Alright! After a long delay and numerous excuses I've made up for myself, here comes, at last my review of this amazingly designed figure. To start, I just want to say this: I was completely blown away when I first took it out of its box and started playing around with it. To my surprise, its sculpting is more than decent and its articulation is as impressive as I've heard and saw from many Revoltech collectors.
More picture of the GP01 Zephyranthes here.
While gunpla's main concern is with the accurate visual representation of an MS, Revoltech's business come from their ability to bring out the spirit of a mecha.
As you, my dear readers, can clearly see, the Revoltech figure is quite keen on the smaller details in their figure, which greatly surprised me. I always imagined Revoltech to be a line of toys with decent detail and great articulation, but toys nonetheless, which is one of the reasons I've been so reluctant to shell out $27 dollars for it, but thankfully, this King Gainer figure was quite a wakeup call, partially from the very decent amount of detail sculpted into the figure, but most of all, I have for the first time learned, through this figure, the difference b/w articulation and poseability, for reasons I will explain after a rundown of this figure's range of motion.
The shoulder design is quite ingenious, in that it is based not on a traditional Revoltech joint, but is composed of two rotational joints, which gives the figure not only a wide range of motion, but also create a very natural look no matter how the arm is placed.
This is the amount of motion you can get out of using one of the two rotating joints, which isn't too impressive, but then again, this is only one joint.
Using the second shoulder joint alone will allow you to bring the arm outward at a degree, which is again, not worthy of applause, but when you use the two joints together....
Two joints suddenly works flawlessly as one and the shoulder obtain a full range of motion!
The leg uses a very similar double rotating joints system that allow for about the same range of motion as the shoulder joint. As for the knee joint, it bends a bit more 50 degrees.
Its waist joint is quite flexible and allow it to bend nearly 90 degrees, but most importantly...
Also allow it to rotate its torso 180 degrees. What scares me the most isn't the fact that it can do this, but the fact that it looks quite normal and even, dare I say, quite comfortable in this position. King Gainer's asymmetrical design proves to be superior once again it seems.
The head of this figure also boast a fair bit of articulation, but again, isn't extremely impressive if examined separately.
The wrist joint took quite a bit of getting used to for me in terms of posing, since I work mostly with gunpla's ball jointed wrists, but once I figured out how to manipulate its three rotational axis into various positions, system boast a ridiculous amount of articulation. Another thing I'd like to point our about this joint is how well it blend into the rest of the design, even though it's just a plain, exposed Revoltech joint. Kudos to Revoltech.
As one of this figure's most well kept secret, the mane has a deceivingly simple design, consisting of four solitary Revoltech joints and the mane that is attached to them. Like many other things I found about Revoltech, this is just a misleading cover-up.
Despite the simple design, the mane is able to adopt quite a wide range of positions that will make any pose infinitely more appealing. I really like this thing to be honest, and not just for the novelty factor either, although how often do you see mecha with dreadlocks like these? No, I like it because it just add that bit of much needed sense of speed to the design.
It's one of those design elements that makes a mecha look like it's moving at high speed even when it's just standing still. It's what I call a sense of flow.
It's not something that I can quite describe clearly, but what I know for sure is that this is what flying in the air, free of direction, of restraints, being able to soar without a worry in the world must feel like, and this to me, is what King Gainer is all about.
Slowly but surely, I seem to be running out of things to say about this, but then again, King Gainer itself is quite beyond words' description, so it's only natural.
Looks like this is the end of the review, my dear readers and what's a better way to end it all than with the good old "figure with all accessories" shot?
At this time, I'd like to thank you all for going through my wall of text and please do tell me how I can improve my blogging prowess. Other than that, have a-King, a-king ah-Gainer day!
In summary, this is definitely a figure that I'd recommend to anyone who like King Gainer, a decision that I can back up with the figure's great range of motion, more than decent amount of details and a flair that is all too fitting of King Gainer. For a figure that cost 1900 yen, or about $19 US dollar, there really isn't any reason you shouldn't get one.
☆Kira~!☆
Sweet SHIT, thanks for the review ^____^ cause of you I will for sure be buying this ^___^
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