Sunday, February 3, 2019

S.H. Figuarts Joker - Batman Ninja







In a world where Grodd has opened up a time portal to feudal Japan, Joker ha become one of the daimyo's, ruling from a giant mechanized Arkahm Castle against the other Batman villains, who ALSO have crazy castles.  If this isn't jumping the shark, I don't know what is! If you listen to the English dub, he is voiced by Tony Hale, famous for playing Buster Booth in Arrested Development. 

Joker appears with his hair grown out into a large bun/ponytail, wearing his classic colours in a mixture of western and Japanese style clothing. This is a pretty dead-on representation of his appearance in the animated movie. They've got every detail down with the small exception that his inner vest (purple edging) has a geometric pattern in the movie that isn't on the figure. We can forgive this!



He comes with great accessories and his articulation is still pretty great given he has pantaloon type legs as Batman did. A nice piece is that his jacket is not only a very supple rubbery plastic, but it can also be removed. Noice!

Sculpt/Paint: 5/5 This figure is full of great details and paint throughout. They have amazing details in everything from his green hair curls to the vest and accessory paint apps. This is top notch for this category and because it's the joker, we see a lot of different eye-catching colours.

Articulation: 5/5 (35+ points) Like the Batman figure, Joker has some awesome articulation, with a few limitations. The head and neck pose really well considering the vest collar and the (removable though) jacket. The arms are super well done and have pegs that allow some cross arm movement. The waist is ball jointed and just fine, though doesn't have an ab crunch. Joker has hip joints that are far easier to manipulate and are more flexible than the Batman figure, though, for the reasons that his large pants extend beyond the knee, he has just barely 90-degree knee flexion.  Everything else is well done.

Price/Availability: 5/5 Great He's actually 10 dollars cheaper at this point on Amazon than he was
at his original MSRP (about 67 bucks as of this posting). I still see him in the occasional store and convention, as well as online.

Accessories:5/5 He comes with many pairs of hands to hold his fan, sword and to allow some gesturing. His two fans are so well done and painted, and he holds that fairly well in his hands (I had minimal dropping when posing). His sword has awesome details and I think the creators made a good design choice instead of making his a standard katana. The scabbard is well done too and I love that shiny black.  The extra open mouthed laughing face is essential!

Fun Factor: 4/5 I really enjoy this figure. He's got great posing for his sabre wielding poses. He looks great paired with the Ninja Batman. He doesn't quite make my top ten for a couple of reasons. His knee and waist articulation are quite limited, and since they avoided this with Dragonball figures, who classically have baggy pants, I don't accept they couldn't have found a solution. The other issue is he's quite top-heavy, and sometimes falls over.


Verdict: 24/25 Amazing! This is a really good figure, and for many reasons has a really high rating. It's not my absolute favourite but it does a lot of things well. That said, if you didn't like the character designs (I'm going to assume you didn't love the movie), you might want to skip this one.
I personally love it and would love it if S.H. figuarts released the Catwoman and failing that, I will likely get the Figma one.


Love sword and fans especially here
Really well detailed. Throughout the movie (And this
figure), it really looks like he's wearing a mask.
Lookin' dangerous




Fan-cy dancing!




TA-DA!



POW!

Time to draw





En garde!








1 comment:

  1. Very cool figure. I feel like the Joker would have a hard time fitting into such a structured society like feudal Japan. Interesting that he has more of cutlass than a traditional Japanese sword. Cool review!

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