Now that I've acquired a few Monsterarts of my own, and had time to get the feel of the figures, I understand both the compliments and the criticisms the line gets. Each of my three Godzillas, pictured above, have features I absolutely love - and at least one feature that makes me scratch my head.
G64 was my first. The sculpt on this figure is excellent, but marred by some of the joint engineering. The thigh gaps aren't too bad - they do seem to actually help the articulation - but what's with that back gap? It even looks sculpted to bend straight, but it can't; Godzilla is stuck hunchbacked. The paint job is good, but a little inconsistent as well.
Rebirth is nearly perfect, again with excellent sculpt, as well as perfect paint apps, and about as much articulation as you could ask for in this design - except they got cheap on the tail. The most flexible part of Godzilla's body.
G54 continues the excellent sculpting trend - seriously, you can't get this level of detail on a vinyl (lovely as they are) - and also improves on the neck & tail articulation from the other two. Again, this figure offers ample movement for a design that moved very little in reality. Unfortunately, the paint job is very plain. I feel like a little more detail could have been achieved, and while my figure's eyes are alright, it's concerning that a figure this far into the line would have as many issues as have been documented.
Overall, these are all great figures, but they have issues that really shouldn't be issues for the prices demanded, imo. I got all of mine (sometimes well)under MSRP, and I wouldn't pay any more than that. My Legacy of Revoltech Legion weighs as much as my SHMA G54, has a better paint job, and comes with nifty minifigure accessories, all for roughly 20%
less of the G54's MSRP - which came with a bigger box than Rebirth despite zilch accessories.
S.H. Monsterarts seems to be a good line - but I'm not sure it's a great one. I definitely think it's an overpriced one.
Oh, and why did this line have to become "S.H. Godzillarts"? As much as I'd love to see some more Showa Toho characters, I'd like to see some characters completely unrelated to Godzilla just as much. Hey, tangenially, Evangelion is related now, so why couldn't Tamashii have done something this past year with those angel prototypes? The timing would have been perfect.
Seriously, let's see more Gamera characters. Let's see more Kong characters. Let's see Jurassic Park dinosaurs or Pacific Rim kaiju. Let's see some real VARIETY.