All right, got the new Ultraman Saga vinyls today. They're a mixed bag, but what's good is really freakin' good.
Starting with Saga himself. He's pretty much what you'd expect. Simple sculpt, basic at-attention stance and typical arms and waist articulation. If you've bought any Bandai 6" Ultraman vinyl in past 30 years, this shouldn't surprise you. I do like the blue paint but it's applied a little too heavy so that the translucent vinyl just gets lost. Are they doing an Ultra Act of this guy, because I think this design needs something like that. But as a vinyl I'm not impressed.
Hyper Zetton is really cool though. Again, simple stance and basic articulation (though the wing things move, so that's a couple extra points) but it's still a relatively well detailed figure for this size and price point. The paint does it's job and the stark yellow really stands out against the black and grey of the rest of the figure. What I really like is the subtle silver wash all over the black vinyl, much better than leaving it all unpainted. That would just be really bland. I really like this toy, and I say get it if you can. Don't sit around waiting for an Ultra Act version which may or may not happen.
Alien Bat (or Bat Seijin or whatever variation you feel like calling it) is an easy skip. I don't really know much about this character and perhaps I'll like him more when I eventually see this movie, but right now this figure isn't doing it for me. Doing the same dance: basic stance, basic design and only two points of articulation at the shoulders. The red and gold paint is fine but there's no attempt to make the rest of the toy look like anything else but unpainted grey vinyl. Your mileage may vary but I say pass on this one unless you want every new vinyl released for this movie.
And then there's Gubira. Yeah, yeah, I know I wanted Earthtron too. And yeah, I know only the arms move. It's pretty much the definition of a static figure. But you know what? This stupid thing is quirky as all hell. The sculpt is dead on, I like how they weren't afraid of the hands and knees stance and the figure is just dripping with surly personality. I'd gripe about the lazy paint on the back if the rest of the paint job wasn't so cool. Even if you have no desire to see this film or collect any of the movie-related toys, I really think this is a must own figure if you don't have the original Bandai Gubira released between 1983 and 1991 or already have it and want an example of Bandai's approach to the same character across three decades.
I also got this 2007 release Bemular. Finally, now I have all three major releases of this sculpt (1994, 2000, 2004). If I hadn't already packed a majority of my Ultra figures away for the time being I'd take a comparison photo.
