Observations & Critique: Detailed fixed posed figures
These figures come in a box adorned with sexy, low light, pictures of the figures within adorning the box. The front of the box is a flip-top lid that immediately lets you see the figures. The whole package looks and functions nicely. When you open the box you’ll find the following along with the two figures:
1) 2x base (with pegs corresponding to the feet of the figures)
2) 2x Optional arm (1x Chirico, 1x Fyana)
3) Chirico fist holding gun
4) Chirico hand, with fingers that peg into bottom of helmet
5) Chirico gun
6) Chirico gun holster (empty)
7) 2x helmet (1x Chirico, 1x Fyana)
8) 2x Oxygen canister (1 for attaching to the chest when helmet is on, 1 making it appear as though it is stored within the helmet when helmet is off)
10) 2x neck for use with helmet (1x Chirico, 1x Fyana)
That’s a pretty good amount of stuff which will give you some display options for your static figures. It would have been nice if there were more accessories for Fyana.
These figures were released in January 2007 for the astronomical price of 7,000 Yen. At a time when Yamato was selling 1/12 Scopedog toys for 20,000 Yen and the pilot figures as accessories for 4-5K Yen each, maybe the price seemed more reasonable. Of course, that was a long time ago and now you’ll be relying on the secondary market to hunt these things down which may not be particularly easy though, if you can find them, you can normally still pick them up for well below retail. It will be interesting to see if ThreeZero’s recent 1/12 Scopedog toy will cause a spike in demand.
Visually, these figures are stunning. The pipes in Chirico’s suit? They’re actually metal rods on this figure. It’s really very nice. I’m sure some might envision Chirico’s face differently but, if it bothers you, there’s a pretty nice looking helmet you can throw on. Speaking of faces, the helmets on these toys use nice translucent plastic. Unfortunately, neither of the helmets have face detail behind the visor. For Chirico this is almost impossible to notice because of his goggles and mouth piece but Fyana’s lack of a face is more conspicuous. I also found myself wish Fyana had a more neutral pose instead of leaning back the way she is. I felt the two figures together looked a little less natural than it could have if Fyana were more upright.
The optional parts do a good job of accomplishing their goals by simply plugging into various slots. I found Chirico’s removable arm and hand to be the only parts that occasionally dropped out during handling. That said, these are static pose figures so you’re probably not going to be handling them a lot. Neither figure will stand without the use of a display stand base or some other prop. It seemed to me like it would have been better to have a set of legs that worked for stability purposes and then another set of more dynamic posed legs that had to go with the stand.
It’s really tough to judge if Fyana’s white suit is yellowing very evenly or if the suit was a cream color all along. My Yamato Fyana is definitely yellowing in a few areas. Both Fyana and Chirico felt a little tacky. I never noticed finger prints on them or anything like that, it was a very subtle tackiness, but since these are static figures and not action figures it was less perturbing than it may sound.
Chirico is 15CM tall here which makes him nearly half a centimeter smaller than his ThreeZero counterpart which makes the ThreeZero pilot that much more impressive for fitting in the Scopedog cockpit. Fyana’s figure is 14.5CM tall. As you can see, the Yamato figures are much too small. I know some people hate action figures that use fabric so they may prefer the Yamato but they may then be turned off by the obviously incorrect size. These Wave figures present a boring but good-looking workaround for this dilemma.