Continuing our trend in reviewing toys that actively want to hurt you, we move on from Ban Dai’s SH Figuarts Injustice figures to Figma’s Guyver.

Sigh, you know, at this point, even I’m a little hesitant to go into flashback mode…but, hey, it allows me to link back to other review…so why not! So I mentioned my ‘gateway nerd’ before, way back in my DC Comics Deck Building Game review…well, as it turns out, he was also my gateway into anime. Now, I don’t want to give the guy too much credit, after all, I was already fairly primed and receptive having grown up on a steady diet of Transformers and Voltron. But the concepts of wounds that gushed so much blood as to illustrate that hypertension was apparently a HUGE fucking deal in Japan and the random and springy nature of animated boobs…no, those were foreign to me, until shown the way by the aforementioned ‘gateway nerd’. And what anime did he start me off with? Yeah, you guessed it, the first six episodes of Guyver. Man did I watch the hell out of those tapes! You had Guyver 1, the yellow Guyver 2, the gray Guyver 3, Zoanoids, Hyper-Zoanoids, Hyper-Zoanoid Team 5 (are you catching my hint yet, Figma? Just sayin’…)…it was just great stuff. Okay…at the time. It hasn’t especially aged well. Anyway, it was enough to push me further down the rabbit hole, buying VHS tapes that were, in general, $25 to $35…and many times, that was for just a half hour of animation. Growing up poor…well, that wasn’t really an option, but I managed to snag a tape from time to time. But by the time I found out that there were episodes 6-12, well, at that point I was a college student living on student loans so fat chance of snagging those on VHS. Fortunately, I grabbed them on DVD once I got a job.

[You ARE going to talk about the figure…right??? – Ed.]

Fine. Back on topic then. Needless to say once I’d found out that Figma was releasing a Guyver figure, the buying process devolved into “SHUT UP AND TAKE MY MONEY!” Having bought and reviewed Figma’s excellent Samus Aran figure (review HERE), in some ways I knew what to expect: great articulation, fantastic detail and plenty of extras. I certainly wasn’t disappointed as Figma once again packed that little box full with spare hands, an opening chest plate for the mega smasher and a closed one, short and extended vibro-blades and, hell, even an unopened Guyver unit. Just like Samus, this figure proved a lot of fun to play with.

But, as the opening alludes to, it’s not all good. Yes…Guyver is pointy…the vibro-blades in particular. Ouch. Given this…Figma, if you want to totally skip making a Guyver 3…who is much MUCH pointier in design…I’m DEFINITELY okay with that! Second is the opening chest piece for the mega-smasher. In concept, it’s amazing. In actual form…it’s half amazing. You see, one side of my chest piece works just fine…exactly has you’d want it to. The other side? The cover falls out if you so much as even breathe in its general direction. Also, there’s something a bit wonky going on around the hips and waist. No, not like that. The way the articulation is set up there…well, I read one review where someone claimed that their figure had one leg longer than the other. I didn’t find that to be the case with mine…I actually measured…but there does to appear to be some joint issue between the hips, waist and lower torso that if you don’t get things lined up juuuuuuuust right, yeah, it’s going to make it seem like one leg is longer than the other. And trying to get that sorted out requires the sort of patience that either qualifies you for sainthood…or being able to put up with my girlfriend. [Hey! What did we say about posting personal stuff??? – Ed.] Lastly, there’s Figma’s scale…somewhere around 5.5 inches…which means that these figures fit in with…pretty much nobody. And that’s kind of a shame, because Guyver taking off Batman’s head with one of those vibro-blades would’ve DEFINITELY been included in the gallery below. [Okay, we know you’re tired of Batman, but talk like this? I think maybe it’s time to seek help. Just putting that out there…you know…think about it. – Ed.]

Very fortunately, the good far outweighs the negative with this figure. Figma’s style of elbow and knee joints allow for posability typically associated with figures with double joints and, aside from the minor squabble with the hip/leg issue, the remaining joints lend you a poseability that you just don’t find with American action figures. As with any imported Japanese action figure, yes, it’s going to be a little pricey for what it is…running around $50 to $60. If you’ve got the scratch and the love for the character…and you don’t mind potentially losing some blood…then, yeah, totally hunt one down!

#toys #actionfigures #cartoons