The importance of Articulation

 I often mention that articulation can make or break a figure. A Spider-Man figure that can't pull off the web yo-yo or the Spider-Man landing pose, is not a great figure. As a bonus I use the MVC stance, because it's spidery but not as extreme as the other two poses. With Street Fighter characters, I try to reproduce key poses.

If it's Ken, you get The Ansatsuken 3 moves. If it's Chun Li, you get Spinning Bird Kick,  Hyakuretsuukyaku and kikoken. But, sometimes, I forget to test other poses and it comes back to bite me in the ass later.

Ken: You think you can replace me with a cheap ass Jada toy? I'm a motherfucking SH Figuarts Ken! You can't replace me!

Ah, but I am, Ken... It is all for one simple reason:

Jada wins...

The "cheap ass Jada toy" can do a much better seiza pose than the super expensive SH Figuarts... 

While seiza is not a standard pose in SF, it's  a common pose in certain Japanese Martial Arts.

Don't get me wrong, the SH Figuarts Ken figure is really cool. But the knee articulation is a little bit lacking. Not to mention that some of the Japanese style articulation is a little bit unsightly.

In my recent Bruce Lee figure review, I said that his articulation was a bit lacking. Well, one picture is better than a thousand words:

Super7 Bruce Lee cannot be posed in his Iconic Kick pose. The Fei Long by Jada Toys can pull off this pose a lot better due to the butterfly shoulders, and double joints on the knees and elbows. I understand B-Flynn's reasoning for not going into hyper articulation, but in Bruce's case, it IS NEEDED for the most iconic Bruce Lee pose. The fact that this $55+ figure can't pull off the iconic pose knocks down the figure from really awesome to huh, neat! Territory.

But that's just me...