10.17.2013

Inside the box with Ichabod presents:

S.H.Figuarts Vegeta from Tamashii Nations/Bluefin

 The prince of all saiyans, with the most fragile eye ware in the universe.



 Oh Vegeta, one of those characters that starts off as a villain, then becomes kinda of a hero, than has a kid and becomes a dad. Happens all of the time. So right off the bat I'm letting you all know it has been literally forever since I have seen Dragonball Z so I'm gonna be way rusty with information. 

 Vegeta here is presented with his appearance in the early part of the series, namely the saiyan saga and the Frieza saga. Back when he had the shoulder and thigh armor attached to his vest. I always liked this look, and it is well represented here. The undersides of the shoulder armor and hip armor are left blank, when they had detailing on the animation model, and there has been some contention over that but it doesn't bug me at all. 

 The Boots and Gloves are well sculpted, with some nice light blue highlighting, which helps them pop more instead of being just solid white. The entire blue body suit also has some great black coloring to make the muscles all pop, and gives the figure a really cool animation look. I love the colors on him in general.

 His elbow articulation is somewhat limited, due to the size of his forearm and biceps. He can still get some good poses, thanks to the shoulder design. Also a cut up near the shoulder for a full bicep swivel gives him some pretty great arm articulation. The shoulder pads do get in the way in regards to upward movement, but that is the design of this armor. They do pop off, as they are just attached by a ball joint, instead of breaking which is a good thing.

 His lower half articulation is all pretty snazzy.  The double jointed knee provides some excellent movement, and the hips are also the same pull down style we've been seeing on the sentai Figuarts, so all around he's good here. The hip armor is on hinges and easily gets out of the way so it thankfully doesn't hinder any motion. But his waist... He has no torso joint, and the crotch to torso is hindered by the tail and hip armor so his torso is essentially one big block.

 So the scouter. yeah this is a really cool accessory that broke really easily on me. The pink clear part just snapped off when I was trying to attach it, so BE CAREFUL. It still can attach but it's sort of a loose fit. It has some excellent paint and sculpting work, and really, is damn small so points for that.

 He comes with two hair pieces that you can swap, with one minor minor difference. That being the small indent on the hair piece on the left that has a spot for the scouter to stick in. That's it. That is the only reason to include a separate hair piece. I appreciate the effort that went in to this, but I can barely tell the difference. 

He also comes with the most hilarious accessory ever. Thanks to the Internet and the power of memes, he has a crushed scouter hand. The detailing is really well done including the cracked glass part. Way cool, even if it is entirely thanks to the meme.

 Yeah. Over 9000!!!! and all that.

 He comes with a nice amount of faces too! Look at all those, stern Vegeta, smirking Vegeta, yelling Vegeta and the most hilarious one, getting choked by Frieza's tail Vegeta. They pop off super easy and are all pretty damn expressive. I'm pretty happy he comes with this many interchangeable faces.

 I love when toys come with a crossed arm part. Lots of characters have crossed arm poses, but the toys generally have a hard time replicating this. Here they just included a swap out piece, which is achieved by removing the arms at the bicep swivel. 

 Yeah, just his arms sitting there all gross and not on the body.

 HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAANDS!!!!!!!!!!!!!
He has a nice set of ands, with splayed out hands, rage hands, karate hands, two finger hand and over 9000 hands. not a bad layout for this already accessory laden figure.

 These hands combined with the faces really gives you a lot of options for expressive poses.

 A classic episode of Dragonball Z, where they characters spend like 90 percent of the half hour charging up.

The karate hands make for a really great set of devious "Up to something" hands combined with that smirking face.

 His tail. It swaps out for a more free flowing tail that isn't his belt. It looks like a saiyan tail for sure. I'm pretty indifferent about this.

 The old one has two attachment points, one into his back and the other pegs into the tail to make it look seamless. A pretty cool design, really. 

 Yay energy blasts!!! They look great!

 They give you two blue blasts, one made to look like a projectile and the other made to look more like the blast leaving his hand area. Both are a semi-soft plastic, and have sharp edges, and peg pretty easily into a Tamashii stage.

 Speaking of Tamashii Stages, he comes with one! Also three arms, and the figure holding grip. Getting everything onto one stand takes a bit of creative posing, but it is doable.

 Vegeta with Red ranger and Kamen Rider 1. He's short but BEEFY. I don't currently own any of the released Dragonball Z Figuarts, so this comparison will have to do. His hair does edge out the other two, but he is a shorter character in the show. 

Vegeta here is a regular release that was a exclusive in Japan. He is PACKED with stuff, and at the price of a normal Figuart he is a easy purchase. I mean, look at all the stuff, 2 hair pieces, 4 faces, 5 different sets of hands, 2 energy blasts, a scouter and a full Tamashii stage, that's a ton of stuff. Add to that the Figuarts level of pose ability and paint quality and this is a pretty fantastic figure. My years of loving Draognball Z and buying every bit of merch are long past me, but I'm happy to own this snarky little bastard. You can grab a preorder of the upcoming Figuarts Goku here at Superpowercollectibles.com and Vegeta can be had at any of the normal placs that carry Bluefin product. This figure was provided courtesy of Bluefin/Tamashii Nations.

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