Figma's latest "Ghost in the Shell" action figure is an excellent representation of The New Movie's main character, Major Motoko Kusanagi. based on her look in the final chapter of the Arise series, The Major comes decked out in a matte black stealth bodysuit, and comes with three interchangeable faces, three looks for her hair (visor, actually), her assault rifle, pistol, rack of eight additional hands and standard figma stand. As you would expect from Max Factory and figma, the sculpt is excellent, the paint is impeccable, and the accessories are plentiful. The eyes, for example, are perfect, as are the lighter purple discs all over the suit. Two tiny red lines highlight the tops of her heels, and even the butt plate of her pistol magazine has a coat of perfect brown paint (and, yes, the four ports on the back of her neck are present).
Figma's Motoko Kusanagi is a fun figure. She poses easily, for the most part, and looks pretty natural in a wide variety of poses. The construction and materials are solid - I never felt like anything was being pushed to the breaking point and I had absolutely no issues with stuck joints or parts falling off. The design and engineering is a little more of a mixed bag, and is actually where I encountered the only issues I had. Firstly, her neck is sculpted at a forward angle. This means that any pose where her upper torso is crunched forwards gives her a downward stare. In fact, I found that I had to pull her chest back constantly to get a straight-ahead look. The spot where the head attaches to the neck leaves a significant amount of gapping, as well. It only shows itself from certain angles, but it's there. The lower torso joint has a nice range of motion, but posing in combination with the upper torso joint took a little bit of patience on my part. The joints are very smooth and moveable without being loose, but getting the parts lined up just the way I wanted was tricky.
I'm not thrilled with the hair pieces. The regular "no visor" version looks as it does in the movie, I think, but I don't like the amount of forehead it leaves. The "visor down" look is ok, but hides the face too much for me to use on a regular basis. The "visor up" look is my personal favorite, combined with the regular "stern face." The fit of the pieces is not great, with a noticeable gap at my figure's right ear for a couple of the hair pieces, and one of the faces is very tight to plug in. I needed to take a blade to shave off a tiny bit of another hair piece to get it to sit better, which it now does.
The face sculpts are nice, but there's something about them that's just a tiny bit "off" to me. In hand, her cheeks seem a little puffy and her mouth is tiny. There's absolutely no paint applied to the lips or cheeks, and as a result the expressions lose some of their strength.
The shoulders feature an ingenious ability to pop in and out, giving some added forward range of motion. Enough, in fact, to allow the figure a two-handed grip (of sorts) of her weapons. It works very well, and gives this version an ability that the original Stand Alone Complex version didn't have.
Overall, this is an excellent figure. With figma, you get what you see: a well-made figure that's fun to play with. She's worth the asking price, even with the few issues I encountered, and I'm hoping that figma gives us more versions of the Major in the future...
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