Today I received my Burning Godzilla 2019 in the mail via FedEx. I'm going to be getting quite a bit of figures in the coming days (3 scheduled for Monday, 2 more scheduled by the end of next week), as a lot of my pre-orders have now been released in Japan. I'll have a lot of new import figures to dabble with, nice. The Covid thing has delayed many releases, and since the Japan Post is still restricting shipments to the U.S., certain sellers are waiting until the restriction is lifted. I'm lucky in that the place I ordered mine from offered upgrades to FedEx/DSL free of charge. Anyway, back to the flame broiled Gojira.
This is basically the same mold as their standard 2019 Godzilla, and since I really liked that one, I went ahead and pre-ordered this one. Now that I have it in hand, it's just ok. I don't hate it, but I'm not completely wowed by it either. The paint job is the obvious big difference, but he seems to have too much yellow. Some darker shading would've definitely benefitted this King of the Monsters. He looks like he just got done fighting a giant mutant Cheeto, and you know how you'll end up with orange stained fingers after snacking on them? Well, Godzilla looks like he spent a significant amount of time rolling around in a Cheetos bag. As you can see, there's lot of bright yellow and splotches of orange throughout his body. Certain limbs (such as forearms and legs) are darker in color as well. It's especially noticeable on his left wrist and his shins. The figure could use some airbrushing to darken larger portions of the body, that way the orange highlights would pop more.
One other thing that's very noticeable to me is that the tongue seems to be positioned more in the middle and seems stuck in that pose. On the original release, the tongue could move up or down to the bottom of the mouth, but on this one, it seems to be stuck in place in that position. I've also noticed that in the special edition poster version release. I don't own it, but all the reviews I saw of that one showed the tongue in the middle. Maybe I need to fiddle around more with it to get it to rest at the bottom of his jaw. Also, the jaw doesn't seem to close all the way. The original release couldn't shut his mouth completely either, but on that one, you could get it pretty close. On this one, there seems to be a slightly bigger gap, so he always has his mouth is open with his tongue sticking out.
As for the articulation, it's the same as the original release: ball jointed head, ball jointed lower jaw, ball jointed upper neck, upper torso and waist, ball jointed shoulders, wrists, thighs and feet, hinged elbows and knees, and several ball jointed tail segments. On my original release, the left arm was pretty stiff and couldn't be moved too far back. On this release, that arm is less stiff and has better range. All the other joints are good as well. Some were stiff, but a little bit of messing around with them helped to loosen them up. He can't do any yoga poses or acrobatic moves, but he's Godzilla, he doesn't have need for extreme poses.
As much as I disliked the NECA release (the sculpt was nice, I just didn't care for the limited head/neck articulation and those awful fish eyes), I have to say that NECA's burning Godzilla 2019 has a much nicer paint job. The color is really the biggest offender on this Cheetozilla. Other than that, his articulation is good and if you like his look and liked MonsterArts' original release, then go ahead and pick this guy up. Otherwise, just toss your regular MonsterArts in a bag of hot Cheetos and you'll have the same effect without the extra cost.
Comments
Post a Comment