to his simplistic design, theres nthing to stop his movement. Really, is a lot of fun to pose him and it seems he have unlimited posibilitys thanks to his nature as a figther.

The only part with a little bit of problems are his ankles thanks to his pants but theres still a very good range of movement. His is made with soft plastic as well as his belt soo it dosnt block his leg movement. The rest of the figure is made with hard plastic.

His dace expression is really perfect, evil and stoic and the details are great like his lips and the scar and this level of sculpt continue to his entire body full of veins and scars. Tough i find his chin a little to thin actually, is easy to see Kaxuya in here but the face sculpt is not entirely realistic thanks to his face shape (and the hair dosnt help). The strongest point is deffinetly the eyes, they are pretty impresive.

The pants have a good sculpt as well with the classic embrodiment with flames on the sides and this details is sculpted inside the knes too soo you can bend his knes and dont cut the flames design.

The paint tough i am not very sure. The details like the flames, gloves, belt, are certainly perfect, but the pants have a lot of grey washes and tones to artificially create shadows and the end look is kinda weird. Same for his skin, they give it a lot od darker tones and brushes to highlight the shape of the muscles and scars but it dosnt looks very natural to me. The only place were this shadows work perfectly are his eyes since it gives them a pretty deep and menacing look.

I dont know why Square wanted soo much to articicially create shadows. This is not the worst example (that being Kratos or Nathan Drake) but it deffinetly makes the figure to look dated compared with the Storm Collectible figure. That why i was this figure "was" impresive, but now thanks to the hard platic material and weird painting it looks unnatural.

And the accesoryes, sadly this is the most lacking part compared with all other Play Arts Kai. Poor Kaxuya aside of his base only have an extra pair of open hands for fight stances. This was really dissapointing considering the price. He dont use weapons but Square could have give him attack effects and extra face expressions like the Street Fighter guys but they were not very interested on Tekken after all.

Despite not being perfect this is one of the best action figures of Tekken to date and both looks and play fantastic. Also is hard to resists when they give such a comic book super hero buid to the already hunky Kazuya.