[Den-O]

Like many Kaiju throughout the Ultraman franchise, everyone has their favorite Gomora. Whether it's the original misunderstood creature that fought Shin Hayate, the heroic one that allied itself with the Reionyx: Rei, Daichi's Cyber Gomora from Ultraman X, or even if you know him from his stint in the legendary Redman series, if you're an Ultra fan then you know Gomora. But today we're taking a look at the original one that Ultraman faced off against in our gallery of S.H. Figuarts Gomora!

Packaging
Despite the Ultraman branding, this figure feels very much like an S.H. Monsterarts release. That mostly boils down to it having an unnecessarily large box. I've always questioned why exactly Godzilla monsterarts need to come in such long boxes. Their tails take up such little room but cause the packaging to be excessive. In Gomora's case he includes an accessory that replicates his tail being blown off. So his tail is purposefully removable. Thus making it rather easy to just, package the tail separately. But they opted for the big box again this time. And for some bizarre reason there's an extra half plastic tray under the regular clamshell, I'm guessing for stability. At the very least the package design is nice and fits right in line with the rest of the figures we've since the franchise made the transition from Ultra-Act.

Main Figure
This giant lizard (no not that one!) may not have been on a lot of people's radar depending on what point they got into the Ultraman franchise. For myself, I found Gomora memorable because of his appearances in Ultra Galaxy Mega Monster Battle. The heroic Gomora of that series really endeared the creature to me. Despite how the original, and others, have been portrayed as more antagonistic creatures. I wasn't at first very excited to buy this figuart either, but a nice amiami clearance price has a way of changing my mind.

I won't beat around the bush to start, Gomora isn't as dynamic as I'd have liked. While it's undoubtedly the best take on the character Bandai has ever given us, it has it's faults. It's still leagues better than the old Ultra-Act Gomora though.

As you can see Gomora's design doesn't allow for much in the way of painted detail. 99% of him is a muddy brown color so the visual appeal of that will vary from collector to collector. the details that matter are those on his horns, which are subtle but well done. And his eyes. While Gomora mostly stares up at his opponents from a downward stance, the pupils being painted at the upper limit of the eye lid does give him a pretty odd look in most any other stance. It's just odd. I would have really liked to see an extra head included with pupils painted on dead center.

As for eveything else it all really boils down to how well Gomora function. This is an issue I've had to seom degree with every Kaiju released in the line so far, and Gomora I think falls short in this area as well. Starting with his stubby little legs, there isn't enough clearance on the ankle joints to allow his feet to both stand flat in more than a handful of poses. The knees have a decent range, and the hips can rotate back and forth and even outwardly pretty well. But the upper leg articulation is just stifled by how little the ankles can accomplish. These joints are also not strong enough hold Gomora's body up on their own. He's entirely reliant on his tail for balance, mostly due to the tails weight.

On the topic of the tail, it's actually segmented really nicely and the individual sections are all quite sturdy and strong. As you can see below you can actually get a lot out of it. It's easy to pull the tail off at the ball joint if you aren't careful, which is good since you need to be able to do so to use the severed tail accessory.

The upper body is deceptively nice actually. The upper torso floats on the lower half quite nicely and when you pull up and back on it, you get quite a bit of extra growth from the abdomen. It's more than I was expecting for sure, and it definitely makes Gomora feel more lifelike. However, his arms, his stubby little arms are pathetic. It's bad enough that try to pose them they'll just disconnect at the elbow constantly, but the shoulders can barely rotate at all, and have almost zero outward motion. Getting anything more dynamic than just pushing them out to the sides is difficult. For a creature as ferocious as Gomora, this is is really unfortunate.

And finally we have the head. I mentioned above about the paint apps, but the sculpt is pretty strong for this are too. There's a little gapping around the horn, but that's only because it's removable to recreate an injury. The jaw is also hinged to give Gomora a little more lifelike movement. Sadly the balljoint for the jaw is so laughably weak that if you open the mouth too much it'll just fall right off leaving your Gomora looking rather sad.


Accessories
Gomora doesn't come with much, but it's probably all they could have included:

2 - additional hands. Kind of pointless honestly, they aren't different enough from the normal hands to really do much with. They're basically half open hands.

1 - severed tail. Just pull off the full tail on the balljoint near the back. This piece looks pretty good, and allows the figure to actually balance on it's feet normally.

1 - severed horn wound. This part can be a little difficult to use. The horn can be removed easily, but the damaged part once attached, will require a lot of prying and long fingernails to get back out.

Seeing as this Gomora is meant to be the original one from the first Ultraman TV series, it probably does included about all one coudl expect. Though later versions of the character would be well suited for special attack effect parts.

Final thoughts
All in all S.H. Figuarts Gomora is not the strongest outing for the Kaiju so far, I believe that honor is still held by Alien Metron. But this is a more than adequate update for a creature that deserved better long ago. For the current discounts it's selling for now, it's pretty well worth it, especially if you're a fan of the character.