DEVILMAN

 Its been a long time since the last adition to the Devilman collection because, despite how well known he is now thanks to Netflix, toy companys leave the license completelly a long time ago. But there was a time when Toy R´Us and other places where full of Devilman figures and products and i remember seen them in awe throght the PC screen, when i was a teen.

One of the figures i saw back then was Medicom Real Action Heroes Devilman, a 1/6 scale figure that was considered one of the most expensive merchadise of the characters and after 25 years of seen images of such figure, against all my expectations, i finally was able to get him!!

Its odd to see how simple looking is th box of this figure despite being a limited edition (number 989 from ???) and how this was (or still is??) Medicom more expensive and premium line but i guess this was in line of how this figures looked in last century - 1997 to be more precise.

Like i said, this is a 1/6 scale figure soo he is really big and the same size as modern figures of Hot Toys, Sideshow, Asmus, ThreeZero and he have no base and can stand on his own....sometimes, since his articulations are kinda loose soo its just a matter of find the rigth balance spot and he can stand with no problem tough i dont know for how long, soo its best to use a base with this figure.

He is articulated in the neck, waist, shoulders, elbows, legs, knees and ankles and all of them use ball joints soo they have a big range of motion or at leats the head, waist and knees and ankles does, they turn around nicelly and tilt in different directions tough the legs articulations are restricted by the pants and the elbows...for some reason they dont move to the sides too much.

Also, i got other Medicom figures, Real Action Heroes actually, and the materials used on theyr bodys are really cheap and break pretty easy and given how old is this Devilman, i am really afraid the plastic used on the articulations just turn into dust if i aply too much force to it.

Actually this figure is soo strange i am not sure i can explain how it is build....is basically a base body with big transluscent plastic ball joints on each section and is completelly modular because each section can be removed and dismembered. Is pretty strange but then again, i am afraid soo much removal of sections can damage the plastic pegs.

Then, covering the each section, there is a plastic "skin" with the sculpture of Devilman, soo in reality this feels like....a dummy generic figure with a Devilman costume? I dont know and i really dont know if other Medicom figure worked like this but i got the feeling this was the first try to make a figure like the modern TB League figures: a metalic articulated eskeleton with a soft plastic skin to cover all articulations.

This seems to replicate the basic idea but its not made correctly since the articulations are very much visible and the only nebefit here is the skin texture with the soft plastic. The sculpt is nice tough, despite the material theres a lot of wrinkles and life like details here, like veins on the arms and chest and hair on his abs. The hands are totally made of soft plastic soo they are pretty soft and realistic to the touch tough they are useless to hold any kind of accesory.

The head is the best part deffinetly, the sculpt is on point with Go Nagai art style and character design with his wing structure looking completelly irregular and very organic looking, with the pointy horns, wide eyes and giant mouth full of fangs. The upper fangs are protunding and the way the fangs follow the mouth shape make it looks like a piranha and the tongue is sculpted behind them.

The paint is really good too, with the skin tone looking very solid and the fangs in yellow stand out agains the red of the inside of the mouth. The eyes are yellow too with red veins aroudn them and while the rest of the head is black it does have red airbrush around that makes the wings reflect the ligth very nicelly despite the "all black" image it have.

Sadly,, the skin tone of the rest of the body is ligther than the face color but i am not sure if thats how it was made or if the march of time affected the color of the body thanks to the soft material. The torso is pretty muscly tough it also have in-human features like the protunding ribcage and the opening section on the chest. The hairs sculpted on the back and on his abs is very nice as well as the open scars on his shoulders.

The body have different tones of skin colors, airbrush of softher and lighter tones with darker ones to give volume to the musculature and some artofocial shadow. It looks good in close inspection actually and the part that stands put more are the hairy bits.

The hairy legs tough.....instead of sculpting them, Medicom decided to give him pants, literally, black velvet pants. This limits the legs articulations but while i understand the effect they try to give it, they looks too much, well....like pants. Also they have a tail made with soft plastic in the back but its not articulated and just hand in the back, while the material helpt it flow a little bit to make it looks natural, i wish it was wired.

The only accesory this figure have are his wings but Medicom wanted to be really inventive as well in here and instead give us a set of plastic wings, they made a steel plate covered in back velvet. Put the wings on is really difficult since theres two cuts on Devilman back and the metal plate must be slide on them but the plates are really sharp like a blade!! Not only they cat cut fingers pretty easy, but i am afraid they also cut the soft plastic skin of the figure as well!!

Once instaled the wings plate cna be shaped in different ways and while the idea is pretty good, the wings are actually extremelly small. They looks very "toy-ish" and the black velvet material looks kinda cheap.

Its odd because this figure is full of pretty inovative ideas like plastic skin covering the figure articulations and vendable metalic wings but it seems they didnt had the technology back then to full fill all this ideas. And despite the funny looking pants and small furry wings, the body sculpt is really good and the head looks fantastic as well and in the end, this is pretty much the only Devilman in 1/6 scale to ever exist.

Compared to wath IconiQ Studio is doing rigth now with Street fighter or Tunshi with Samurai Shodown, or Hot Toys and other 1/6 scale brands are doing, this figure looks pretty cheap, rough and rugged, but somehow.....that fits Go Nagai art style and his characters and i got the feeling back in 1997 this figure was incrediblly impresive and advanced for its time.

In the end this figure looks like a pretty old and vintage japanese toy but it really thats wath it is, a product of its time and i am happy that, after seeing images of it for 25 years i finally can touch it and play with it (tough i am afraid to broke it and i am sure those pants and wings will get extremelly dusty pretty fast) and despite its faults, this is one of the cloest representations i ever seen of the core design of Devilman.