Poseocalypse - Ultra Act: Evil Tiga

I was ordering a couple shows off Amazon ("Are you Afraid of the Dark" and "Rick and Morty", if you must know) and needed to push it into the free shipping range.  Just a little bit!  So I added a forty dollar figure.

*LAUGHTRACK*


The figure we're lookin' at today is from Bandai's Ultra Act line - it's like Figuarts, but for the Ultraman universe.  If you're unfamiliar with Ultraman, then...wow man.  You've at least seen him, right?  Giant guy?  Fights monsters?  I'm just gona assume you know what I'm talkin' about.

I chose an Ultraman called Evil Tiga, purely because of his color scheme.  I knew I wanted to try at least ONE of these guys, but I'm not too familiar with Ultraman beyond his giant-ness and his monster fightings.  So it all came down to color, and you know I gots ta go with silver and a bit of red.

Evil Tiga, according to an Ultraman wiki, is an evil counterpart to Ultraman Tiga.  I guess Tiga's friends were turned to stone at some point, so some evil guy fused himself with one of Tiga's old friends (in statue form) and became Evil Tiga.  Also according to the wiki: The gold and red bands on his chest are supposedly the strongest part of him and are nearly indestructible.  Great.  Nice...uh...nice armoring job.  Kinda missed...most of you.

But hey, if you're an Ultraman fan, you may have a bunch of these guys already.  Lets say you're like me: You like toys, and these look neat.  How is he?

Welp, lets look at the basics: He's certainly fancy!  You can tell the money is going into paint.  Very little slop, though, I'll be honest, I've never been a stickler for paint (unless you've got an eye painted on your cheek or something).  Still, you can look real close at this guy and barely find a nick on 'em.  That's not to say that YOU won't nick him, though, so don't let 'em drop off the shelf.

In terms of size, he's larger than most S.H. Figuarts toys, like Kamen Rider or Power Rangers.

About the same size as a Marvel Legend.

But smaller than a MotU figure.  As you'd expect.

Something else you should expect: articulation!  This is called Ultra ACT, after all.

You can see the basic shoulder joint there.  He has a swivel at the top of the arm, but his shoulder tries to cover it, which makes it run into the red 'n gold armor piece at the shoulder.  It's not terrible, but it does mean you have to work a bit more for an arm pose than I'd usually like; especially when you've got a figure with so few extruding details.  It's a guy in spandex!  Shouldn't be much to get in the way.

The hips are also a little funky.  I'm assuming they wanted them to "plug" into the pelvis to hide the joints a bit, so the legs have a ball joint and a hinge.

I don't usually like pics like this in a review, 'cause if you're skimming, it looks like the toy broke - but I only popped the leg out to demonstrate.  It pops off without any worry of breakage, but also pops back on just as tight as it was before you popped it off.  So far as I can tell you don't have much to worry about, EXCEPT:

As I said, you can push the legs into the large hip cavities of the pelvis, but the left side opens the seem when you do so.  It's not broken, but I certainly don't wana do it much.  I could be doing it wrong, but the right side fits just fine without stretching it out, so I assume this is a fluke on my particular figure.  Who knows?

So, like the arms, you've got to work at the legs a bit to get some poses, because the tops of the legs are always in contact with the pelvis, unless you want a big 'ol gap there.  It's not a deal breaker, and I'm not afraid to pose him, but I would like a little more ease of use.

Now, as a figure that mostly punches monsters, he doesn't come with a ton beyond hands and a couple blasts for signature moves.  Bandai still got you covered, though!  You won't want for any hands.  Lets start with the teeny tint parts, though:

Many Ultramen have this jewel in their chests that indicates how much time they have left to fight.  Classically they have three minutes to fight, then the jewel turns red, then they run out of power.  Evil Tiga is no different, so he comes with both.

Ha ha, fire!  Ahhh....okay.

Hands!

Not a ton of hands, but what more would you need, anyway?  You've got some open hands, for various things like:

Grabbin' and wrasslin'.

and grabbing your head in lamentation.

Then you've got some hands with the fingers in SUPER useful positions for all sorts of cool things!  I'm sure they're supposed to be for a certain attack, but man:

I freakin' love these hands.

Can you tell?  Can you get a feeling for the depths of my sweet love for these ha----

OKAY GEEZE.  Yeah, don't let me have any FUN or anything.  It's not like you're a toy, right?

*EYEROLL*

*AHEM* Anyway, he's got some classic....well, Ultraman hands.  You ever see him do his classic blast?  You'll see when we get to the blasts.

They're also good for running like the T-1000, or flying.

And speaking of flying: LOOK AT THIS GUY'S NECK.

He can look ALL the way up!  It's a little funky from the side, but looking at him head-on can give you some awesome dashing or flying shots.  I can't think of a single figure that couldn't be improved with this neck joint.  It's rad.

Also, with those last to close-ups of his face: I gotta say, those eyes are awesome.  They're clear blue, but the paint behind (in the sockets) is shiny silver, so you only need a little light to make the eyes look like they're glowing.  There's a neat side-effect where you can hold him lying flat, then slowly stand him up and his eyes look like they "turn on", so to speak.

Alright, lets say good bye to hands and take a look at his energy accessories.

We've got a blast thingy for his chest and a beam to attach to his arm for the classic Ultraman arm blast.

Pop a hand off and slide the beam on to his arm, then do what you like!  The way he's holding his arms is how Ultraman traditionally fires his arm beam, but you can mess with the thing and...I dunno, be dumb.  Like me.

The next item plugs into the hole in the chest that accepts the jewels.

Goes without saying that you should be careful with it, but it's not super fragile.  I mean, you could probably toss it like a shuriken at some styrofoam and it'll stick without breaking anything off.

It's a cool little blast, though I dunno if it's supposed to be offensive or defensive. Looks like he might be firing some sorta wave.

Overall, i'd say they're totally worth it if you're an Ultraman fan.  If you just like how they look, well, there are other items that move a bit better that you could buy just for looks.  I feel like they could have used some of the things they've learned from doing S.H. Figuarts toys and applied that here.  I appreciate that they were going for form over function, but I think they could have toned down "form" a tiny bit and added the points to "function" and you wouldn't have lost much.

This thing gets TOP marks for looks, though, so I can't say they were entirely wrong in their focus on form.

Give one of these a shot, I say!

And oh yeah, I totally know what that needs.

G'night everybody!