LULU

 

Final Fantasy X was the first in many ways and the last in others: it was the very first Final Fantasy to have voices and facial expressions and it was also the last to be a tradictional turn based RPG as well as the last one from the team behind the original first 10 Final Fantasy games. The next six games had some really spectacular entrys as well as others not soo shiny, but non had the voice of Hironobu Sakaguchi imprinted on them and this game was the last to echo that voice since not even X-2 had it.

Final Fantasy X was also the very last game of SquareSoft...and back then they didnt produce theyr own figures soo it was Kotobukiya that had the rigths of theyr characters and while they release lots of action figures based on VIII and X (i still dont know why IX had no merchadise) for me the cherry of the cake was theyr ArtFX statues. In 2001 they were extremelly classy and spectacular looking with Tidus and Yuna being everywhere and having limited articulations, Rikku and Auron being very rare to spot and finally Lulu and Kimahri being imposible to find and really expensive!!

And against all odds and after 23 years of search, i was able to find Lulu. She have a little bit of battle damage but i got the feeling this was going my last chance to get her and she is in 95% perfect condition. She is on 1/6 scale soo she is huge and fits perfectly in size with Hot Toys, Sideshow, Tunshi, Medicom, ThreeZero figures and she can stand on her own perfectly. I mean with that dress she is super stable, like a mountain.

Just like the others in the collection, this sculpt is completelly faithfull to the Tetsuya Nomura art design soo the details really pop up. The sculpt on her face is trully beautifull, specially on her pouty lips. It dosnt matter wath angle she is look at, the lips and nose looks pretty perfect and natural always and even her eyes are sculpted (or only one eye??? I have no idea of the eye behind her hair is actually sculpted or not).

The hair lack deffinition but this is mostly because of the material, vynil dosnt hold up extremelly intrincate designs, specially on the hair tough i do love her braids and how soft they are. Sadly, this softish material also makes it delicate since she is misisng 3 of the 4 hair ornaments.

Sadly her jewelry around her neck and earing are sculpted on top of her bdy instead of being separate pieces and this give it a pretty plain look despite how perfectly sculpted they are. Her skin is very smooth as well as her long dress texture that looks really spectacular from the back given how long is the back tail tough her corse ir sich in details and wrinkles, the part that atract more the attention are the belts.

While all belts are a whole piece, they are sculpted in layers and have different levels that wrap around each other while still keeping the flow of the dress and her exposed leg is not part of it, thats section is a hole and under it her legs are completelly sculpted, posed in a very femenine way and using black stiletos as well as black translucent stockings. All this is hidden by the dress and her feet actually touch the ground soo she is not flaoting with her dress, her legs have the perfect size and are anatomically correct (and yes, she is not using underwear).

Her Moogle plush tough is a totaly independent piece and fits nicelly around her arm ins a very natural way. The sculpt is clean and good looking for a weapon tough he is missing also the pom on his head, one of the most delicate part of his design and in vynil, one of the weakest as well.

Lulu´s skin color is very pale and makes her look like a very unatural doll tough thats fits her perfectly (unlike the very pink and healty skin color of Yuna) and the color of her hands and legs matches perfectly the color of her chest and face (most of the time this is very rare even in modern figures) with only very little shade on her chest to give it EVEN MORE volume.

The black of her eye lashes, white in here eye, brown in her pupil, her mole, the purple lipstick, every detail is perfectly painted as well as the metalic red and blue of her jewelry. The leaf details on her dress and sleeves is kinda sloppy tough and invades some black segments tough theres different tones of grey in here to make it stand out more.

Again, the belts also stand out with the many tones of black, greys blues and reds perfectly deffined as well as the metalic bits. The deffinition is impresive!!

This is an trully femenine and sexy design that gets sexyer the more you look: the goth makeup, the elegant dress, the exposed leg, the stockings and stiletos, the bosom and corse, its been soo long since Final Fantasy had a design lik this and i doubt we see it again. Nomura was really good at character designing and managed to make look cool even the most ridiculous dieas (a dress made of belts).

Maybe i see this ArtFX statues with pink colored glases, the vynil material feels kinda cheap and some of the paint is kinda sloppy, but this statues have such a huge presence on the shelves thanks to the big size and how close they look to the original artwork design, i sure wish Final Fantasy XVI had vynil statues like this instead of those useles Bring Arts crap. But also its soo easy to love this characters. Now i only need Kimahri Ronso but judging by how long it took me to get Auron and Lulu i dont know if i should give up or not.

ISAAC CLARKE

 Why i like soo much Isaac Clarke? I never liked armored or mechanical looking characters, i even dont like Batman at all on the movies thanks to his robot looking outfit and a guy on an astronaut suit is the same for me, yet i somehow like a lot Isaac Clarke design, there is something cool on him, even if he looks soo bulky and slow moving, that i find really fascinating, specially on Dead Space 3 with the furry neck section.

Of course, maybe is because i love his game as well, one of the very first Playstation 3 games i played and probablly the most notable survival horror of its generation (with Resident Evil turning into the Rambo route and Silent Hill in total decadence) that manage to balance pefectly action with suspense, psychological horror with gore and a space age horror that i only seen on Alien. Dead Space is a game, even the thrid one with all its flaws is pretty much the best representation of At the Mountains of Madness.

Somehow tough there was a lot of merchadise of the games, something not even Silent Hill had back then and somehow, even more rare, i let it pass most of them and only got the ThreeZero 1/6 scale figure and the ArtFX statue from Kotobukiya, the subject of this entry!!

This guy is big...like, really big, the same size of a 1/6 scale figure from Sideshow or Hot Toys but considering the legs are flexing he is on a bigger scale and also he is really really heavy as well. Tough with the base included he can stand on his own perfectly with no problem.

Also despite being an statue this Isaac is articulated: the head and wrists and also his plasma cutter main section can rotate just like other versions of the plasma cutter. The weapon mid section and the hand that holds it have a cut joint that only rotates in one single direction, while the head and the freem wrists have ball joint and have a little bit more of freedom of movement.

The display options are limited but having them in this kind of product is rare. You can have Isaac looking at front, pointing his plasma cutter to his rigth or covering himself with the weapon from the left, the most anoying part is actually the plamsa cutter since it covers his face thanks to the position of the arm and while turning it around it also clashes with the monitor on his chest.

But once the plasma cutter is out of the way the view of Isaac is perfect. The sculpt is really really bautifull with all the intrincate detail on his suit perfectly represented, specially the furry neck piece. The protunding peices on his legs  like the jets and the knes wprotection are made of softplastic as well as the weird rails on his arms and the little jets on the shoulders while the rest of the body is made with high quality plastic, pretty dense plastic.

I love the different textures on each section, not only the furry neck but each part, like the knes section, is made on a different fabric and the protectors of the legs are full of scratches and other worn details. Even the green "cord" thingy that navigates around his legs and chest area is a real cord carefully enbroided with the plastic of the sculpt!!

The helmeth is perfect as well, again mixing cloth texture with metal and the only part that is missing any kind of detailing is the monitor machine on his chest. Theres no paint of sculpt there and thats odd given how crazy detailed is everyhting else, tough its imposible to see this section soo its OK i guess. Tough i still wish they articulated his shoulder soo he can move away the plasma cutter to see this monitor...

The paint job is amaxing! Very rich in diferent colors, greys, blacks, greens, browns, golden, metalic tones and other. Unlike the Three Zero version that have a brownish outfit, this one is grey with a dark wash on it that gives it a texture of a puffy materal. I think this is closer to the game design tough, i dont know why Three Zero went with the brownish look.

His mechanical boots have gret metalic with also cooper looking colors as well as golden tones, all with some dark washes to make them look dirty and very worn and the plasma cutter have the same color palette and worn feature, it looks pretty old and dated but that was Isaac main design concept.

Each bag on his belt have different tones of green and brown and his helmeth also have a big variety of tones of metal and golden. Its odd how this figure may looks just dark and simple but is actually pretty rich design wise!! Also the fur have a yellowish paint finish to  make it looks much more natural.

The only missing thing that the Three Zero version have is actual snow on top of his helmeth and outfit. I guess thats ask too much? But the snow base compensate that a little bit. The base is hollow and is the most ligth part of the piece with some simple blues to give a little bit of shadow to the snow.

Tough there is a corpse, or a piece of a corpse at least as wel where Isaac is standing. Theres a spinal cord and a littl of muscle structure with no shape at all with a dramatic spray of blood covering the snow in that section. Looks gruesome even if its imposible to know wath it is and helps a lot to condence the horror aspect of the series in a single figure.

Aside of the amazing sculpt and out of this world painting and high size, this figure have extra feature: led ligths. The top section of the waist can be removed to reveal a box for 3 batterys. Once they are in place and the top section reconected, with the push of a very discret button on his back the ligths turn on: the life bar on his back, the oxygen metter at the side, his gravity module on the palm of his hand and of course, his helmeth.

While the Three Zero use different ligths for each section (green, yellow and blue) this guy have only blue for everything and the ligth is actually pretty pretty strong since the actual ball joints are the bulbs. The effect is really spectacular and stands out even with all the ligths on and is easy to use.

I cant complaing in here about anything, this is a perfect representation of Isaac Clarke and maybe is better than the Three Zero one? I dont know...both have very different colros and the 1/6 scale one have a beautifully tailred suit and the different colors of the led ligths are oustanding but this Kotobukiya ArtsFX is really brillant as well.

There is a Figma and a Pop Up parade coming based on the remake but i doubt they reach this level of perfection.

AURON

 

With the release of Final Fantasy X, Kotobukiya noy only released action figures of the monsters of the game, but also a collection of giant scale vynil statues of the main characters. The first two figures were pretty easy to find: Tidus and Yuna, but the second serires was much more troublesome; Auron and Rikku and the last characters; Lulu and Kimahri were extremelly difficult to find and very expensive.

I got Yuna at a very low price but the main star for me was Auron deffinetly, since he is my favorite character from the entire party i was extremelly excited for him, specially with his size he looks really spectacular since he towers over Yuna an entire head and a half. He is actually one of the tallest figures from my collection almost matching Sideshow.

Auron can stand on his own perfectly without his sword, but with the sword on his hand he have a little bit of trouble getting balance tough at times the sword help him to stand too. He came with a big round black base but i dont have the base anymore.

Despite the size, he is pretty light thanks to the material and he have only one articulation on one of his wrists to move the sword direction a little bit tough the movement is mostly useless.

The sculpt is really really good, based on the Tetsuya Nomura artwork, he is standing in avery heroci way with his outfit being moved by the wind, included his sleve. The belts, the carving on his wrist piece and shoulder pad, everything is perfectly done and specially his face. You cant see his face under the eyes but he is actually really really handsome under the collar piece, his face features are chiseled and i really love his intense blue eye.

The color is pretty clean just like Yuna, to give it a kind of anime look. Most of the figure is cast on red and blue vynil soo the paint is limited to the small details of his design, like the white strips on his pants, his boots, the shulder pad, etc. The paint aplication isnt perfect but i am glad the paint of his hand matches the skine tone of his face.

Again, the face is the best part of the paint, with his vibrant blue eye and white hairs on his hair, they really were carefull painting his face, the most important part despite being half covered.

My statue is incomplete tough, since its missing the sake bottle on his wait as well as his gllases. This two items are pretty delicate since aside of being small, the just hang from him in a very flimsy way. I regret the most not having his glasses since they add a lot of personality to him but at the same time i can see his eye much better without them.

His other accesory is his GIANT sword. Its huge..as tall as Auron himself and i never notice his gigantic was his weapon on the game....the blade is pretty thick and strong with metalic tones and the handle is very colorfull with a weird carving on it. Pretty nice looking sword tough thanks to its size and how old it is, the sword handle is bending already. Gladlly, this can be noticed only by looking at it in certain angles.

The sword is pretty difficult to put on his hand tough thaks t the hard material and each time i remove it i am afraid to broke it, also take a whole lot of space on the shelf....but since it helps him stand its impossible to display him witouth his weapons, not the mention the iconic pose.

While Yuna is a very nice statue, this Auron is really really impresive, even after 20 years he still stands over other figures thanks to the incredible design on Nomura and great crafting of Kotobukiya. I am even tempted to buy him again to get his glasses and sake bottle but he is soo expensive....and getting Lulu and Kimahri is really imposible now.

YUNA

Back in 2000, when Final Fantasy was extemelly popular and jumping to next gen (and finally getting voices) Kotobukiya was at full force releasing action figures based on the creatures and monsters from FF VIII and X but they never released a human character somehow, instead they released the cast of both games as vynil statues that for some reason were extremelly pricey (for back then standar) and pretty difficult to find.

Pretty difficult except the first two of the X serires: Tidus and Yuna and while i am not too much of a fan of Yuna i really dislike a lot Tidus soo i ended getting only Yuna. She have a huge scale, the same size as a Hot Toys or Sideshow figure and can stand on her own with no problem tough she came with a black round base but i dont have it anymore.

She is articulated only on the wrists to turn around her hands. Pretty usless except for adjust her accesory soo she is a statue on all sence of the word. She is not my favorite character but i dont dislike her either, in the game she wasnt as anoying as many of the female FF characters and i loved her fighting style based on Summons soo i was pretty happy with her back then.

She is pretty, really pretty, I think Kotobukiya did a great job esculpting her soft face features with a little bit of anime touch, more focused on the Tetsuya Nomura illustrations than her render. The folds on her upper outfit and sleves are realistic enough and are fluid enough despite her pose to be extremelly simple. She is just there standing still and yet she dosnt look stiff thanks to the gesture on her hands and very subtle movement on her dress.

I am actually glad she is not arms open jumping or something, with her size that would be very difficult to handle.

The paint is wath makes the sculpt shine. Her dress have very soft hues of blues to give it volume while her sleves have soft pink. Her hair is kinda plain tough, i wish they give her more shadows and shades but i guess they wanted it to match her skin, since this section is cast on skin colored vinyl, with no texture and paint at all.

The intrincated design of shadows on her dress and waist piece (obi?) are actually printed like stickers soo they are really vibrant and perfectly deffined. Her face is beautifull, with soft pink lips and a blue and a green eye to show the amazing attention to details.

Her only accesory aside of the missing base is her staff, with a good sculpt but a really awesome paitning. I do love the aquatic tones of blue on the staff as well as the deep browns. Its kinda difficult to put the staff on her hand thanks to the rigid nature of vynil but once installed its direction can be moved by moving the wrist of Yuna.

Now, this figure is old, 20 years old and is pretty dusty and have some scratches here and there, also she is missing the big ribbon on her back. I try to clean her as much as i could and curate the scratches but i wasnt able to do anything about the ribbon soo excuse the incompletness of this piece.

Overall, she is really pretty. Considering her Play Arts action figure as well as the Play Arts Kai, i think this is the most pleasent and aesthetical accurate representation of the character: soft, serene and really pretty. Tough as pretty as she is, my waifu wasnt Yuna....but Lulu.....and sadly, she was crazy expensive back then and now she is even more.

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.