BLACK 13 PARK FUJITA-KUN AND YOU KO'S OTAKU FANTASY WAR 1/6 SCALE ACTION FIGURES SET

This set includes both figures, Fujita-Kun, the inventor with a bionic hand, and his creation You Ko, the cyborg girl. The figures were originally sold separately, and come in completely separate boxes, but they’re obviously meant to go together. Some of his accessories are specifically usable by her, for instance, like the backpack. This is my first Black 13 Park product, so I can’t compare it in much detail to previous releases. But there are a lot of strengths and weaknesses to these two awesome looking, but very expensive, figures. First, the strengths. The first thing you’ll notice is the sculpting, and it is TOP NOTCH. Fujita’s body (except for the left hand) is a stock body, but every inch of You Ko has been sculpted from scratch for this release, and the meticulousness shows. His robo-fingers are each articulated. Her whole body shows loving detail, from the parts meant to look like synthetic skin to the more clearly robotic elements. She’s clean and sharp and fits together well, and has a ton of modular options. Her articulation is great, as well, and she has a ton of awesome poses she can get into. She can also be disassembled – her head, arms, forearms, upper torso, belly, hands, and feet all easily come apart, so you can pose him ‘building’ her in almost any state of repair. Heck, you can suspend her upper torso from your display like Tony Stark working on an Iron Man suit with her legs and an arm and a face plate or two on the table beside him. The time and effort they put into sculpting, particularly her, has clearly paid off. And there are so many little details – grooves on the underside of his robot fingers, Aztecing on the inside of her face and chest plates, the interiors of the backpack side panels. And the painting is great, clean and tight and surprisingly subtle. These are gorgeous and unique figures that are also fun to play with. And they’ve been improved since the prototype pictures. For example, You Ko’s elbows, wrists, and ankles are now all skin-toned (and, if I’m not mistaken, larger), which improves the aesthetic of the figure a lot. Their faces aren’t especially photorealistic, like a Hot Toys portrait would be (particularly hers), but they fit the general aesthetic of this company’s other output, and their tenor as a pop-culture-obsessed Japanese man and his anime-inspired invention. His smirk is cool and his glasses fit well. His hat is magnetic – removing it leaves the smooth black magnet visible, and needs his hood and/or one of the two dog masks (heads? I’m not sure if in the bizarre lore these are supposed to be his actual head for some reason) put on to cover it up. Her hair is sculpted and pulls apart, and then her normal face pulls off to be replaced with the cyber face. Each of the plates can be opened or completely removed, and the eye and mouth guns under the face are a separate, removable piece, although there isn’t anything to replace them with. Most of the face plates can’t be open when her hair is attached, though. They have a lot of great accessories, including her extra face, the dog masks, a small gun for each of them, a large paintball-like gun for him, smoke grenades for him, a backpack for him (that can become a weapons platform for her), a cigarette for him (complete with a lavishly sculpted smoke trail), and an extra pair of hands for her, with her palms open like she’s shooting, Iron Man style. The weapons are largely interchangeable and both can use any of them. Their clothing is well tailored, and his comes on and off easily. Dressing her is another matter, though. You’re supposed to take her arms off and thread them into her outfit first, then pull her hoodie on and attach the arms inside. This is very frustrating to do. Moreover, the arms fall off easily – and coupled with her very stiff shoulder joints, this makes posing her exasperating when the shirt is on, and even sometimes when it isn’t. The arms hold fine when she’s on display, but any time you try to pose her, expect the arms to come off. Just pose the shoulders to your liking first and reattach the arms last. Both figures have this problem – some joints too loose, and some too tight. It’s not bad enough that they flop around or can’t hold a pose – they don’t need doll stands, which is good, because none are included – but it is much more irksome than it should be at this price point. There are a few minor design flaws, which is probably to be expected with such radical new sculpting. His robo-arm is too thick to go into most clothing (what he comes with works fine), and her hair drastically limits posability and clothing options for her. Also, perplexingly, nothing fits in the backpack. There are slots for all the grenades, but they only work when it’s open. You can’t close it unless it’s completely empty, which seems absurd. But these issues are fairly minor; I imagine if they go on to make the blonde android pictured on You Ko’s box, they’ll have ironed all their problems out. However, there are some baffling absences with these figures, particularly at this mammoth price point. The first is a lack of extra hands. He comes with none. NONE. And she only has two pair; the gun grips and the flat shooting palms. Given how unique her hands are, they really should have had a broad assortment of hand options. None of their hands even fit the grips of the guns particularly well. This is a massive oversight for such expensive figures. His right hand can always be swapped with other stock hands, but he should have several options included wearing his fingerless glove. Also, as mentioned above, Fujita is missing the top of his head. I don’t know why they didn’t sculpt a hair piece to put on for when not using the hat or hoodie. It would have been far, far more valuable than one of the silly dog masks (I’ll accept that it was vital to somebody to have one dog head, but there was no reason to have two when it so obviously was made at the expense of including a more useful piece). And there are some absences that seem unusual given Black 13 Park’s other work. It would be great if Fujita’s cyber arm came off (similar to the amazing Coo Model werewolf, vampire, or witch) and could be replaced with a human arm (it would also make dressing him easier), but it’s glued on tight. It would have been nice for You Ko to have skin-colored hands (and it would seem to suit the spirit of the toy to be able to disguise all of her mechanical parts when dressed in the provided outfit, an effect her cyber hands ruins). In the same vein, it would have been nice to have a skin-colored stomach panel for her, or at least have the existing transparent panel painted to look like the rest of her synthetic flesh. As mentioned above, the machine guns are an insert that comes out of the face; it would be nice to have a second insert of her eyes and teeth as well, and that sort of bio-dissection type layering would be right up Black 13 Park’s alley. Also, there are no directions included in either box, and this is a set that NEEDS an instruction sheet. I recommend downloading all of the pictures from Hobby Galaxy’s website and referring to them often when posing, or you’re likely to miss something (or even think you’ve broken something that’s meant to come apart). I would have liked to know that his arm didn’t come off before putting pressure on it, and know that it was okay that one of hers fell off seconds after taking it out of the box. And if you haven’t studied all the pictures, you’re likely to miss that her whole top comes off to be replaced by the backpack, turning You Ko completely into a walking weapons platform. So, is the set worth it? These are amazing, beautiful figures that are a definite conversation piece, and likely resemble nothing else in your collection. Having them on the shelf really makes a statement. That said, they’re far from flawless, and they cost an insane amount of money for two sixth-scale figures with only a moderate number of accessories. If I’m being brutally logical, there’s no way these are worth what I paid. But I’m still glad I bought them. Heck, I’d probably even be willing to buy a second You Ko, if I could find her separately. If you’ve looked at the pictures and think they’re cool, you’re likely to be happy to own them, too. So the emotional side of my brain says yes, they’re absolutely worth it. Just assume there’s a small asterisk next to that statement. A few pictures of Fujita-Kun and You Ko in action: Tinkering with You Ko: https://sta.sh/0h2zbn2uuro Out looking for trouble: https://sta.sh/019ho8l14i7k An undistressed damsel: https://sta.sh/0oda9ovaxu6 Fighting mad: https://sta.sh/022gsnckcxwh Battle bots: https://sta.sh/01834aq3zjlv Bionic waitress: https://sta.sh/024ngld1wzi6 Modern Prometheus: https://sta.sh/0152r57w2bi4