Akira - Gaming Goodies - The Armchair Empire

Series: Fantasy Figure Gallery

Available from: Yamato Toys USA

Artist: Dorian Cleavenger
Sculptor: Plant-jzero Moekichi

MSRP: $98.00US

Pros:
- Grabs the sci-fi sensibility from the '40s and '50s
- Really great color
- Has all the curves of a real woman
- Easy assembly...

Cons:
- ... except for the staff!
- No print of the original artwork is included

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Akira from Yamato Toys

akira

Of all the Fantasy Figure Gallery pieces, Akira is probably my favorite because it's a call-back to how I imagine most sci-fi heroines from the Buck Rogers era. You know ladies on both sides of the good/evil coin in films with titles like "An Interplanetary Battle with the Tiger Men of Mars." It's a style that George Lucas tapped with the Star Wars: Episode 1 - 3 but he never did it like this.

Draped with robes, adorned with a giant headdress and earrings, and sporting a big spiky staff, Akira is like Art Deco in female form. With provocative nudity and an enigmatic smile -- though not quite as enigmatic as Mona Lisa's and lots more skin.

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And as strange as it may sound, with the headdress, Akira actually has hints of HR Giger's Alien design. Akira is obviously at the other end of the spectrum but the hints are there.

Standing an impressive 10.5" tall (taller still with the staff), the only assembly required is attaching her to the base, securing a small winged embellishment

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on her leg, and and installing the two-part staff. The first part is easy. The figure attaches very snugly and securely to the base, the embellishment pushes easily into place, and you'll have to time to ponder one of life's action figure mysteries: How do women fight in high heels? The next question will surely be heavier. How the $#%^@! do I get the staff installed properly?

The positioning of the hand, where the groove is along Akira's right breast, and because the staff comes in two parts, it makes for an extremely finicky installation. Maybe it'll be different for you, but when I put the staff together, it took me nearly fifteen minutes to get it into a satisfactory position and without the staff "bending" at the seam. A solid (or two-part) metal staff would have taken care of this.

According the to the marketing information, the figure itself is "constructed of over 100 individual pieces and features over 400 paint applications, twice the conventional statue." I'll take this information at face value. 100 individual pieces with no notable seams is an accomplishment in itself. (There's no indication of how these numbers compare to the rest of the figures.) The hues and tones of the colors -- the royal blue is killer -- show a high level of craftsmanship. There's no oversplash to speak of.

The paint application does a great job bringing out the detail of the figure. There's no specific area of detail that trumps the rest -- it's all very good; just take a look at the figure from the shoulders up.

Compared to the source material, it's a pretty good match. As noted with the other pieces in the Fantasy Figure Gallery, Yamato missed the boat when they decided not to include prints of the source material. It would make for easier comparison. The real difference between the two -- apart from the one dimension versus three dimension detail -- is that the source material has a much darker, deeper tone to it. Granted, some of this is probably due to the black background, but even washing the background into white reveals darker tones to the paint. Yamato's Akira is a much paler figure. That's not so much a "con" as it is an observation.

One other thing I like about this figure is that it's a woman. Not a stick model with bolt-on boobs but a woman with soft curves and an appropriate chest size. The fact Yamato can pull this off seamlessly and with a ceramic look (in plastic!) makes it all the better. And with a price tag that comes in under $100US it's also the most affordable of the Fantasy Figure Gallery.

Recommended for fans of sci-fi from the '40s and '50s.

- Aaron Simmer

(April 16, 2010)