SH MONSTERARTS GODZILLA 1995 (ULTIMATE BURNING VER.) - Figure Review

Just when you thought the SHMA repaint/re-release train had come to a halt, it decided to pick back up again with a "new" Burning Godzilla figure, followed by a newly painted Destoroyah and a Super Mechagodzilla figure. But for now let's look at the Burning Godzilla.

The first SHMA Burning Godzilla figure was released back in December 2012 and has since been used for a variety of different re-paints, like the 'Birth Version' which was the 2nd SHMA figure I would come to own. And then there are questionable ones like the "Evangelion Godzilla" which looks really weird to me.

As for this one, it's a slightly mixed bag.
I love the majority of the paint job on this figure, the body is painted a glossy black complimented with the iconic fiery orange patches made of translucent plastic which looks amazing!
Even the small details aren't skimped out on, the Eyes, Mouth, Teeth, Claws and Toenails all look on point. In fact, looking at this figure head on makes it look really cool!
Which is a relief for me seeing as how I've seen some unboxing videos where the eyes on this figure where misaligned.

It's when you turn it around that things start to get a little iffy with me.
In the film 'Godzilla vs. Destoroyah' the large back Dorsal Fins have the orange glow while the rest of the spikes retain the grayish-white look. But on this figure, I guess to make it the 'Ultimate Burning Version' Tamashii Nations decided to make every spike on Godzilla's back from his head to this tail orange. I don't really like how it looks to be honest, I much prefer the white spikes on the neck, the small outer row on the back and tail. Having them all orange makes this feel more like an unofficial bootleg figure by a third party company.
But still, it could have been worse...a lot worse...*cough* diamondselect*cough*

The paint wasn't the only thing different about this release, we also have a few accessories to go with it.

The main accessories are 4 steam pieces that can be attached to the figure as shown. Getting them on can be a bit tricky and 2 of them have latches that need to be attached to the inside of Godzilla's limbs.
And in my opinion, I find them to be just OK. I'm not sure if they look too big and awkward when attached to Godzilla, or maybe they should have been more clearer, I don't know, I'm just not that impressed with them. I would have been more impressed if it came with a Spiral Heat Ray piece instead of another pair of interchangeable hands.

Articulation on this Godzilla is pretty standard. Nothing we haven't seen in the previous releases. The head can look up and down, mouth opens and closes. Arms move forward and backward a bit while bending and twisting at the elbows. Hands can twist around. The waist can bend forward and with the multi-segmented waist we don't have an annoying fin gap! Legs move forward and backward, knees bend and the feet can turn and pivot.
The tail is a bit stiff but can move around as you would expect.

But while my figure has perfectly aligned eyes, the shortcomings on mine come with a stiff left leg, a right leg that likes to fall apart and a tail that likes to snap off at the butt.
-_-

I figured it be fitting to compare this repaint with another repaint.

I don't have the original SHMA figure, but I can compare him with some other 6 inch Burning Godzilla's.

And a Destoroyah for good measure.

I'm sorry to say that despite a mostly good paint job, this release is a bit disappointing to me. I myself would recommend going for the original SHMA Burning Godzilla, assuming someone on eBay isn't overcharging for it. But if you think the stuff that bothers me won't bother you, then I would still approach this release with caution.

Till next time, I have been your host Gryphon

and I hope you've enjoyed your time here in my lair.
So long...

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SH MONSTERARTS KOU KYOU KYOKU GODZILLA 1989 - Figure Review

This is probably one of the most hyped figures to ever come from the SH Monster Arts line, it even got it's own commercial to show that this was nothing like any figure we've ever seen before. But does it live up to the hype?
Well, according to some other Godzilla figure reviewers out there, it doesn't. But this isn't about what they think, is it?

As some of you may know, a 1989 Godzilla figure was shown off in the promotional material for the SH MonsterArts Biollante figure. It left me wondering if maybe it was going to be the next Godzilla figure to be made. Actually, Godzilla 2000 was the next figure after Biollante and 15 other figures later, we finally got a 1989 figure under the new title of SH Monster Arts KOU KYOU KYOKU (Light, Sound, Music)

But did it live up to the hype? According to some reviewers, it didn't

Honestly, I'd have been happy enough with just a highly detailed, articulated 1989 figure, but these added bells and whistles made it seem all the more special and if you've read my reviews, you've noticed that I tend to play Devil's Advocate when it comes to certain issues.
Well, here are my thoughts.

The first thing you'll notice right away is that this is one big figure. It towers over other Godzilla figures and is completely out of scale with other SH MonsterArts figures.

But what this figure lacks in scale, it more than makes up for in it's sculpt and detail.
I feel when most people think of Godzilla, this design is the most popular one that comes to mind and I feel that this figure captures it awesomely!

 Starting at the head, it looks great. I've always liked the rounded, gorilla-like head of this Godzilla. The eye's look really good. The inside of the mouth is painted good and the teeth look nice. The upper part of the mouth is also sculpted with translucent plastic for the effects which I'll talk about in a minute.

The rest of the body is nice and muscular as it should be, he even has his thunder thighs. The paint over all is great, although something I've noticed with past figures is the claw and toenail paint ranges from OK to average.

The right hand looks OK, but the left hand has way too much shading on it. And the toenails have too much shading on the top as well.

 Godzilla's dorsal fins are probably the best detailed feature of the figure, sculpted beautifully with translucent plastic for the ones on the back and regular plastic going down the lower back to the tail.

What some people have a problem with are the outer smaller fins, some claim they aren't painted that great. And to be fair, it's not...if you look at it up close. I find that the paint issues with the claws, toenails and outer fins look pretty good from a distance, which is how most collectors (like myself) are probably going to be looking at it anyway.

What I have a problem with is how the fins start at the top of the head, just sort of stop at the outer row and then pick back up by the shoulder. It just looks very awkward to me.

As far as Articulation for this figure goes, it's very limited. The inner workings for the new effects prohibit any real waist movement. The only way you're getting the waist to move is when you pull the top part of Godzilla's body off to add the batteries.
I guess at least we don't have to worry about a fin gap, amirite?

But as for Articulation that isn't prohibited: 

The head can only move downward and tilt side to side a bit.

The arms can rotate around at the shoulder, but it is very tight. You run the risk of either rubbing against the figure and scraping off the paint or popping it completely off. They can also twist at the shoulder, twist and bend at the elbow. The hands have the standard twist and swivel.

The legs bend bend at the knee, but not very far back. Should you try to bend any further, you risk popping the leg out of it's socket as I did and it's not that easy to put it back in. I spent almost 5 minutes trying to reattach the leg. The feet bend up and down a little bit and can also pivot around

The tail is where most of the articulation is at. It can curve and bend as much as the actual Heisei Godzilla's tail actually did. 
When moving the tail around, some of the segments will twist around making it look really weird. They go back in place just as easily though.

As it is named, the figure incorporates Light, Sound and Music features. 

The Dorsal Fins on Godzilla's back and the inside of his mouth can light up to simulate the Atomic Breath. It's a great effect and has various settings, sometimes the Fins light up and flash to varying levels of brightness and turn off as the mouth lights up, while both can be lit at the same time.

The Sounds include various roars, growls and stomping sounds. However it seems you can only activate the stomping sounds when the music is playing.
The only way I've found to get the footsteps to play by themselves is to hold down the button so that the music plays, push it again to get the footsteps to play and then hold it down till the music stops and only the sound of the footsteps is playing. A roar should follow afterword.

As for the Music, we have 2 pieces from Godzilla Vs. Biollante, they are the themes that play as Godzilla is escaping the volcano and the first piece that plays as Godzilla rampages through Osaka, both of which are great additions.

In my honest opinion, I feel like these effects were handled pretty well. The roars sound great, the fins light up very nicely and I like the idea of having a Godzilla-shaped music box.

I just don't see how that makes it worth close to $200. $140-$150 maybe, but any price over that, I feel is pushing it by a lot.
I'd say, if you can find it for a good price (maybe from someone on eBay who feels the same), then this is definitely an amazing piece for any Kaiju fan's collection.
I gotta give a big thanks to Kaiju Kidd for letting me borrow his figure for this review. Now that I've had a chance to examine it up close, I do plan on getting my own eventually.

Till next time, I have been your host Gryphon

and I hope you've enjoyed your time here in my lair.

So long...

If you would like to see more from The Gryphon's Lair, Be sure to give my FB page a 'LIKE' to see updates and other related stuff. Thanks for reading!
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'ROGUE ONE: A STAR WARS STORY' - Likes/Dislikes

SPOILER ALERT! SPOILER ALERT!  SPOILER ALERT! SPOILER ALERT! 

Everybody got that? Good.

As a fan of the Star Wars films, I was curious and optimistic about the first in a series of Anthology movies based on the Star Wars saga.

'Rouge One: A Star Wars Story' follows a band of Rebels who attempt to steal the plans of a new super weapon built by the Galactic Empire called the Death Star.
Basically the Plot is the opening crawl from 'Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope'. The only other time I've seen that happen was from watching the last few episodes of the 'Star Wars: Clone Wars' cartoon from 2005 and then seeing the events from those summed up in Revenge of the Sith's opening crawl.

And having seen the movie, I can say that I thoroughly enjoyed it. And in trying to come up with a review for it, I figured that I would detail some things I liked about the movie as well as some things that I didn't nessisarily hated, but kinda bugged me about the movie.

Without any further ado...

Not as much Likes:

1. Jyn's Meaningless Crystal

In the opening scene, Jyn Erso (Felicity Jones) is given a Kyber Crystal by her father and it's shown very prominently. You'd think that it would've had some bearing on the plot the way they showed it, but it doesn't.

2. Crawl-less Opening
I know that plenty of Star Wars related media doesn't have the iconic crawl at the beginning, but here's the thing: Rogue One opens with the famous "A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away..." text and then they cut to abrupt music and a shot of a planet, almost as if they cut out a crawl at the last minute.

3. Jyn and Cassian aren't the most interesting protagonists
Rogue One has some fascinating characters in it, unfortunaly our two lead characters, Jyn Erso and Cassain Andor (Diego Luna) are the weakest links. They aren't the worst characters in the movie, far from it, I could follow their character arcs just fine and genuinely wanted them to succeed in their goals. I just liked the other characters far better. It's similar to the 2014 Godzilla film in which Aaron Taylor-Johnson played an OK character but was overshadowed by certain actors who gave a performance that was too good. -cough-byrancranston-cough-

4. I couldn't spot the MUTO's on Saw Gerrera's cave walls.

I knew where to look for them, but the were too blurred out to really see what was on the wall.

Likes:

1. Special Effects
One thing the Star Wars films excel at is it's blend of practical and Digital effects and Rogue One is no exception. Some people would like to overrea-, I mean, criticize some of the digital effects and claim that they look awful, when really they don't.
Speaking of which:

2. Classic Character Cameos
The appearance of characters from the past films really help to tie this movie into the Saga nicely. Such characters include Bail Organa (Jimmy Smits), Mon Mothma (Genevieve O'Reilly) even the two gangsters from the Cantina in A New Hope make a brief appearance. ("You just watch yourself, we're wanted men. I have the death sentence on 12 systems!") And you simply can't have a Star Wars film without R2-D2 and C-3PO (Anthony Daniels) 
But there were 2 character cameos that caught me off guard. One was that of Grand Moff Tarkin (Originally played by Peter Cushing). While being played by a different actor (Guy Henry) who stood in and provided the voice for Tarkin, his face was digitally altered to look exactly like Peter Cushing in 1977, which I thought was pretty cool!

One thing I was wondering about the film was weather or not Princess Leia would make an appearance. Of course, I got my answer! As with Tarkin, Leia appeared as a stand-in actor (Ingvild Deila) with 1977 Carrie Fisher's face imposed on her own.

3. The Side Characters
Like I said before, the side characters are the most fascinating characters that I wanted to know more about.
My favorite might be the droid K-2SO (Alan Tudyk), he's kinda like if you took C-3PO and gave him the personality of Tony Stark from the Marvel Cinematic Universe movies.
A close second favorite would be Chirrut Îmwe (Donnie Yen), A blind fighter who is a strong believer in the force. He might as well be Daredevil if he were a Jedi, every time he was on screen it was an awesome delight! He should have taken Jyn's Kyber Crystal and stuck it into a make-shift Lightsaber to fight with.

4. The ENTIRE Thrid Act!
As soon as the crew of Rogue One land on the Imperial base on Scarif , the action, tension and great character moments are cranked up to 11. We also get a really cool space battle.
How cool is it? How about the moment where one of the Rebel ships rams into a Star Destroyer, then crashes that Star destroyer into ANOTHER Star Destroyer and uses BOTH STAR DESTROYERS to destroy the planets Shield Generator, allowing Jyn to transmit the Death Star plans to the Rebel Alliance so they can find out how to destroy it?!?!!!

-takes a breath-

And just when you think it couldn't get any better.I have 3 words for ya: DARTH GODDAMN VADER!!!

Yes, even though we knew Darth Vader wasn't going to be in the movie for very long, he steals the show in every scene he is in and James Earl Jones even came back to give him his iconic voice.
He doesn't get a lot of lines, but guess what? He's Darth Vader, he doesn't need to speak to let you know that you really should not mess with him and the last part of this Third Act deals that message in spades. He boards a rebel ship and just slaughters a bunch of Rebels who think they have a chance. I remember sitting there in the theater with my mouth wide open in absolute shock and amazement at how much of a great moment this is.

So overall, I really loved 'Rogue One: A Star Wars Story'. I know some people who were actually quite skeptical or cautiously optimistic about seeing this movie, but I can assure you that seeing this movie is well worth the price of admission, and I look forward to seeing what other Star Wars Stories we may get on the big screen.


Now where's the trailer for Episode VIII?!  

Till next time, I have been your host Gryphon
and I hope you've enjoyed your time here in my lair.

So long...

And HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!

If you would like to see more from The Gryphon's Lair, Be sure to give my FB page a 'LIKE' to see updates and other related stuff. Thanks for reading!

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X-PLUS GODZILLA 1984 (30 CM DIAMOND REISSUE) - Figure Review.

X-Plus, a company who's Godzilla products I've known about for a while but have little to no experience with. I do own a Cold-Cast Resin Chess Piece of the 1968 Godzilla and I used to see their larger Vinyl figures in Comic Book stores.

I would've picked them up if they weren't $100+.

As the years went by, I never thought I would come to own one of the larger X-Plus vinyl figures. But you clicked on the review, so you know that that just changed. I had to help my Grammie fix up her old house so that she could sell it and she was kind enough to pay me for my services. There were a lot of things I could have done with that money, but for some reason, my mind kept fixating on getting an X-Plus figure.

Particularly, the 1984 Godzilla since I knew it was getting a re-issue. Godzilla 1985 (The Americanized version of 'The Return of Godzilla') was the first Godzilla movie I saw and that design of Godzilla has remained one of my absolute favorites and I always told myself that if I was ever to own an X-Plus figure, it would be that one.  
Having the money, I knew I had to leap at the chance!

And I'm glad I did, this is probably one of the coolest Godzilla figures I own know.

This figure has an amazing sculpt. Godzilla's rough and bumpy skin is captured beautifully. X-Plus definitely spares no expense in making sure that their Godzilla figures look exactly the way they do in the movies. If I didn't know any better, I'd think I was holding a smaller version of the actual suit.
The amount of detail in the head alone is something to marvel at. Just look at the eyes, not only are they painted very nicely, but you can see individual veins painted on the pupils, a small detail that I love immensely.

Another great thing about the head sculpt is the mouth. The paint work looks outstanding, Godzilla's teeth and gums are painted without overlapping each other too much and he has a very nice looking tongue. 

The same attention to detail on the skin continues down the rest of the body. The claws and toenails are colored a nice yellow-ish white. I also really like how all the creases and folds all over his body look making Godzilla look big and muscular, particularly in the chest.

The dorsal fins look really great running down to the tail, which is perfectly sized when compared with the body.

If I had to give one little nitpick it'd be that the paint work on the back of the neck looks a little off, like they got a little carried away with the grey airbrushing.
But at the end of the day, this is only a little nitpick and doesn't distract me too much from the rest of this figures magnificence!

Left: Diamond Select Godzilla 1975. Right: Diamond Select Godzilla 1989

Standing beside the NECA 24" Godzilla 2014.

Left: Diamond Select Rodan. Right: Bandai Creation 12" Mechagodzilla

As you can see, X-Plus figures look great standing next to any larger scale Godzilla figures.

I wanna take this time to give praise to the retailer I received this figure from: Flossie's Gifts and Collectibles, a site that sells all manner of dolls and figurines, but has it's own section of Godzilla related merch. This is where most collectors get their X-Plus fix and I knew this is where I need to go.
The journey to obtain this figure has been interesting, to say the least. This figure came out around the time when my card I use to buy things was to expire so I had to find an alternate means of payment till I got a new one. Luckily, John Stanowski, who manages the Godzilla products on the site was able to communicate with and help me square that away, and for that I give major kudos for outstanding customer service.

In the end, I think this is a FANTASTIC figure from X-Plus and absolutely captures the essence of the 1984 Godzilla perfectly. If this is one of your favorite designs of the Big G and you have the extra scratch to spare, this is one figure you should add to your collection right now. 

Till next time, I have been your host Gryphon

and from my lair to yours: Have a Merry Christmas!!! =)

So long...

If you would like to see more from The Gryphon's Lair, Be sure to give my FB page a 'LIKE' to see updates and other related stuff. Thanks for reading!
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