Yet another of the characters from Black Rock Shooter makes her way into figma form! I was hoping this one would as the design for the character is really quite good. I was also interested to see how it would work in toy form too. So here we have Strength, who also happens to be BRS’s basketball coach in ‘evil form’ (I guess).
How does she compare to the likes of BRS and Black Gold Saw?
The box is the usual box style. Pretty sparse on the accessories, or so I thought until I opened it. I thought they would skimp on the spare hands due to the size of her gauntlets aka Ogre Arms. They didn’t however, so not only do you articulated digits on the Arms, you have a reasonable selection of little hands for her to use as well.
There is a small instruction sheet advising on how to swap her faces, take off her hood and swap her arms over.
Out of the box and she looks quite neat. A nice small figure, keeping in size with her in the show, she is smaller than BRS. Simple in design, she has her one-piece dress, massive hood and a tail as well. Good news everyone! The tail is pliable plastic. I am interested to see she has a shackle looking thing on her ankle. I hope to see some background story on this, I would be most intrigued.
Details on her clothes although sparse are clearly printed and interesting. The white flames on the hood are neat and the ones on the back look a little like Dead Master’s wings. On her left breast is a small symbol, it took me a while before I realise, but it looks like a fist! Keeping in with the Japanese love of fetishes, cute and maids, she has a bow on the back by her bottom.
Her hands and feet have nice gloves on them with white highlights. I really dig the style of these.
It’s also nice to see the bow on the top of her tights on the side of her thigh. Her hood can be removed. Putting it back on is a bit of a pain, I found it easiest to take her whole head off, arrange the hood appropriately, make sure the sides are tucked in and then put her head back on the body.
How NOT to put the hood back on…
You will need to do this to change her faces as well. Interestingly, Strength has a spare face, making a total of two to choose form, but they both look very similar. One is slightly more annoyed than the other and has her eyes looking off to one side. Took me a while to notice the difference…
Rather annoyingly I managed to put a small mark in one of the faces chin as soon as I had picked it out of the box. If anyone has discovered a good way to clean figmas, please let me know… The tiniest bit of dirt on your hands will manage to stain their ‘skin’ somehow..
Her hair is nicely coloured, I will admit and has some plain but interesting detail. I personally like the look of it from the top!
Her Ogre Arms are pretty cool although a tad on the morbid side when attached. For some reason to me she reminds me of an amputee. You have to pull her arms out at the shoulder, leaving the joint in and attach the Ogre Arms there.
The hands have articulated fingers and are generally pretty cool. They are heavy though and without aid, Strength has trouble holding them up. Luckily you are supplied with 4 stands for the arms, two short and two long ones. They have two extra joints and up plug the joints into the Arm’s palms.
The detail on the Ogre arms is impressive. Great metallic plastic, with scratches marked in solver paint. They each have the fist logo on them. Overall very impressive!!
They do have a swivel joint on the elbow for articulation, but that’s it. The figma is naturally fairly articulated at the shoulder, but aside from the up/down at the elbow, that’s it. I would have liked to see some twisting somewhere, although taking into account the weight and design, I can see the impracticalities of that.
I have heard of part breaking and the part that connects the Hands to the upper arms looks particularly fragile, especially since it’s connected to the elbow swivel joint. mine was a bit stiff when I got it out, so please be very careful.
Where its looks like its ‘clamped’ onto the forearm is a possible break spot. Very thin plastic there for a large weight really. Where the ‘metal’ ends and connects to the bicep area, would have been a great spot to put in a swivel joint. Would have meant an extra piece, but would also have made Strength’s arms a lot more pose-able without sacrificing the core strength of the arm too much.
Quality wise, mine only suffered from the marking on her upper arm in the picture above.
You may have noticed her pants are not well-covered (another Japanese fetish?) and in a first for figmas, they have followed Revoltech’s lead and you can actually take off Strength’s one piece. Nice move really, as it means that the clothes will have to be flexible plastic and this keeps all the articulation of the basic figure.
Normally I would shift this over to my adult blog, but there are no rude bits to follow as they haven’t completely followed Revoltech’s lead. Some disassembly is required. Take off her head, legs and pants, then unhook the neck piece from the neck and slide off upwards.
No extra sculpting to worry about.
Of course, since you have been looking at her in her undies, she’s angry and you’re going to cop it!!!
And since you can take her arms and legs off, we can really creepy now….
Ok, enough of that! All up, I think that Strength here is a pretty good figure. Not as awesome as I thought she would be, but then I was terribly, terribly excited about this one. Which I have found to be a bad state of mind, as you often leave yourself open to be disappointed. Still Strength is solidly made. I would have liked a bit more articulation in her Ogre Arms which would have made this toy great, but what is there is adaptable enough to be used to a great effect. The Arms are awesomely detailed, if a little fragile looking and the lack of expressions is a bit of a let down, especially since they both look remarkably similar.
I do like the dress idea as it does allow the articulation of the figure to be used properly, although if they had done it normally, it probably wouldn't have made that much difference. So, in my opinion, if you can get her, get her. Cool accessories (I LOVE those Ogre Arms!!!!) and the usual figma sweetness. Plus she is in scale with the other BRS characters as well!
Now for some play shots!!
Yumil has a big hand as well and wants to be number 1, after all she is a princess…
Strength however is the silent but strong type, with only one thing to say.
After seeing the true size of Strength’s hand, Yumil realised she may have bitten off more than she can chew….
No comments:
Post a Comment
Comments under moderation until I find around this spam thing.