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S.H. Figuarts Libra Zodiarts Gallery
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01-05-2014, 10:58 PM
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ryan
Veteran Member
Join Date: Jan 2012
Posts: 3,313
Libra was one of my favorite characters in Kamen Rider Fourze, so I was excited to finally get this Tamashii Web Exclusive figure for a reasonable price, just before Christmas. And you know what? It's pretty good. Not perfect, but pretty good.
For accessories, Libra comes with a decent pile of things, though they boil down to just 3 items and a bunch of hands. He has a small Zodiarts switch, with two paint apps. The switch has some detailing on the side, but it wasn't painted at all. Somebody with a fine brush and some gold paint could make it look pretty excellent though. Libra includes a special right hand that's slightly more splayed open than the other open hand, for offering the switch to unsuspecting school kids so they can wish upon the stars. He has his staff, with metal chains on each each end and lots of nice, fine, gold detail work, and his cloak.
Ah, the cloak. What an awesome thing to include. In theory. I love how the Horoscopes look in their matching robes, the sinister look they convey, so I was really happy that these Zodiarts Figuarts include the cloak. But, sadly, the execution doesn't match my expectations. The cloak is comprised of 6 distinct pieces of very hard plastic. It snaps together around the figure, killing all articulation except some head movement (limited by the high collar of the robe and Libra's giant head). The arm movement is restricted to moving forward a couple of degrees, and you barely have access to his hands. The look is pretty decent, but there's no way he will hold his staff in an upright position while in this robe. Oh, and because his legs can't move, balance definitely becomes an issue with the robe. I knew all of this going in to the figure, but it's still a little bit disappointing, but at the same time, it's not a huge deal, because I wasn't ever going to display the figure too long with the robe, because the Zodiarts all look the same with their robes.
As is expected with any Figuarts, the sculpt is as detailed as the suit it's replicating. Due to the dark color palette of this figure, the details are not alwasy visible unless you look closely, but it's all there.
The paint work is excellent. The gold detail work is very crisp and clean, with little or no slop, and the stars painted on his body are surround by a light over spray to simulate a glowing look, that I think works quite nicely. The inside of the head cavity is even painted with a couple of gold bits, and metallic red over his eye, both on the front and back.
Looks-wise, the figure is pretty awesome, but the articulation is where it started to let me down. It has all the standard Figuarts articulation, and the range of movement on most of it is what you would expect. My complaints are with the back cockroach 'wings', which are a single, solid piece, with absolutely no flexibility. In fact, it's made out of much too thick, or heavy a plastic, and it slightly affects his posing, in that it's hard to get the torso pieces to line up so the gold line down his front is straight. Also, Libra will never be able to sit down, as the wings extend far past his waist, down to the knees, in fact. Additionally, his legs can't move back very far, again, blocked by the wings.
The other posing issue I had was the head. The antennae are huge, a softer plastic, as they should be, so you can get them out of the way of his arms and staff, without worry of breakage. But, between the antennae and the giant head, the neck joint feels just a bit too lose, so he tended to want to cock his head to one side, or more frequently, down. It's not a huge deal, but it was kind of a hassle at times.
The shoulder pads don't move up very high, they're not attached to the arms like most other Figuarts, so they do hinder the arms at times, but they do rotate forward and backward a little, so they can be moved out of the way for most poses.
Some of the things I really like about this figure are the clear plastic bits that make up the stars of the Libra constellation, and the fine metal chains on his chest. They can get caught on all the sharp edges of the figure, but it didn't cause too much trouble. I also appreciated the few spikes thrown here and there on the figure: the shoulder pads end in a nice spike, there's one coming off of each forearm, and his heels have two small ones as well.
In the end, this is a decent figure, and I would say he's worth getting, but of the Zodiarts released in the Figuarts line, he's also probably going to be the most bland looking, as he features the most bland deco of the five. Scorpion is primarily ivory colored, Leo is white, Virgo is pink, Sagittarius has lots of red and orange, but poor Libra is dark gray, which just a few gold highlights to liven him up.
Side note: this is my first gallery done with my new camera. I think it looks much better than my previous galleries, done with an iPhone 4S, hope you all agree.
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