Jay's Toy Shelf : S.H. Figuarts Batman Ninja

I, along with many DC and Batman fans was really excited earlier this year when the new animated film Batman Ninja released. I mean it's hard to go wrong: a new storyline set in Japan, sword fights, and all your favourite Batman characters and villains

Boy, were we wrong. I won't spoil things, but suffice to say there's a bit more than that that takes over the show and makes it a bit too silly. I personally would watch it again to see, but I wasn't as fond of the 3D animation style. The character designs were really neat though, so I knew I was getting the action figures designed by S.H. Figuarts. It's interesting to note that Figma has also made a few characters, but their Batman seems to have far wackier proportions.

Like the movie, I've heard both decent things about the figure and not so great things. Overall, I really the figure, but it does have a few things that I would change if I could.

To start, it is very accurate to the film, featuring a smaller scale head, large legs and large hands. The paint job is pretty great, very clean with a lot of cool gold and orange highlights among the standard grey and black. The accessories are pretty good and are all well painted and sculpted. The only gripe I have is they didn't design a way for the scabbard to be put onto the figure...it's held onto with the overly large grip or not at all.

The articulation is pretty good, with a few joints that are awkward/difficult to get where you want them. The hip joints are well articulated, but are designed in a way that it is easy to bring them backwards, but harder to maneuver them to kick directly forward. The ankle joints are recessed a bit into the shin guards, so they aren't as moveable. The cape has a few good points of articulation, but like the SH Fguarts Batman Injustice cape, it's not easy to get it into a position where you can make it look good. You have to rely more on camera angles for that.

Sculpt/paint: 5/5 Generally great sculpt and paint. Really love how they painted it to include all the line details in the armour bands, lining and small gold additions to the belt. The belt is a nice soft material that allows movement though it does tend to bend over time after being in certain poses. As for the cape, I wish they hadn't sculpted over-the-shoulder part into the cape. It doesn't look as good when being posed for sure.

Articulation: 5/5 (35+ points): Like all SH Figuarts, he's got a very wide range of motion. Great range of motion in the ab, though it's limited by the cape when it's on. Double jointed everything, and once the cape is off, the neck has a pretty good range of motion. I really like how they articulated the knees given how the legs have a baggy clothing effect. The manage to still look good and not compromise overly when his knees are bent as far as they can be.

Price/Availability: 4/5 He's still on various online stores at his standard price of roughly 85 CAD. I think if you really enjoyed the look of the character and wanted a Ninja Batman to display, this is a pretty reasonable price for this S.H. Figuarts figure.

Accessories: 4/5 I want to say this guy has everything, and for the most part he does. One thing I wish they had done better was the cape, and have the scabbard attachable. The rest of the accessories are plentiful and well done in all other respects. His sword you can actually sheath in its scabbard (people who collect high-end figures will understand how rare this can be), he comes with lots of extra hands, an extra yelling face, and some batman kunai. The details are great and the sword probably has the most detail. They even painted the parts between the katana cloth wraps. Awesome.

Fun Factor: 4/5: He's pretty fun to pose around with his sword. I find the only thing that detracts from the experience is trying to maneuver the cape so it looks good at the angle I want it facing. It is a pretty brittle plastic, so needs a lot of care to make sure you don't accidentally break off the small tail pieces of the cape. His legs are also a bit tricky to maneuver but he looks so great on the shelf, especially standing beside the Batman Ninja Joker figure. I may have *slightly* regretted buying the film, but the figure is a keeper.

Verdict: 22/25 Great. This is definitely not most people's favourite version of Batman, but if you liked the movie or enjoyed the character design, I think this is a great one to pick up, and much better looking than the Figma version. On a side note, I may order a custom wire cape for him as I think it would both improve the neck motion and make it easier to get his upper arms into more dynamic poses with the cape flaring.

Close up

Cape from the back. The joint impressions aren't too bad

With these plastic capes it would be interesting if they
made two smaller pieces to fill in the gaps. Or just cloth wre!

The detail on the back
is pretty impressive

De box!

Full armed!

Dash!

Pretty well balanced even with the cape! This pose
didn't take long to set up. Thigh joints are
tricky on this figure compared to most SH Figuarts,
but the kick is decent.

Exploring how he can use other hands to hold the kunai!

Fly!

I'm happy that they actually have a sword that works in the
scabbard (even if it is quite large for the width of the blade).
He can even half draw it!