Today I finally received the new addition to the Ultra-Act line from Bandai Tamashii Nations, Red King! Red King is the first kaiju to be released into the line since Eleking back in December 2010... yeah, it's been that long!
Upon taking it out of the box, I noticed that the packaging is a bit wider than even the box for the Ultra-Act Gomora. That's mostly due to Red King's slighter larger size. The box itself adopts the same design aspect as the Ultras from the past year. It's an interesting design, although I prefer the older box art a lot more.
Like the Ultra-Act Gomora, Red King is easy to handle with. You can really grip it when you need to adjust the articulated sections of the figure. The articulation on the figure is tight to start out with - typical when you first take these items out of their boxes for the first time. However, after some fiddling around, the joints loosen up and you're ready to pose Red King whatever way you want.
While I think this figure captures Red King really well, There are some gripes I have about the sculpt. Firstly, the joints when you look at it from certain angles are quite noticeable. It is not a huge complaint on my part, but it's one that I have to point out. The second issue I have with it is that Red King's mouth does not open as wide as it shows in the prototype images. I barely can get it open wide enough. I don't know whether I have to continue fiddling with the figure's joints or whatever, but I found that irritating.
Red King comes with several accessories. Let us first take a look at the most impressive piece of the bunch. The accessory pictured above is a rock formation being smashed and kicked by Red King as he did in his debut episode in Ultraman The Original Series. I actually found this accessory pretty cool as you can make really neat scenes with it. The exploding part is articulated actually, and you can swerve it left to right to point any direction you want.
Another accessory that comes with Red King is a big rock... err, I mean boulder. Red King is known to utilize large boulders and the like as weapons against foes since he, unlike Gomora or Eleking, does not possess a beam weapon of any sort.
In order to have Red King get ahold of the boulder, the figure is also supplied with an extra pair of hands that are mean't to grip the boulder. The right hand is what actually holds onto the boulder. You just stick it into the socket on the boulder as shown below.
Once the you connect the hands to Red King and the boulder to the right hand, then you can have some fun posing Red King with it. Like with the previous accessory, this one is pretty cool too, and you can really have some fun with it as far as posing and displaying go.
Compared to the only other Ultra-Act kaiju figure I have, Gomora, Red King stands a couple of inches taller, making it the largest kaiju figure in the line... however since I do not own Eleking (yet) I can't make a comparison to him.
Red King also stands taller than the recent Ultraman figure.
His larger size compared to Ultraman makes an interesting battle scene.
Overall, despite my minor issues with the figure's sculpt, Red King was pretty satisfactory for me. It is exactly what I hoped it to be, an a bit more too! Out of a five star rating, Red King receives four stars. It isn't perfect, but it is certainly a great figure to have in any Ultraman or kaiju collection. The accessories really do express Red King's character as a big brute. I highly recommend you to pick one up if you're interested. Based on previous kaiju releases, the value for them just goes up and up!
For now, Red King will be my final Ultra-Act figure for a while. I am done collecting Ultramen in the line (aside from an eventual new sculpt of Ultra Seven), so I will wait till the next kaiju in the line releases before I get back into it, which may be a while based on their track record in the past.
No comments:
Post a Comment