The final pre-order from last year (late December release) arrived early this week. It is none other than Mechagodzilla from the Godzilla vs. Kong film. I enjoyed Legendary’s rendition of Godzilla’s famous robot counterpart. His appearance at the climax was no surprise (it had been teased for months), but I found his look interesting, and his brief rampage and battle with the title kaiju was fun. Tamashii Nations gave us a highly detailed sculpt that included some dye cast parts. He’s big and menacing, so let’s dive in.
First things first: let’s talk about his thighs. Tamashii Nations decided to individually and separately sculpt the hydraulic pistons he has on his thighs. There are 2 issues with this decision. The first being that they made them in plastic instead of dye cast. The second problem is that one end attaches to the inner leg, while the other is attached to his inner torso, and they were designed to move with the legs, but this makes it so that you have to be extra careful when moving those legs, as they may easily snap if they are moved out and/or forward too far. Many collectors were complaining about these pistons easily breaking, with quite a few reporting them broken right out of the box. Upon inspecting mine, one was already broken. I had seen a post where another collector simply removed them and reported that it improved the articulation, not to mention relieving you of the stress of always being extra careful when moving the legs, so I chose to remove mine. It was quite easy, and now my cyborg can spread his legs and kick free of worry. I feel that these pistons are more of a design flaw, good in theory but not in reality. Yet another one of Tamashii Nations questionable choices. Luckily, the rest of the figure is fantastic.
MonsterArts put so much little details into his sculpt, you find yourself wowed at all the lines, patterns, etc. throughout his body. He’s molded in bright, shiny silver, with only small red stripes on his dorsal spines and eyes. Some complained that they should’ve added more red, as he had red light radiating from various parts when he was fully powered up. They could’ve also added some wash here and there to bring out some of those intricate details. But still, you can’t deny how great he looks.
He has three firing cannons on his torso that you can flip and reveal, as well as one on each of his shoulder pads that you flip up to open. As for his articulation, it is good, quite impressive in some sections.
His head and neck are on ball joints, his mouth is hinged and opens wide, he sports swivel shoulder pads, butterfly joints on his upper arms that have a good range, swivel shoulders that can turn fully around, single jointed swivel elbows and knees, claws on ball joints, swivel thighs and ankles, with swivel parts on the front and back of his ankles that move up to help with the foot’s range. His legs can kick forward, as well as turn inward a bit. And a segmented, ball jointed tail that can twist and curl fantastically. Just like with Godzilla Ultima, they managed to master tail articulation that can hold poses without falling apart. He’s able to move well enough to get him into some decent action stances.
For his claws, he comes with 2 pairs, one with curled fingers and the other with extended digits. You can remove the fingers separately, and since one claw is molded for closed fist, while the other is extended, you can mix and match them, giving you a variety of display options. I suppose they could’ve just easily given us articulated fingers, but then they would have probably made them plastic instead of dye cast, so that may have been another QC nightmare, so I’m fine with what they did.
Since he was much bigger than Godzilla and Kong, they decided to scale him accurately, so he really towers over pretty much all my other figures. He’s even taller than my third party Ready Player One MG, and that guy is big.
S. H. MonsterArts Mechagodzilla 2021 is a very nice figure, despite the questionable hydraulic piston issue. Luckily, I found a simple solution that allowed me to make lemonade out of lemons. So now my cyborg can join the Rockettes without fear of his parts breaking off and flying into the audience, stabbing an unfortunate audience member.
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