DIABOLOS

 

The very first action figure serires for Final Fantasy came from Bandai and Kotobukiya, both working on the characters and the monsters to match the scale of each other. While the characters were nicelly detailed for theyr size, the real meat for the collection were the creatures; the Guardian Force. Figures like this were hard to belive back in the final years of the 90s.

While i no longer own the full collection (and my Odin gor broken) i still keep a few of them like Shiva and Siren, but of course, i also have my favorite Guardian from Final Fantasy VIII; Diabolos. And this guy not only was one of the rarest figures back then, but he didnt come on a puny blister like his sister, instead he came on a big box with a widnow to make him look more impresive.

And impresive he is deffinetly, even after 20 years. He is much more taller than the female creatures, much more heavyer and his wingspan is huge!! Of course, he still suffer the same curse from the rest of the creatures: he cant stand on his own, soo he came with a black simple base with an arm. I no longer have the base tough.

He is articulated on the head, shoulders, elbows, wrists, legs, knes and ankles, all cut articulation soo theres not a whole lot of posability in here but thats not neccesary since he looks imponent and regal just standing still. Oh, he is also articulated on the wings with a metalic rod, soo the wings can move left and rigth and up and down, tough its imposible they stay in place given how ehavy they are (i am sure that metal rod is the only reason why the wings hasnt broke).

The sculpt is really good, his musculature complex and the scaly texture on his wings and for on his legs is nicelly done. I specially love his face, extremelly odd to the point is hard to discenr how to look, but once you look closelly, you can see his eyes and tiny teth and even his gums. The gesture of his claws and legs are really good and catch his personality perfectly.

Paint is not too complex, just vibrant red in here with deep black in there, some gradients on his wings and purple on his tail but again, his eyes, gums and teeth are soo nicely painted in a coper color for such a small scale is impresive. And speaking of his tail, i just wish it was somehow articulated or made with bendy material since it gets on the way too much.

And unlike the rest of the creatures, he is completelly alone, no small monster with him and no accesory either, wich is OK given the masive size of this guy.

Really, this is a very difficult figure to handle, i am still afraid to broke him given how cheap are the articulations and how heavy are his wings, he is also pretty troublesome to pose around for the same reason, but i cant help but love him soo much, this is deffinetly my favorite Final Fantasy creature closelly followed by Shiva.

SHIVA

 It was when Final Fantasy reached its full potential at the Playstation one when it was also born as an action figure brand. It wasnt the Play Arts line but Bandai and Kotobukiya the ones responsible of the Final Fantasy VIII action figures, main characters and monsters. I sell most of them sadly, but i keep a few and one of them was Shiva.

For some reason Shiva was extremelly difficult to find, she was rare along side Diabolus and Gilgamesh and my mother found her at one of her trips to USA, tough not the original version, but the clear version. Since then i been triying to get her original painted version but with no luck. Back then repaints of clear version of figures were pretty common, now day would be unthinkable.

And in Shiva´s scenario, the clear version fits her nicelly since she is the Guardian Force of ice. She is in the same scale as Siren, but unlike her, Shiva have a lot more articulations: her head, shoulders, elbows, wrists, legs, knes and ankles. All of them cut joints soo they can only move on one direction soo she is still not as posable as modern figures at all.

Also, articuations play against her since che cant stand on her own. To fix this they give her a kind of ice pedestal for she to be on top of it but of course...her ankles and knes articulations make her fall even with the base soo i had to use another one with an arm and a clamp to stand her. This is a very serious isse and i always wondered f the painted version had this problem.

The sculpt of Shiva is as close as it can be to Nomura art, her body is lean and pretty simple and aerodynamic and both the crest on the back of her head and the tentacles at the side are made with soft plastic, but still they get in the way pretty often and are very anoying.

She is of grey ransluscent plastic, with the back of her head, hands and feet un soft blue and the ice base in darker blue, wich looks really beautifull with the rigth light, is like an ice sculpture. She also have blue paint on her beasr and pointy sections as well as metalic pink on her tentacles soo she is nt completelly clear.

Tough her face have no paint so her face features arent too clear since they only depend on the sculpt. This is the detail i dont like, if her face was painted then this figure would have been totally perfect.

She has no accesory like Siren togh i guess the ice base count, but she have two companions: two extra Guardian Force creatures, Carbuncle and Moguri. Both are tiny, nicely sculpted and have some minor paint jobs on Carbuncles diamond and eyes as well as Mogu eyes and nose. Aside of that they are completelly transluscent, one cast in green and the other in red.

After 20 years i am still looking for the original version of Shiva, she is one of my favorite Guardian Force from Final Fantasy and she looks beautifull fully painted, tough for now this clear ice version is enough i guess, specially considering how difficult to find she is.

SIREN

 Turning back in time, to the last years of the 20th century, was when Final Fantasy reach its glory point as well as it was born on the action figures industry too. It wasnt FF VII the one that started selling figures tough, but it was Final Fantasy VIII in the hands of Bandai and Kotobukiya. Bandai released figures of the main characters while Kotobukiya put the "creatures" of the game on the shelves. The coolest part is that both companies used the same scale soo the "creatures" are taller than the human characters.

Sadlly, i sold all my collection and a couple of the creatures too but i keep a few and now i been triying to get again those misisng monsters in my collection. The serires focused on the Guardian Force and the very first one i got was as well the very first Guardian Force of the game: Siren. The scale is not as big as i rememberded tough since she is a a little smaller to the average modern action figure scale.

She cant stand at all thanks to the odd shape of her legs but she comes with a plane plate base with an arm to help her stand. Sadlly, i lose her base soo i had to use a generic one that works perfectly for her. As an action figure from that time, she is not very articulated: shoulders, elbows, legs, knes and wings and all this segments use cut joints, soo they only move on one direction.

There is not too much logic on moving her legs since she could not stand at all and the arms movement is soo limited, the most helpfull articulations are on her wings. The sculpt is nice, pretty faitthfull to Tetsuya Nomura design, she is almost like a statue and her legs are sculpted leaning to her side. Is a nice touch to not give her a totally generic pose.

Most of the details are on the feathers and face and still those details have a very soflt scultpting. Color is the same, the body is cast on flesh tone soo most of it is on her wings tough the colors are pretty nice and vibrant, blue, greens and purples, i specially love her metalic purple claws as well as her lips and eyes.

She have two accesoryes, one is her harp. Is nicelly sculpted and painted in green with gold and even the cords are metalic, tough is very difficult for her to hold it thanks to the shape of her hands, a reall strugle! The second accesory is a completelly different Guardian Force: Cactuar!!

Cactuar is tiny, perfectly sculpted and perfectly painted. The only downside is that he cant stand at all, but he match with any other FF figures line no matter the scale.

Despite the details could be better and the useless articulations, this figure was soo impresive back then... she looked soo pixelated and blurry on the Playstation game, it was such a luxury see this character in HD and this is also probablly the best design this monster ever had.