ZENKI

 One of the most exciting memorys from the 90s was the discovery of anime, tough anime started to invade the world in the 80s, it wasnt until the 90s when we actually got a good graps of wath anime is and how it should be with iconic works like Dragon Ball, Sailor Moon or Ranma 1/2 and one of those "blueprints" was also Zenki! Also called Kishin Douji Zenki, this anime excited me the most when i was a kid at the half of the 90s and burn in my brain how an anime should be: fluid animation with an stylish design, body horror and a monster of the week on each chapter, lots of humor, action and violence, a demonic hero that turns into a kid and a totally opposite heroin that was mostly cute, the japanese high school athmosphere mixed with the shinto tradition....

Watching this anime every day on TV was one of the most exciting moments of my everyday back then, and tough it also had a manga and videogames, it was a product of its time and once it was over, it was totally over and no one hear anyhting about Zenki for 30 fucking years until now!! Out of the blue and in the most casual way i find out theres Zenki action figures!!

This is a third party product soo it dosnt have the rigths of the series (i wonder who has them? Studion Deen, or Shounen Jump??) and the box itself was extremelly bootleg looking with pretty low quality art on it and with no logos, bar codes or any trade of info tough i learned on the internet this was made by Dasin Models. I usually try to avoid this kind of figures but i had o choice, even if it was trash, this is pretty much the only action figure of Zenki we will ever get soo it had to be mine!!

He is 1/12 scale soo he is in the same size of Figma of S.H. Figuarts, but given how tall is this guy, he is actually much bigger and is taller than the 1/10 figures like Storm or NECA, a whole head and a half figure soo his presence on the shelves is really respectable. He can stand on his own surprisingly well tough he comes with a base just to be safer.

Zenki is articulated on the back of his hair, his sideburns (yes, the hair coming out in front of his ears!!), the head, shoulders, shpulder srmor, biceps, elbows, wrists, chest, waist, legs, knees, ankles and half foot. The long hair on his back is united to his head with a ball joint soo it rotates and moves to all direction but the peg is soo small as wellas the hole that conects it, the hair keeps falling over with minimum movement and is pretty anoying.

The head have a HUGE range of movement up and down, to the sides or any direction since not only the hair on his back is made with soft plastic, but the sideburns are also made of stoft plastif and they are united to a ball joint in between the ears and the hair, soo this articulation is invisible and his his head total movement freedom.

Sadlly, the head is also pretty lose, soo while it dosnt fall over, sometimes the hair piece pull his head to the back and make posing quiet tricky. The shoulders ball joints, rotating biceps, double articulations on the elbows and wrists works really good, but the articulations on the shoulder armor is also pretty lose and this leaves a big gap sometimes that let his shoulders visible. And overall, this armor pieces really block most of the shoudlers articulation since they are made with hollow hard plastic but i guess this cant be helped and is part of the character design (many times i wondered how those shoulder pads works on the anime).

The chest and waist ball joints have a huge range of movements but they are also pretty lose and demands a lot of adjustment while posing since they move around with minimu contact. The belt is made with soft plastic soo it dosnt get in the way of the legs. The legs articulations have aso a huge range of movement to the sides, up and down and is not as lose the the upper section. The knees are also very stront and they can bend pretty deeply and that along side the rotating mechanism of the legs helps a lot for pretty cool stances. The ankles have a ball joint but they cant rotate, soo they cant be adjusted to the floor and the half feet articulation works really good.

The sculpt is really good!! His feet are long and pretty werewolf-ish looking with long nails, his legs are long and his waist is thin and shoulders pretty broad. The sculpt on his knees is really good since the inside of the articulation is also sculpted following the wrinkles of the fabric soo while bend they are well hidden, tough the joints on the legs are much more intrucive and ugly looking. 

The shoulder armor have the rigth size and the chest piece pattern looks good but the face is the best part. On all the simplicty of his design, his face matches perfectly the anime design with the small nise, long ears and a smile with a fang. The tiara with the eye is perfect as wella s the shape and size of his fiery hair and the spikes on the back are really good looking. The long hair on the back tough is pretty plane, like a piece of paper and that kind of not match the rest of the sculpt but is not that evident.

There is no texture here, no texture at all, the whole figure have a pretty smoth feel to it soo that makes it feel a little simple, but it also helps to recreate the cell shading effect of an anime character i guess. I am not sure wath to think about it here since the lack of texture helps the colors to pop up as well.

The colors are vibrant and pretty strong, with very intense and neon purples, yellows and reds but they dosnt have any kind of shade or shadow or detail, they are just the plain color and that makes them looks a little cheap, specially in the yellow section of the chest and the plates on his arms, sinc ei guess those should be metalic or golden color. Gladlly, the shoulder armor looks shiny enough to looks metalic. The pants, bandages on the arms and belt are the only sections with a darkish shadow to give deep to the wrinkles of the fabric.

Skin color looks very natural and smoth (for an animated character) and is just the plastic cast in such color soo even if it dosnt have shadows it looks good. The red eye on the tiara is perfectly painted as wella s the hair with the black color on the inside section and following the pikes, its really really good looking and the back of the ehad also have softer dark shades. The hair tal on the back is bicolor with red and black cut in half tough it looks more cartoonish than the rest of the hair.

The mouth is not only sculpted but painted as well erfectly along the little fangs too and the marks on his cheeks and eyes are pretty stuning looking!! The shape of the eye and black eyebrows as well as the small pupil looks perfectly defined!!

He comes with five extra pair of hands aside of the closed fist: closed fist with a big hole on the knuckles to add the Vajra, a pair of hands to hold the Golden Axe, a pair of hands to hold the Karma Seed, a pair of open hands and a pair with a pointing finger. The sculpt is really good, specially with the claws and the paint is consistent as well, but while they help a lot for the display, swap them is a huge pain in the ass!!! They are made of hard plastic and the peg of the wrist articulation is tiny!! I am afraid to push in the wrong angle or pull too much and i end up broking the ball joints!!

The other accesory is an extra hair tail shaped like an "S" for more dynamic poses. It have the same ball joint as the normal hair tail soo its articulated and amde with soft plastic but the peg is soo small it keeps falling over and over as well.

Zenki also includes 3 extra face plates aside of the normal smiling one: one with his mouth a little bit open for a more cocky smile, another one grinding his teeth with anger and another one shouting. While the cooky smile difference is pretty minimum, the angry face plate have his pupils painted even smaller to give him an impatient look and the shouting one have his pupils looking down. Also he is deffinetly not screaming in fury but he is half smiling as well, i guess ready to eat the Karma Seed. The inside of the mouth and small fangs on the top and bottom of the jaw are incrediblle looking at such tiny scale!!!

The problem here is how to swap the face plates: after remove the tail of hair, the back section of the head is removed and reveales a pretty small and delicate structure that joins with the neck. The front of the hair with the tiara must be removed with extreme care since the structure is pretty thin and once done, the sideburns must be posed up soo the face is free to be removed. The only thing that hold the face is a small peg but the sideburns make most of the job to hold it into place until the hair sections are added back. This proces is extremelly tricky and i really hope the inside structure is strong enough to not broke it with soo many changues.

They also added the Karma Seed, a tiny round seed with a red eye inside that oses people and turns them into monsters. Ince Zenki beat them and the human is turned back, he eats the seed to keep his powers high. This little critter was really freaky and the anime and looks pretty good in here and fits perfectly on Zenki´s hands.

Also included are the Vajra, a pair of spikes or horns that grows on Zenki´s knuckles or elbows to fight. This items are extremelly simple looking and are painted in brigth crimson and have a peg in the bottom. They fit perfectly on his closed fists but sadly, the peg is too thick for the small holes on his elbows soo i can use them there!! I need to cut the extra part of the peg but given how small it is, i am afraid i broke it.

Then is the Golden Axe, an axe shaped like a twisting dragon holding a blue jewell with the axe coming out from it. The weapin fits perfeclty on Zenki´s hands and the sculted scales of the body and head full of spikes are really good looking!! The golden paint fits nicelly as well as the shiny green used on the jewell mixed with the silver of the blade.

And finally, theres the base; a black octagonal base with no logos or marking and a transluscent articulated arm and a clamp to hold onto Zenki´s waist. The base is very simple and elegant and while the arm is kind of short and wont let you pose Zenki fliying or jumping, it does the work perfectly fine to keep him in balance in a very easy way soo i guess theres no complaing there.

There is a Chaiky Enno figure as wellby Dasin Models but i am not sure if i will getr her since she was never a character i liked very much given how she acted towards Zenki, my true interest in the series was Zenki himself since i really crushed pretty hard on him when i was a kid. But having both together would be nice as well.

I wasnt sure wath to expect but this figure is really good looking and a lot of fun to play with!! I can live with some simple loking elements on his visuals and the loose articculations but the hands and face changues mechanism really worrys me and the inability to use the Vajra on his elbows was disaponting but still, this figure is much better than many more official and expensive figures (Figma...) and even if it wasnt, even if it was a trash product, is impsoble for me to not feel hype and excitement for finally have a Zenki action figure!!! Now if only They made Ghost Sweeper Mikami figures!!!