[Tokumonkey]

Ankh (arm form) showed up in the mail today. This release is almost certainly more scale-appropriate than the original, but it's so tiny, it's a little hard to appreciate the added detail. To an extent, I wonder if purchasing this when I already own the original Figuarts release was a questionable idea. The pre-release materials suggested the cloth strips hanging down from the arm are poseable, but there's no wire, and the cloth resists posing. One point I really appreciated is that the end of the hand's ball joint that connects to the peg is straight rather than a ball: attaching and removing hands is easier than normal for Figuarts, but the connection is satisfyingly stable. Not sure how they engineered it, but if it translates to larger figures, I'd really like to see more of this connection style in future releases.

The tiny cell medals come on runners, and are easy to twist off without the need for clippers. Since they're exceptionally small and easy-to-lose, I'm glad the portion of the clamshell for the runners can be repurposed to hold the loose medals. I like that Ankh comes with trios of core medals to hold, but the choice for one of them to be Taka/Tora/Bata makes little display sense unless Bandai is planning on releasing a pre-transformation Eiji. (If so, I suspect the likelihood of that will depend on how well Ankh's human form sells.) Also, why include TaJaDor when they already had the release of GataKiriBa scheduled?

I'm glad they provided a Tamashii stage, arm, and adapter for Ankh. The release really wouldn't have felt complete without it.

Somehow, I completely missed the Figuarts blog post that confirmed a detail I hadn't realized: this release can, in fact, be attached to Ankh's human form. I guess that leaves me glad I picked up this release!