While most of the world is enamored with Pokemon, I found myself more vested in another show - Digimon. I mean, both shows were anime and as a result weren't reflective of reality, but there's something about a show featuring creatures that didn't physically exist and could turn from an egg, to a cat, to a half naked woman REALLY resonated with me. I actually watched a lot of it, including most of Season 3, which was really interesting with the designs and overall tones, and also having an actual story line. Haven't watched anything since, but seeing the series brought back to the public eye from time to time does bring a smile to my face.
So when it comes to character goods, specifically action figures, Bandai has always had the license (or at least as far as I know). Bandai makes Figuarts, and of course eventually some Digimon stuff showed up. A few weeks ago, one of their more recent efforts, Dukemon/Gallantmon: Rebirth of Holy Knight, went on 'clearance" on BBTS. So I bought one and was eager to see what the high end Bandai touch could do for this type of character.
Ok, so I have no idea why this character has two names, but if I remember correctly the character first made an appearance in Season 3 as on the evolved Digimon when the concept of Matrix Evolution was introduced, merging the Tamer with the Digimon. Whatever the case this, the character design is awesome. Now this is specifically the Rebirth of Holy Knight version, which I presume is from a later series or movie that I didn't watch. I did notice that there was a release of the character under the much earlier D-Arts line. which might be something I should look up down the line if it's dirt cheap.
Now the actual box of the figure is massive due to the size of the Aegis and Lance. Retail price on this figure was 9,000 Yen, and I can tell you right now if you're counting accessories you're gonna have a kitten, as in addition to the aforementioned gear, you really only get two additional hands, a wired fabric cape, and extension for the crest on his head, and a Base/Stand along with relevant adapters.
I've jumped a bit ahead here and fully decked out the figure for this photo. so expect the bulk of my photography to be of a naked figure. But, I have to say this figure looks magnificent. and just jumping ahead, the money didn't go into crazy articulation or anything like that, it went into the super pimped out finish on the guy. I think with the exception of some slight flaws on the smallest of facial details, this figure is beautiful.
There are no square corners on this guy, yet, pretty much everything is sanded and painted to perfection - the strange exception would be the braid extension which I guess was meant to mimic fabric but they fell a bit short on the polish. The base Grey is a pearl finish whereas the rest rest of it is metallic. The wire in the cape works very well, using two layers of a fairly substantial fabric and wires strong enough to hold poses.
While articulation isn't the focus on this figure, that isn't to say that its terrible. It's actually pretty good, and features some premium features to help with posing, such as pull down joint at the thigh so the legs can cross more, or the Pauldrons that can move for better shoulder articulation and line of sight. It's just that the character is fairly bulky and that's going to get in the way of posing. It's just a reality that can limit the things you can do and to full get around it you'd need to start introducing things like articulated flaps and pull out shoulders to get around the bulk of the chest as opposed to the slight butterfly joint articulation we got. The head crest effect has multiple joints so you pose that fairly well. Neck/head articulation is good, limited by the collar.
Overall, you can pull off all the typical poses you're gonna want to get in.. it's just your twerks aren't gonna look particularly good.
So we've looked at Paint Applications and started with Build Quality. What I've noticed is that for a figure of this size, this figure in incredibly light. My personal guess is that due tot he nature of the design, Bandai had to go with a stiffer material to get all the curves and other details right, and to keep things under budget, went with a thinner wall that still gets the job done. As a result, the weight distribution is kind wonky, though you can argue this is why it came with a stand.
Another strange issue I have is with the hands. Both sets of them are not securely held by the pegs on the arms. They fall off really easily. Fortunately, the Lance and Aegis come with built in pegs, and actually require you to take off the existing pegs to equip the figure with them. These pegs do a much better job of keeping things together and is what I'd use for long term posing.
Overall, a beautifully made figure with some good posing options, but some really strange stability issues. There's nothing overly wrong with it per se, but one has to wonder why it ended up on the clearance list at BBTS. I'm thinking it's what I kind of started with, that Pokemon is significantly more popular on this side of the world as compared to Digimon. Whatever the case is, if you love your Digimon and can deal with the Build related issues, this isn't a bad thing to have on your shelf... provided you don't overpay for it.
For Full Gallery, please visit:
Comments