MORRIGAN

 

Four years it took Storm to release Morrigan, 4 entire years to release the second Darkstalkers figure of te series after the first one....i am sorry this is the very first thing to say in this review, but i really had to took it out from my chest. Storm Collectibles has been turning into reality many of our dreams as fighting game fanatics by creating high quality action figures in the same scales based on many fighting game characters, from main stream games to games that hasnt seen the day of ligth since 25 years ago.

In the last years my Storm collection has been growing a lot and i only got the characters i love the most with exception of a few series that i swear to complete and buy any character they produce. One of those series is Darkstalkers because not only is one of my favorite games since the last century, but because the last time we had action figures based on this characters was from ToyBiz well.....a century ago actually.

Naturally, my hype was huge when Storm show it had the licence and i had the fantasy to finally have figures of all this monster characters tough i had to wait 4 entire years to saw the very first release; Demitri. I was ectastic, but i had to wait another 4 years for a second figure: Morrigan Aensland.

I am actually surprised this figure wasnt the very first to be launched, but its actually a figure full of contrast. In perfect scale with Demitri, she is half a head smaller than him and that makes her a pretty tall lady, i mean she is like a head and a half taller than Ryu, but not only Ryu is quiet short, but this woman is a monster, soo i guess expect her to be tall is natural.

As i was afraid since i saw the very first prototypes, she is a pain in the ass to stand. With no base and those stileto high heels, she is literally standing on the tip of her feet and only when her legs are in the extact distance from each other, soo she is really imposible to stand with her legs together or any part of her body leaning to any side. I guess that cant be helped and thats a character design flaw in 3D.

She is articulated on the neck, shoulders, biceps, elbows, wrists, chest, waist, legs, knees, ankles and half of her boots. Also her wings have a ball joint atriculation where they join her back and another one in the middle of the arm (elbow?) and another ball joint where the membran part begins (wrists??). All this ball joints make her wings extremelly flexible and since the arm part can be rotated that helps a lot to give the wings any pose in a pretty easy way.

Her head have a ball joint like all other Storm figures and her shoulders have both a ball joint and a butterfly while her elbows and knees have two articulations and her boots have a pibot and her legs can rotate. Her chest articulation and waist have a ball joint soo they have a HUGE range of movement that let her tist her entire body pretty easy, specially with her soft plastic hips piece.

The chest piece is also soft plastic but since its quiet small, it dosnt make too much of a difference. Her hair is also made with soft plastic tough it lacks any kind of articulation and thats one of the problem points here: The hair and the white thingys on her shoulders get A LOT in the way. The hair weigth too much and it gets in the way with the wings pretty easy.

The featherish leace that conects with her chest and back also dosnt let her amrs rise too much. In order to make a Soul Fist movement the feather thingys must be put above her shoulders. They are made with soft plastic of course but i hope the glue resist all the movement of her arms section.

I dont have many Storm female figures, aside of Taki, soo this figure is quiet a novelty for me and i am impresed by how much of a good jov Storm did here; Morrigan is stuning beautifull. Whie her chest is smaller than Taki´s, her waist line is soo incrediblly tiny while her ass is HUGE. The curves here are really extreme, beyond human anatomy actually....she is mostly shaped like Jessica Rabit.

Theres not much sculpted detail here tough, her outfit dont hide too much soo her silhouette is mostly wath we seen here. Her boots have the rigth amount of wrinkles close to the ankles and her wings have the rigth shape tough i am not sure if they are a little bit too small. The feather/hairy thingy that holds her outfit from the chest to her back looks really good as well.

And here is another contrast: she dosnt looks like Morrigan. We can use the sprites to compare but the artwork of Capcom from the 90s shows a different woman: round face, wide mouth and nose, no make up, big brown eyes. This figure is quiet the opposite: chiseled face features, small mouth and nose, cat shaped eyes with make up and lipstick and her pupils are the same color as her hair. Despite not looking like her, she is really pretty. 

Tough she is more like...."doll pretty", and that mixed with her imposible shapes make this woman looks kinda cartoony along side the rest of the Storm Collectible figures. Of course, being a Darkstalker thats about rigth since thats one of the most cartoony games from Capcom and i am glad she is cartoony pretty and not just cartoony like Mai Shiranui.

The bangs of her hair are made with soft plastic tough the wings are made of hard plastic and are nto artciculated, and that makes them specially delicate and must be handled with caution. Her hair have the rigth lenght and shape in the back and the aqua blue color stands out with all those different shades.

The red lipstick, awua blue eye brows and big blue eyes are perfectly painted and contrast nicelly with her pale skin (she actually looks quiet a bit like Slan from Berserk).Her chest piece and elbows are cast in the same skin color as her face with some darker shades to give them shadows in a natural way while her arms are cast in pink color plastic and her legs in purple. Theres not much color details here either aside of the bats pattern on her legs, that looks pretty perfect.

The wings are the same, cast in gun metal black with only the membrane painted in a dark purple and the claw on top on withe. Actually i think the whole color aplication is quiet cartoony as well, but it matches Morrigan perfectly (just like Demitri dosnt have too many color details on his suit either).

Her accesorys are four extra pairs of hands aside of the close fists: claw shaped hands, a pair designed to hold her arms or waist, another pair in a becoking stance and another with 3 fingers together. All of them are extremelly femenine and have a lot of personality and matches Morrigan perfectly. The color is perfect and they are pretty soft to the touch and can be swaped prettye easy despite the tiny ball joint.

Then theres 3 extra heads aside of the neutral base face head for a grand total f 4: one is smiling, another one have her have angry looking eyes while another one shows her being hit, with her mouth open and huge cartoony eyes poping out. The problem here is the neutral, smiling and angry faces are 90% the same, they are extremelly unespresive and you must to looks carefully in order to notice the tiny differences on them: the soft smile and the frown.

The last face is the opposite, extremelly expresive!! With her open mouth, with no make lipstick but her tiny teeth and mouth perfectly apinted and those huge eyes oping out of her sockets.At first i hated this head in images but in the end, i think is one of my favorite accesorys because it aknowledges the fact how Darkstalkers wasnt a serius game at all, it was less serius than Street Figther.

The next accesoryes are her wings, four in total: one with straigth neutral hair, another one being bown by the wind, another one the same but tunrning a little bit to her rigth and another one being blown to her back and flooding to the sides. This last wig is mostly for the Soul Fist pose and looks really spectacular since it recreates the shape of the sprite perfectly.

I find the other two hair pieces irrelevant tough since they looks almost the same and they take a lot of space in the box. With an articulation on the hair hidden on the back of the head, Storm could have save the space and material of this wigs, tough the sculpt is good and the paint matches the aqua blue colors of the rest of the heads, conect this pieces to her back is quiet tricky, specially with the delicate wings on her head and the wings of her back getting in the way constantly.

I am not sure if this counts as an effect, but they also included two boots shaped like giant blades. You can see the shape of her feet under them and how the gun metal black turns slowlly into metalic grey near the blade. This are pretty damn big and i am surprised how easy is to swap this for her high heel boots. Of coruse, adding two is unnecesary since she will not kick with both her two feets at the same time, but they are designed for an specific feet.

This is mostly to recreate her heavy kick, where she throws herself to her back and stand on a single leg, while the other leg rises with a balde in front. This pose is.....extremelly difficult to achive actually even with a base, but with some adjustement and posing her holding the boot with her hand and covering it with her hair, you can recreate her Shadow Blade attack as well!!

Then the real effect: the Soul Fist bat that cna be suspended in the hair using a base with an adjustable rod. This bat is exactly the same as Demitri´s except this one is smaller: made with soft transluscent plastic and painted with a mix of orange and yellow, it was pretty dissapoiting for me to see them recyce this piece. I mean, is not like Morrigan dont have much flashy moves, they could add arros to adjust to her wings, more blades or even some bats to surround here....

And lastly, theres her background: the Deserted Chateau, With the dress in one side and a gargoyle in the other and the Aensland castle in the middle. The pixel work is beautifull and this is one of the most iconic stages of Darksalkers, but i think the contast is too dark since this image dosnt looks as flashy as it looks in the game. Tough it deffinetly makes Morrigan pop out.

Its odd how many issues have this figure, from an off sculpt face to unexpresive extra heads, and redundant hair pieces and even recycled effects, i cant belive Storm took four entire years to produce this and yet....and yet, she is pretty beautifull and pretty fun to pose with all those femenine hand gestures and she just have such an amazing and unique design that shows the brillance of Capcom artistry in the 90s.

Is really bittersweet because i am not expecting Storm to release anymore Darkstalker figures, if they take this much to produce a second one and they didnt show any prototype, this line is mostly dead just like Soul Calibur VI, actually i am amazed they didnt cancelled Morrigan just like they cancelled the women from Mortal Kombat or Supermand and Batman from Injustice. Again more contrasts: Storm Collectibles makes me soo damn happy but at the same time they dissapoint me like no other company.

RYU

For the longest time now Storm Collectibles has been my favorite figures brand given the subjest they always produce: character from fighting games and they been fullfiling a lot of wishes of mine from long time ago, like figures based on Virtua Fighter or Darkstalkers, Samurai Shodown, but most of the time, they are really focused on Street Fighter. Seriuslly, like 70% of theyr production is Street Fighter based and while i love Street Fighter i somehow not been very intersted on collecting it since pretty much every single action figure brand have released every character multiple times.

But my weak point is Ryu, i been in love of Ryu since i was a little kid with Street Fighter 2 and my love for the character is constant...i mean, currently my most expensive piece of my collection is Ryu from IconiQ Studio, soo i am open to spent a lot of money on him!! Soo when Storm anounced theyr Street Fighter 6 line i was pretty sure who i was going to get.

And here he is, the Ryu from Street Fighter 6 that is basically Hot Ryu from SFV but with a cape, or is it?? For starters, this is the same sie as that Hot Ryu piece from 2017 soo this guy is shorter than most Storm figures and he can stand on his own with no problem, but unlike the Hot Ryu, this one dosnt comes with a base. I guess the Storm from now days is really very different to the Storm from back then.

This Ryu is articulated on the neck, shoulders, biceps, elbows, wrists, chest, waist, legs, knees, ankles and half feet with the usual Storm movement: a chest piece made with soft plastic that let the neck move yp and down with freedom, a buttlefly joint in each shulder, cut biceps to rotate as well as legs, double articulation in both elbows and knees and a pibot on the ankles, and given Ryu esign, theres nothing to get in the way of the articulations soo he have total freedom of movement.

The sculpt is a HUGE HUUUGGEEEE upgrade over the Hot Ryu (or the nomal Ryu from SFV) in every sence. At first i tough there was going to be some recycled elements, but theres nothing here. He looks soo incrediblly handsome from every angle, the face features are very stylish and manly but very realistic as well, he noo longer looks like an ape or a cave man. The thick eyebrows, wide mouth, full beard and stoic and manly look on his eyes looks amazing as well as his spiky hair.

The bandana is amde with soft plastic and can be removed and rotated behind his back and his body build is just as perfect as his face since he no longer have Hot Ryu´s  long torso and short legs that makes him looks out of place with other Storm figures. This Ryu is build like a greek god with long legs, perfect size hands and feet and a beautififull muscular torso. He have soft plastic bandages around his abdomen but they can be removed.

The paints have a lot of fabric texture on them and while theyr are thorn at the end of the legs, they looks much more fresh than the other Ryu´s pants and also, for the first time, this is the first Ryu that is not bare feet!! He is using sandals and while the cords of the sandals and his feet are a single sculpt, they look really nice.

The paint on the feet is kinda sloppy tough since the skin color is invading the sandals and cords, but thats hard to see at any normal distance. The pants have a lot of grey washes that makes them looks used and dirty and the kanji at his belt are painted in yellow and they looks perfect, just like the grey washes on the bandages.

The torso is cast on skin color soo theres not much paint here aside of all the scars in randome places on his muscles. They are not as dramatic as Kazuya scars and while Hot Ryu´s are osft pink, this scars are brown wich means they are older and heal. The hair is plain black and the bandana is plain red, tough his eyes are impresive looking, with the brown pupils perfectly painted.

While the beard itself is painted in black and looks good, they painted brown thin hairs in the area where the beard conects with his skin to make it looks like the breard gorws thicker gradually, but the effect dosnt work at all and the beard and skin dont mix despite this paint aplication.

Also this is my very first Storm figure with a fabric piece: his cape/ poncho thingy is made with real fabric. The tailroing is really good and not only the material is thick enough to give it weigth, but the way it wraps around his body is perfect and is wired soo it can allso be posed despite not being very long. The fabric is red but is darker at the end, where is torn apart soo it looks like it was burn. The while piece is tied together with a thick golden ring with some engrabins that canot be removed, but the whole cape can be removed and Ryu can be displayed fully shirtless (is not like it covers much tough).

In the accesorys apartment he dont have much but is not lacking stuff either: four pair of hands aside of the closed fist: relaxed hands, hands with two fingers ready to strike, open palms and claw shaped hands. All of them made with soft plastic and sharing the same skin tone as the figure, they cna be swaped pretty easy and helps toons to different battle ready poses.

he have four different heads as well: the neutral head expression, a growling face showing his teeth, a screaming face for the momentum of attack and another that i am not sure how to describe....he is basically hardening his muscles and or pushing an objetc, i dunno, but the face sculpt is really subtle but effective: his mouth is wider, the muscles on his chesk and around his mouth looks more prominent and have a furrowed brow.

The fierce looking head is less subtle and the sculpt and paint on his teeth is superv as well as the screaming face with the pink tongue isndie his mouth, the expression is really menacing and spectacular while keeping every element in check with the quality of the rest of the heads.

There is also four different bandanas. Why add soo many? I mean they all loks the same soo with one or two would do, but somehow they decided to give a bandana to each extra head.

Int he effects section he have a Hadoken, a fireball made in transluscent blue plastic and while it have different tones of blue and a white wash in the front, this effect is a little simple compared with other effects from Sorm, but i guess thats to be expected. There is also a base with an adjustable bar to keep the Hadoken fliying in front of Ryu.

And lastly, a tradition from almost all Storm Collectibles figures: a background. This time is the Genbu Temple from Street Figther 6, with a completelly white sky and grey ground with some fox statues and red Torii coming out from the grey water and a huge ancient sakura tree in the left side. While the Torii and the temple in the back have red, most of the color on this scenes comes with the pink sakura and its petals fliying around. A pretty heavenly stage for Ryu deffinetly.

The impresion is really good, and in the back of the cardboard theres a second image, an artwork of Ryu in black and white with his red bandana and a lot of ink around. It looks more like a promo poster since it have the SF6 logos as well but is a ncie touch to have this secondario option to display Ryu.

While the pint of the beard could be better and the accesorys are a little too "standar", this figure is really god looking. Hot Ryu looks almost cartoonish comapred to this guy!! He fits much better with the rest of the Storm figures but is also much more sthetic and articulations works much better and the cape is a great touch that makes this design more memorable.

Is pretty neat to see Ryu grow this much and evolve into a more solid and unique character after soo long. This may not be the best Ryu figure out there but is deffinetly th best Ryu Storm has released or any ther brand has done in this scale. Now if only they release Rashid or Ken, my (tiny) Street Figther collectoin would be complete.

MURACO

 Last year i was really surprised by Furay Planet, an original series of figures from Maestro Union; totally original characters that included a comic book with theyr story, just like Master of the Universe did 40 years ago, a concept i found really exciting and refreshing on a landscape thats been totally dominated by DC, Marvel and Star Wars and in much smaller scale, many well stablished series and characters. Its very rare to see something totally new by now.

And suddenly, two years ago was born LoseCollector, launched along side theyr first series of figures called "The Crypt". They first figure was Mr.Hyde soo it was evident they were focused on horror characters and while i let that particular figure pass, i was shocked when i saw the second figure of The Crypt series: a werewolf....i just adore and love werewolfs and wolfmen, they are my most favorite monster and LoseCollector didnt promised one, but four color variations of the same wolf in a kind of subseries inside The Crypt called "The Great Wolves".

Vozlak of the North (a white wolf), Dilim from the East (a Black Wolf), Muraco from the West (a grey wolf) and Garros from the South (a brown wolf), this wolfs seems to be inmortal and immense, aparently they are the very first ones to be cursed by lycanthropy, the ancestors of all other wolfmen. While the storyline was exciting and the figures looked exceptional, they are really expensive....

Soo i had to chose one; the black and white looked too simple for me but the brown and grey looked perfect but given my Veteran Williams is brown, i wanted something that looked very different, soo i adopted Muraco and took him home with me. This is almost like a pet thanks to his size!!!

This bad boy is HUGE....is 1/12 scale soo he is on scale as NECA, Storm or McFarlane Toys but is is literally twice the size of those and astonishingly heavy as well. You can kill someone pretty easy if you throw this wolf at theyr head. He can stand on his own perfectly....for now.

He have two ball joints on the head area, one close to the head and another close to his shoulders (like a neck) covered by a ring of soft plastic fur. This let him move his head up and down and to the sides but the big chunk of fur on his shoulders limit the movement a lot. His shoulders have a ball joint and his biceps a cut rotating artciulation while his elbows have two independent joints and of course, the wrists have ball joints.

The chest area have a ball joint as well as the waist and the legs, the thighs rotate and the knees have two independent articulations while the section at the middle of hsi calf have also a ball joint as well as the feet that rotates and move up and down. The tail also have a ball joint and the jaws open and close.

Aside of his neck articulation, everything here have total freedom of movement since he is totally nude soo the articulation construction on this figure is really impresive, tough some joints are extremelly difficult to move. The shoulders and one of the elbows articulations are pretty tigth and hot water was the only answear. This is because the shoulders must keep the masive arms in place while posed.

Same happened with his legs, they were completelly stuck and i had to use hot water to move them, but even with that, the ratchet inside the legs is pretty tigth and i dont want to change that. The legs articulations are the most important part here, i know if i keep moving them around they will get more and more lose and they wont be able to resist the masive weigth of this wolf.

The wait and chest area, not even with hot water i was able to move them but is the same as the legs: i am not sure if its a good idea to lose them because i dont want this guy to be all wobbly like a puppet of NECA´s Mantis Alien, this guy MUST keep the pose given to him, must be strong enough to hold on his two legs as much as needed and soo far, he has been powerfull enough to do it and i dont want that to changue.

The design of this monster is the basic design of a werewolf, like the blueprint of the Van Hellsing wolf but with esteroids, like.....a body building wolfman. His shoulders are masive and each muscle is extremelly defined by the sculpt and aside of the veins that cover his legs, arms and chest area and back, the skin have a very realistic texture that looks rugged and hard. The claws are hug and very sharp and the fingers are long and knotty.

Theres not much fur here tough, aside of this head and shoulders and neck area, he have hair on the back of his hands and arms, the back of his calfs and his pubic area as well as his tail. The sculpt is totally different than that of the skin tough both mix perfectly.

The face is soo awesome....the pointy ears that looks like horns, small eyes, long anout and shirt beard as well as the huge fangs protunding of his mouth, he looks similar to the Kesler Wolf  from An American Wolf in London but with more stylish face features. The red gums and tongue inside the mouth stand out a lot as well as the fangs and the vibrant yellow eyes despite being very small. Both the entire mouth and eyes are a weet look that makes them shine a lot.

The rest of the body have a mix of soft grey and dark white that looks a little like blue, with clear washes on the fur and dark washes on the muscle tissue to give volume and to make the hair shine. His chest area is also soft grey despite not having hair as well as the finggers on his feet. The claws of the feet and hands are completelly black and despite the simple color palette, the clear areas mix perfectly with the grey areas to make him looks very natural.

Theres noa ccesorys here, no base or extra heads, only 3 pairs of hands: a pair with closed fist, a pair with relaxed hands and anotehr with open claw shaped hands. Changue them is a little tricky given how heavy is the whole figure soo its better to changue them while the wolf is on a sorface and not doing while he hangs or else the articulations could be damaged.

The sculpt and paints are very consistent and looks really good and gives a descent amount of options for different poses.

My main problem ehre is, of course, the weigth. I am afraid to move him too much from the waist down and lose his joints or something like that but aside of that, this figure is impresive and perfect, like a solid 10/10 in therms of sculpt, paint and movement.

This figure have an amazing presence in the shelves and can fit on literally any kind of collection since he is such a well known monster while not having a visual element that tie him to any existing series or characters soo this figure is extremelly dynamic to display. Also while is pretty simiar looking to Veteran William and deffinetly much bigger, i dont think this is better than William, or is just that i like William soo much?

This is by far one of my favorite toys of my entire life and i am even tempted to walk around with him on my arms like Eddie Monster just to be with him all the time. This is trully a dream figure for a werewolf or monster lover and, despite the high price, this big boy is much more than that price tag. I mean i seen Good Smile company asking this same amount of money for theyr tiny miniature Figma´s soo i will try to hunt down more of this guys and get as many as i can before they sold out!