Despite my fitting in the demographic, I'm actually not much of a Star Wars fan. Don't get me wrong - it's not like I grew up with Prequels or anything. In fact I was in the theatre for I believe Empire Strikes Back. I just didn't care for it - it was Transformers or bust. So it shouldn't surprise that you I effectively have no merchandise in my trove here, just anime tiddies.
But, I did enjoy aspects of The Mandalorian, and even then I really just window browsed. Then I saw how pretty much every company just butchered the face of Katee Sackhoff, the actor behind Bo-Katan Kryze. I can forgive the Black series cause, well, it's Hasbro and there was no hope in hell of that ever being accurate, but the Hot Toy looked like John Cena in drag. So, much to my surprise, the Mafex offering came across my figurative desk and the head sculpt looked.. pretty good. To be fair, that's really the case wit most of the Mafex stuff - their digital faces are generally more accurate than other 1/12 offerings, but you certainly pay a premium for it.
So I preordered her, and lo and behold, she was finally released.
Being the most casual level of fan, I have absolutely no idea how accurate this figure is (outside of the face). I do know the colours are about right, the helmet looks about right, and you get both her blasters and jet pack (with thrust effects). Sadly, no tactical nuke action as the missile is fixed. There's quite a few hands, but most of the are for posing, with the only accessory hands being the pistol grip pair.
You can also swap out attachments for the right gauntlet - a knife, and a grapnel cable.
So the figure overall looks a bit chunky, which is fine given how the character is wearing battle armour. Holsters are functional, made of some softer plastic that doesn't seem like it'll cause paint rub issues with the blasters.
I realize that I might have overexposed this photo, but hopefully you can make out how the facial structure, along with digital paint used for the eyes, eyebrows, and other painted features come together and create a pretty good facsimile of the actors face. She's probably the most accurate Mafex sculpt I've seen... maybe the Ahsoka release is even better? The sculpted headband and hair are decent - functional but lets be honest here, it's not exactly possible to do too much fine detail at a size this small.
Swap out the head for the helmet and attach the Jetpack, and you get Bo-Katan in battle mode.
The helmet features a targeting scope that rotates into position. The Jetpack, while effectively non functional, is nicely sculpted and is the right size for the figure.
With regards to the forearm replacement, the first challenge was actually getting the thing out to expose the socket. It took me a while, but I finally pried it out and it looks like that the painters got a bit too excited and sealed the seams. Fortunately I was able to get the piece out without any serious damage.
Articulation is... really not that great. The figure is built on the standard Mafex body, which is decent but not mind blowing. The issues is that most of the other females aren't anywhere near this big, and as such you lose most of the range of motion to bulk. Even the pull down hips, which give your typical figure that much more leg articulation, serves to give this figure standard amounts of articulation. The knees, despite being double jointed, don't really give you a whole lot to work with, and this figure really can't spread its legs.. Overall, you're effectively getting Black levels of articulation, albeit with an improved neck with both the heads, so don't get too excited about making dynamic poses.
Paint Applications are pretty solid. Mafex paint work can be hit and miss, but I think because I've only bought so many, I've been erring on the right side of the statistic. Indeed, while there are sections where the base plastic does the work, armoured sections are painted with competently, as are the various "leather" sections. I've already mentioned the face being painted quite competently. The painting on the hair isn't particularly subtle, but it isn't overly thick or poorly done such that the detail on the underlying hair is lost.
Finally, we have Build Quality. Truthfully, the biggest issue pertaining to this would be the unfortunate state of the forearm piece. Other than that, things are pretty good and behave as expected. No visible issues with regards to poor finishes or assembly.
Overall, the Mafex Bo-Katan Kryze figure is probably the best of the figures I've seen of the character. Certainly the best unhelmeted portrait, and the figure itself has some solid production values. The main issue, at least for me, is that visually it's nice but from an articulation perspective, it's really only marginally better than a Hasbro release, despite costing significantly more. If your posing requirements aren't that high, consider this one if you want to do an unhelmeted look. Otherwise, unless you really love the accessories or demand that high definition uniform, I'd stick with the Hasbro release.
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