LULU

 

Final Fantasy X was the first in many ways and the last in others: it was the very first Final Fantasy to have voices and facial expressions and it was also the last to be a tradictional turn based RPG as well as the last one from the team behind the original first 10 Final Fantasy games. The next six games had some really spectacular entrys as well as others not soo shiny, but non had the voice of Hironobu Sakaguchi imprinted on them and this game was the last to echo that voice since not even X-2 had it.

Final Fantasy X was also the very last game of SquareSoft...and back then they didnt produce theyr own figures soo it was Kotobukiya that had the rigths of theyr characters and while they release lots of action figures based on VIII and X (i still dont know why IX had no merchadise) for me the cherry of the cake was theyr ArtFX statues. In 2001 they were extremelly classy and spectacular looking with Tidus and Yuna being everywhere and having limited articulations, Rikku and Auron being very rare to spot and finally Lulu and Kimahri being imposible to find and really expensive!!

And against all odds and after 23 years of search, i was able to find Lulu. She have a little bit of battle damage but i got the feeling this was going my last chance to get her and she is in 95% perfect condition. She is on 1/6 scale soo she is huge and fits perfectly in size with Hot Toys, Sideshow, Tunshi, Medicom, ThreeZero figures and she can stand on her own perfectly. I mean with that dress she is super stable, like a mountain.

Just like the others in the collection, this sculpt is completelly faithfull to the Tetsuya Nomura art design soo the details really pop up. The sculpt on her face is trully beautifull, specially on her pouty lips. It dosnt matter wath angle she is look at, the lips and nose looks pretty perfect and natural always and even her eyes are sculpted (or only one eye??? I have no idea of the eye behind her hair is actually sculpted or not).

The hair lack deffinition but this is mostly because of the material, vynil dosnt hold up extremelly intrincate designs, specially on the hair tough i do love her braids and how soft they are. Sadly, this softish material also makes it delicate since she is misisng 3 of the 4 hair ornaments.

Sadly her jewelry around her neck and earing are sculpted on top of her bdy instead of being separate pieces and this give it a pretty plain look despite how perfectly sculpted they are. Her skin is very smooth as well as her long dress texture that looks really spectacular from the back given how long is the back tail tough her corse ir sich in details and wrinkles, the part that atract more the attention are the belts.

While all belts are a whole piece, they are sculpted in layers and have different levels that wrap around each other while still keeping the flow of the dress and her exposed leg is not part of it, thats section is a hole and under it her legs are completelly sculpted, posed in a very femenine way and using black stiletos as well as black translucent stockings. All this is hidden by the dress and her feet actually touch the ground soo she is not flaoting with her dress, her legs have the perfect size and are anatomically correct (and yes, she is not using underwear).

Her Moogle plush tough is a totaly independent piece and fits nicelly around her arm ins a very natural way. The sculpt is clean and good looking for a weapon tough he is missing also the pom on his head, one of the most delicate part of his design and in vynil, one of the weakest as well.

Lulu´s skin color is very pale and makes her look like a very unatural doll tough thats fits her perfectly (unlike the very pink and healty skin color of Yuna) and the color of her hands and legs matches perfectly the color of her chest and face (most of the time this is very rare even in modern figures) with only very little shade on her chest to give it EVEN MORE volume.

The black of her eye lashes, white in here eye, brown in her pupil, her mole, the purple lipstick, every detail is perfectly painted as well as the metalic red and blue of her jewelry. The leaf details on her dress and sleeves is kinda sloppy tough and invades some black segments tough theres different tones of grey in here to make it stand out more.

Again, the belts also stand out with the many tones of black, greys blues and reds perfectly deffined as well as the metalic bits. The deffinition is impresive!!

This is an trully femenine and sexy design that gets sexyer the more you look: the goth makeup, the elegant dress, the exposed leg, the stockings and stiletos, the bosom and corse, its been soo long since Final Fantasy had a design lik this and i doubt we see it again. Nomura was really good at character designing and managed to make look cool even the most ridiculous dieas (a dress made of belts).

Maybe i see this ArtFX statues with pink colored glases, the vynil material feels kinda cheap and some of the paint is kinda sloppy, but this statues have such a huge presence on the shelves thanks to the big size and how close they look to the original artwork design, i sure wish Final Fantasy XVI had vynil statues like this instead of those useles Bring Arts crap. But also its soo easy to love this characters. Now i only need Kimahri Ronso but judging by how long it took me to get Auron and Lulu i dont know if i should give up or not.

NOSFERATU

 

One of the things i remember about the pandemic times was my hype with the Thundercats thanks to the Super 7 Ultimate action figures series, a dream come true after soo many years. Sadly, after an incredible first series (actually made by Hasbro), series 2 was a HUGE dissapointing for me and i decided to let it go and stop collecting Thundercats. Over the years i been looking at Super 7 and i been surprised to see how many complains exists for soo long thanks to the bad quality of theyr figures, the high price and some really shady actions from them - like only show computer renders of the figures unti the actual figures comes out (looking totally different).

I was pretty close to fall in theyr trap with the Silverhawks too, another of my childhood dreams, but i avoided that bullet long enough to see them re-release the figures all in silver chrome months after the first release and after they insisted they didnt had the technology to produce chrome figures. Yes they are extremelly sneaky to secure pre-orders even if they have to lie about it and i have other tells i been learning from them but i finally got another of theyr figures, i coud not resist.

Its pretty evident the remake of Nosferatu is near as wella s the 100th anniversary of the origina with soo many toys coming out this year about this character: Funkos, Mezco, NECA, Caustic Plastic and of course, Super 7 also did his version that comes in a super slick and beautifull box, perfectly fitting for a "Ultimate" figure.

This Count Orlok is in scale with standar action figures soo he fits with anything NECA or McFarlane or Storm Collectibles and can stand on his own perfectly as long as his legs are in straight position. He is articulated on the neck, shoulders, biceps, elbows, wrists, waist, legs, knees and ankles and to my susprise, all articulations works really really good (ulike the Thundercat´s). The neck is limited of course by his jacket but the rest have a very huge range of movement, even the legs.

Tough his jacket is made of fost plastic and let the legs move around there is a limit and eventually turns the legs to  a straigth position but i guess that is an inevitable restrain of the character design. While the biceps rotate pretty nicelly i am not sure i like the look of the articulation tough i am very happy with how hidden are the knes articulation and how they follow his pants shape.

The sculpt is really good; the shape of his jaw, the long nose and ears, the wrinkles around his eyes and forehead, the iconic details of this monster traslate here veryy nicelly. His body shape is correct and his jacket have a rugged texture that makes it feel like rubber while his pants have a more soft and plain texture and his shoes are pretty shiny.

For some reason tough, Super 7 decided to release him in black and white. I am not against it tough since all the figures i have of Count Orlok are colored, soo this is a nice variation for the display collection soo theres not much color here since each piece is cast on the main color....or main black, since everything is back here.

His jacket have ligther black, the pants are cast in darker black and the shoes are much more darker black while the hands and head are cast in grey plastic. The ligth grey of the skin enhance the soft trasnparency of the material soo it shynes a little bit soo the color is mostly kept for face details.

The very white eyes and fangs stand out with the the grey wrinkles around them as wella s the dark eye brows. There is also a grey wash all around soo the skin dosnt looks perfectly clean and have a natural look (as natural as this monster can be) tough the hands are clean grey and have black knukles. Why the black knuckles? I dont know tough they really made his white finger nails stand out a lot.

On the accesorys side he is pretty ligth tough. He have 4 pairs of hands: closed fist, holding hands, open hands and claw shaped hands. They cna be swaped pretty easy tiugh the finger nails are pretty soft and they were bend inside the blister but is not something that cna be fixed.

Special mention to the claw hands I LOVE THEM!!! The fingers have this bony sculpt that makes them looks like spider legs and also the points of the claws are black soo they have a very poisonous look. This inuman hands are a big part of the character look and gives him a huge expression bost.

Then theres two extra heads that are also very easy to changue despite the jacket collar. One of the heads is called "hypnotic head" in the Super 7 site but i literally cant see any difference with the bae normal head. The sculpt is exactly the same except the color is darker and actually the paint is much more slopy and the eyebrows and eyes are badly painted.

The second extra head tough is very different since he have a more pacific and focued look on his eyes and his mouth is closed, hidding his fangs. Also he have his turkish hat on, his iconic tubeteika nicelly sculpted and with a soft black color and shiny texture. This look of him is essential.

He also comes with an item that has been on all Count Orlok figure soo far: the keys of his castle. This time around instead of a chaine they allmcome together with a metalic rings tough the keys all looks the same and are painted in silver. They fit perfectly on any of the holding hands and the long finger nails keep them in place.

Lastly he have a rat. Only a single rat and it kinda looks more like a pet rat than a pest. The rat sculpt is very cute and basic tough and the paint follows the same route, with his body only having a single black color and his tail, feet and ears in soft greay with no wash or any details to make it looks more natural. It kind of looks cartony at certain degree but i guess it fits the figure, i just wish they added more rats.

Overall this is not a bad figure at all, while the accesorys are pretty basic and the paint could be better, the scult is really good and the articulations works wonderfully. Problem here is NECA´s version is much better and also half the price of this and that proofs wath i always suspected: most of the price of the Super 7 figure is mostly for the pretty box they come in.

Later this year they will release a colored version of this same Nosferatu tough i dont trust Super 7 coloring skills and i got the feeling it will looks cheaper that this version but i am happy with this black and white look.