GEESE HOWARD

 

The King of Figthers, one of the most iconic titles in the fighting game genre and the one that made Capcom shudder, a worthy oponent that perfected the genre pretty fast and demostrated SNK pasion and artcraft developing amazing and epic games. For me, my point of interest was the crossover between the many games of SNK in a single game wath make this title trully special and Storm Collectibles is finally makeing it justice.

Of course, they release Kyo, Iori, Terry and Rugal many many years ago but they seem to completelly forgot they had the licence until this year, when they finally released the long waited Orochi, Blue Mary, Mai Shiranui and the figure i am reviewing now: Geese Howard. I love Fatal Fury, its story is actually much more interesting that KoF´s and every single of its characters has been a classic in multiple games, and while Blue Mary and Mai Shiranui are Fatal Fury figthers, they dont pick my interest as strongly as Geese Howard.

Geese Howard is pretty much the very first villian on the SNK fighting games and has been the face of evil for 30 years. While other villians on The King of Figthers come up with sad storys or an empty desire of destruction, Geese represent all evil that is born from the human condition and power united and is one heck of an impresive and menacing man, even when he invades another universe: His participation in Tekken 7 make him one of the best Tekken characters.

Aside of him coming on a HUGE box, bigger than Rasetsumaru´s or Sol, Geese is the same size as Terry (and by default, Kyo and Iori i guess) and can stand on his own perfectly tough i really wish Storm add bases just like they used to. He is articukated on the head, neck, chest, waist, shoulders, biceps, elbows, wrists, legs, knees, ankles and half feet, just like any other Storm figure.

The mechanism inside of him is pretty interesting, lots of posts conected to ball joints, and while this looks delicate, it allows to an amazing range of mobility, like on his neck, the neck post can move to any direction since the whole neck/chest area os made of soft plastic and the butterfly joints on the shoulders also works fantastic. 

Perhaps the only limitation in here are the knees. His pants are pretty thick soo the knees have a limit to bend. I seen many people discussing if it wasnt best to give him soft fabric pants. Sure that would help a lot to give him more legs movement but the material would clash with the rest of the figure...or the rest of the whole line actually and it would have make him more delicate and anoying to pose around.

Also his ankles movement is a little limited by the pants as well but is not very different to wath happens with Haohmaru or Rasetsumaru and overall, the articulation is fantastic and allows for an awfull lot of posability, like seen in this pictures. I had to delete some because it was way too much already but i manage to keep coming out with more and more poses for him and thats perfect for a character like Geese.

The sculpt is amazing. Geese is an extremelly simple looking character, yet his personality and presence is terrible strong and thats the most difficult character to draw or sculpt. Using as base the Shinkiro art of The King of Figthers 98, this is the most basic and simple version of Geese, the purest design and it matches perfectly Shinkiro vision.

This is one of the most handsome figures i seen from Storm, like, seriouslly, this figure is incrediblle seductive the more you look. His face features are perfect, like a marble statue, yet you can see the the soft wrinkles around his mouth evidencing this is not a pretty boy, but a mature man. The ice cold look on his eyes and the super clean hair cut help a lot to give him the dangerous and elegant look he deserv. Is pretty evident this is Geese (unlike the Sol Badguy figure).

The top part of his hakama is clean white, with no other details other than the wrinkles on his back and how saggy it looks on front, yet the glorious pecs of Geese give it a nice shape on front. Its all made in soft plastic as well as the shelves covering the arms sculpt tough they dont limit the bicep rotation. 

The gap between the shirt and the pants is sometimes visible tough, but this gives a lot of freedom of movement of the ball joint on his waist. The hakama have solds in the inside side of the legs  and the back side as well tough the sculpt is broken by the knees articulation, the piece that unite both sections have the same fold sculpt soo the attern isnt totally broken. I have to say i find this hakama pretty interesting looking sicne it reminds me a cookie..i think i eaten cookies shaped like this, specially like the back side.

The paint is great looking. The skin is clean but very natural looking and a different tone than Terry´s. The lips are very thing and the paint on them is pretty delicate, as well as the eyebrows and severe blue eyes, the paint is perfectly applied and goes for a more realistic take on the character. The hair have a pretty clear tone of yellow mised with some white, soo the hair shines and looks almost weet, again, totally different to Tery´s

The red bands on his wrists are sculpted and painted, something pretty strange for Storm but that makes the hand changes much more easyer. The top part of his outfit have no paint at all, as well as the hakama pants, they are just red plastic while the feet wit socks are also just white clean pastic. Is amazing his simple is Geese design (tiygh the black belt with the yellow detail is a nice touch).

The cherry on the cake, is a golden chaine made of real metal on his neck. The chain shines a whole lot and looks fantastic on hi, giving him the luxury touch his other wise spartan outfir needs. This chain tough demands care since is pretty easy to lose it while changing heads!!!

I dont know if the chain is considered and accesory or not but Geese have plenty of extra goodyes and perhaps the best nude feature of the line soo far. While characters like Heihachi, Paul, Haohmaru, Rasetsumaru, Akira, Ryu can have theyr shirt removed, Geese can do the same but in a different way.

The proces is incredible simple yet pretty scary at frst and is basically the same as The Furay Planet figures: remove the head, remove the arms and separate his torso from his legs soo the top part of his outfit can be opened and the torso can some out. I hate doing this, i am afraid removing torsos ot arms can weaken the ball joints or posts and add more risk of fracture but i guess i can only trusth on Storm quality materials.

This is where the extra shirt come into play: a new version of his shirt but hanging from his hakama pants, with the sleeves on the back. Made with soft plastic in clean white, this shirt cover the gap between the torso and the hakama pants.

Add the torso back as well as the chain and the head and the two extra eccesorys: a pair of extra arms as well as skin colored rings that coer the gap between the shoulders and the chest area. Its a little trciky to see wath part of the ring goes up and wath part goes down, but they are pretty easy to put inside his chest and then insert the extra arms with no sleves (its in here where i can take a look at Geese inside enginering).

The arms are....huge, bigger than the arms with sleves on. The musculature is amazing yet it dosnt block any of the movement and one this process is done, you have shirtless Geese Howard on all his sexy glory.

The abs and huge back section are enormous pecs are soo well sculpted, soo perfect in every angle and to make things even better theres scars: one on each shoulder, one in the middle of his pecs and a huge one cross shaped on his back, all result of his battle against Terry Bogard. The paint have the same quality than the lips soo each one of them looks very realistic and natural.

Aside of this extra shirt, extra arms and arms rings, he also comes with 3 extra pair of hands for a total of 4: closed fists, claw shaped hands, open hands and graby hands (because Geese like to grab a lot....grab everyone). Made with soft plastic, is amazing how natural this hands looks, they even have veins!! They are pretty easy to change on both nude and dressed arms and are an incredille helpt for posing.

There is also 3 extra heads for a total of 4: aside of the basic stoic face sculpt, theres one smiling, one showing his teeth in fury and one shouting. Every single one can be exchanged pretty easy and the sculpt and paint have the same quality on each one them. The smiling one is by far my favorite, that coky half smile is soo incrediblly seductive, make him looks too much like a beach jock but mixed  with the evil look on his eyes is really irresistible. Yes, i feel seduced by a plastic man, cant deny it since i know no one really read this blog.

The third head that show his teeth have a look of contained power, an almost calculated fury and the sculpt of the wrinkles around his mouth is very realistic as well as each teeth scuklpted and painted  and laslty, the shouting face somehow also give a look of contained fury on it, Geese is releasing his power but is not missing his steel look. The sculpt and paint of the inside of the mouth is, again, really fantastic.

And just like Terry, Geese dont comes with an effect, but he have 5 effects!!! Spikes of power of different sice and intensity sculpted on blue trasluscent plastic with some white airbrush on the base. Two smaller than Geese to represent the Reppuken, the trademark technique that shots blue waves of power on ground. Tough its kinda tricky make this power blast stand given theyr angle.

Anothet two effects made pretty similar to the small ones but taller than Geese works the same to represent the Double Reppuken (since one of them have two giant spikes) or the Shipuken once it hits ground.

And laslty theres this HUGE and big spike surrounded by smaller spikes that unite all the rest: some smaller spikes on the side are hollow soo the spike structures can be fused together to form a crown of enery spikes that surround Geese, like towers that gues from small to big size and form the Ragim Storm, Geese special move.

Once united this effects have no problem standing perfectly and the look of this is fantastic. This is by far the biggest effect i seen on a Storm Collectibles figure, is really eat a lot of space from the sides and the top and is really spectacular. 

Lastly, theres a big scenario that is tradition of Storm Collectibles, this time is the Strolheim Tunnel from The King of Figthers 96. The print is of very high quality tough the pixel art is much more rough compared to Rasetsumaru´s scenario and i feel like the color palette have a pretty low opacity. Is a little bit dark since in the game this scenario shines soo much. But the dark tones make Geese stand out a lot against the background.

I was kind of worried with Sol Badguy, he somehow didnt live up to Storm standars and Rasetsumaru was a much better release, but Geese is at a different level. The King of Figthers characters are always the best Storm have to offer and this figure is proof of it: An amazing sculpt that live up to Shinkiro vision, perfect paint, great movility, lots of accesorys for and amazing effects parts for the characte attacks, theres literally not a single thing to complaing in here.

This figure is a dream come true for anyone who meet this characters in the 90s and a testament of SNK amazing ability to create fascinating characters with straigth forward designs. At this point i am actually regreting not getting the rest fo the characters, at last from the Fatal Fury side....i am soo soo tempted by Blue Mary and Mai Shiranui for some reason.

Buy Ryo Sakazaki is coming as well as Goenitz and i drool at the tough to have the Ikari Warriors in this same quality as well as the Orochi Team!!! Maybe someday!!!