JOE HIGASHI

 And the next opponent is Joe Higashi!!

Oh boy! It has been a long journey with both Storm Collectibles and The King of Fighters, a series that the people of Storm love very much since, along side Street Fighter, they have been releasing loads of characters of this specific series, one more amazing that the last one and this year has been specially busy with them releasing a figure almots every two weeks! The reason behind that is kind of sad for me but the good thing is we didnt had to wait years between figures.

For a fighting game enthusiast, The Kinf of Fighters is one of the strongholds that build the entire genre and give it shape, from its mechanics to its character design and while the game is full of iconic characters, some of them trully shine no matter how much time comes and goes, like Kyo and Iori, Terry and of course Joe Higashi. 

Joe has always stand out as one of the most versatile and easy to use characters with a pretty cool Muay Thai move set with pretty flashy combos but while he is really serious busines in the ring, outside he is extremelly fun and comical character that always give us the best endings since its debut in Fatal Fury. And for gaymers out there he has been our crush since the begining of the 90s, one of the very first male characters in videogames that made us fall in love and made us dream to have a boyfiriend like him when we grew up. And it only took 32 years of wait to finally have him as action figure!!!

Really, i been asking Storm in theyr social media pages for this guy for...10 years already...i wasnt expect them to actually do a Joe Higashi figure soo this guy is one of my main interest in this collection. Joe is the same scale as the rest of the Storm figures, standar size with NECA and McFarlane as well and a head shorter than Yashiro, King or Demitri and can stand on his own perfectly (tough like always, a base would have been a welcome extra).

He is articulated on the head, shoulders, biceps, elbows, wrists, chest wait, legs, knees, ankles and half feet. Like always, the chest peice is made of soft plastic soo it let his head to tilt to the front, back and to the sides pretty perfectly since the short hair dosnt get in the way. The butterfly on the shoulders moves smootly and both the elbows and knees have a double articulation. Both the biceps and tigths rotate for better adjustment and...overall his simplistic design gives him total liberty of movement. 

Actually i think this is the nudest figure soo far since Joe is using less clothes than King. The 3 pieces of shorts (hips and each leg) are made with soft plastic and the bandana on the back of his head too, but it also can rotate and be removed with a peg.

I am very very happy with the sculpt here since Joe is really handsome and they catch perfectly his playfull smile as well as his steel gaze on his eyes. The face shape is based entirelly on Shinkiro art and the hair - the part that makes me more anxious - have the rigth size to looks like Joe and at the same time looks realistic, since over the years Joe hair has changued size multiple times, size and shape as well but this particular design is the most easy to recognize.

Each strand of hair is sculpted individually and every single one of them is made with soft plastc, including the strand that falls to the front of his bandana. The body shape is perfect, very muscly and athletic but slimer than Geese or Ryu, the body of a healty Muay Thai fighter. The muscular build is pretty impresive, with veins on the arms and other sexy details along side a velvet texture.

The bandages on the wrists are also made of soft plastic and they can be removed once the hands are gone. The shorts have the rigth amount of wrinkles since is kind of tigth and looks good but aside of that theres not much detail in here to talk about since this guy is 90% nude.

The short is painted in a mix of brigth orange and soft orange mixing together and giving it a kind of "denim" look but is very soft and imposible to see on photos. The yellow lines at the bottom are a little sloppy, but the tag in front with JOE writen on it is perfectly painited. The bandages are pain white and the protection of his feet are plain brown with more yellow finishes.

Each section of the body is cast in skin color but unlike the other Storm figures, this one have a brush of pretty soft darker skin tone to give shadows and deep to the muscles. The effect is really good since everything stand out, specially on the torso and even his nipples are painted, pretty rare with the other figures of this series except for Devil Jin.

The face is pretty clean with the mouth painted just as a thin black line and the eyes shape and eyebrows are perfect. The brown on his eyes matches that of his hair, and each strand of hair have a dark wash on the base that gets lighter on the top too each strand of hair stands out individually. The bandana is plain white and the red sun in front is perfectly painted.

On the accesorys department theres not much but he have the rigth amount of items. For starters he have seven pairs of hands, all bandaged and made with soft plastic: closed fists, hands with a pointing finger, completelly relaxed hands, half relaxed hands, claw shaped hands, totally open hands and .....other pair in between them....i dont know, to be honest its kind of difficult to see the difference in some or even find use for them because they are 90% the same. Then again, is better to ave more hands than missing ones and this variety gives Joe a lot of expresivity.

Then he have two extra heads aside of the normal one with the smile. The second head is showing his teeth in a kind fo smile expression mixed with anger, while the third head is screaming. Both looks perfect on the sculpt and paint department and the inside of the open mouth is impresive painted like always.

Then he have 3 bandanas, all made with soft plastic and painted in white and they cna be attached to the back of the heads with a peg. Why 3 of the same? I dont know...its not like you can display the 3 heads ate the same time soo only one is necesary but oh well...

The biggest part on this pack is his effect, a big tornado cast in transluscent grey plastic with a black brush. It also comes with two extra rings that fit end to end at the back of the tornado with a 4 pegs. Once the rings are in place (a smaller one at the bottom and a bigger one at the top) they looks like they are wind gust floating on the tornado. They looks really good and while basically this is pretty similar to Goenitz´s, this tornado is thicker and shorter, consturcted ona single piece.

Of course, this is the famed Hurricane Upper, Joe´s most popular special movement and while i wish they added a flame effect for his feet or knees for the Tiger Kick or Ougon no Kakato, this accesory is really huge and as tall as Joe himself, soo i cant complaign.

But i can complaign about the background....a tradition on Storm Collectible figures, a background printed on cardboard, with the scene of the Japan Temple stage from KoF 98, exactly the same as Ryo Sakazaki´s. They already give us a duplicate background with Goenitz soo this is a small clue Storm is not as carefull as it used to. The printing is good and the color palette is very dark and Joe stands out on it, but i was expecting something more colorfull and spectacular for him.

Joe Higashi is a pretty simple design but Storm did a great job adding all the needed details to make him feel high quality and give it all the charm of his original character despite his simplicity (just ike Ryu) and in more than 30 years,, this is pretty much the only figure in existance of Joe, soo i am damn happy to have him on my hands and i am double happy they did such a good job with him!

Now lets just wait the next opponent...but it seems this will be the last one. Storm has been releasing a lof of the figures on pre-order at the same time because they are opening a brand new series called Storm Arena. This figures will be...well, the same characters of fight games, but cheaper and of smaller size and given how difficult is for them to release the figures as they are, i doubt they can release two different scales soo they will most probablly stop this series to focus on the miniatures.

I am not interested in miniatures, specially after investing soo much time and money to this scale already. They will release Kim, Ralf and Andy next but i am nto very interestd on them and i dont know if i may get Andy just to complete the Fatal Fury Team. I am tempted to et Nakoruru and Eartquake just to complete the Samuria Shodown line because i doubt we see more figures of this characters someday.

They anounced Jacky from Virtua Fighter years ago and i deffinetly want him but given how logn has been, maybe they cancelled him already soo my Storm Collectibles collection is on its very last moments or maybe, it already ended, i dunno. But if this is the end, i am actually happy Joe Higashi was the one giving it a worthy ending.