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.