REVIEW Play Arts Kai Arkham Asylum Joker

Posted on April 2, 2012 by Knives

INTRO

Batman has been staring down at me from the mid shelf of my bookcase for a few days now. An unblinking crow, never wavering and ever diligent. I cannot escape his gaze. I try to pretend otherwise but I know what, or rather, WHO he’s looking for.. watching for.

It’s my fault really. I was the one who let him out of his cage. The cardboard and plastic semblance of Arkham Asylum. Only held together by a few pieces of scotch tape and a prayer. Yet enough for a time.

He arrived to me out of necessity more than luxury. I take some solace in the idea that Batman must know this. It’s said that to have good you must have evil. To see the darkness, you must know the light. To understand true joy you must experience personal tragedy.

To have Batman, you must have..

the Joker.

PACKAGING

Joker’s plastic prison was much the same as Batman’s, only a good deal thinner. I found it a tad ironic that Joker’s box probably killed at least one less tree than Batman’s. If you read our Batman review you have a good idea of what to expect this time around. All in all it’s about the same sequins-decked ballroom gown minus a few inches at the waist. You cut a thin piece of tape at the top tab and Joker slides out in a plastic tray sans fuss. Marvelous!

WHAT’S INCLUDED

As much as I would have enjoyed seeing it, Joker did NOT include a 3 foot long gun with a “BANG” flag hanging out of the end of it. From another era I suppose. Instead, Joker comes with a hand canon that’d possibly make Robocop jealous. He also comes with comically delightful wind-up chomping teeth that you can open and close.. though cannot wind-up. Like Batman, he too comes with an extra pair of hands to hold his gadgets and gift you with a wider array of pose options.

THE BREAKDOWN

Out of the pack, Joker looks absolutely fantastic! The pin stripe on his dapper attire is sculpted in, his evil/mischievous grin spot on and check out his shoes! His strapped shoes must have cost him a small fortune at the “clothes you can’t buy in this century” shop. They’re shiny too. I love ’em!

Joker’s visage is right in line with the villain whose eye you dotted in Arkham Asylum. As with Batman, Play Arts Kai obviously took care to accurately capture the game version of the character right down to the pointy chin. He looks great.

As much as I truly love how the Joker looks, I’d be wrong not to mention the incredibly apparent shoulder joints. Unlike Batman, whose cape does well to hide whatever shenanigans his shoulders are getting into, Joker’s shoulders are giant seams bordering on holes. With some modest finessing you can somewhat hide them, but in almost any pose you put him in they’ll be readily apparent. This will bother some more than others.

Let me repeat the stuff I said earlier about Joker looking great. There are so many great things here in the sculpt, the paint application, the little details like the dead flower pinned to his lapel and the gold chain hanging from his pocket. The purple suit he’s sporting even has tails. TAILS, MAN!

With so much praise feeding into this garden, what possible detractors could I rummage up ? Well, honestly?

Joker isn’t “fun”.

Or at least as fun as you’d like him to be. That might sound a little harsh, but I assure you that I’d like nothing more than to claim otherwise. I feel like I managed to pull off some pretty tight and dramatic poses with Joker but it was a downright chore to do so.

The first thing I do when writing and photographing a toy for review is stand the figure up in a neutral pose. Turns out, Joker does not easily come to terms with this idea. He’s a bit of a chore to get standing up on his own. While Bats has the advantage of his long pointy cape to give him an extra dash of “prop,” Joker is free ball’n. His feet are so slender, his legs sculpted into a natural bend that’s so extreme, that possibly even more so than Batman, gravity is his worst enemy.

Obviously, I eventually did get him standing.

The thing is, I don’t necessarily consider the difficultly in balancing him that massive an issue. I take it as a challenge like one might when balancing an egg filled spoon in one’s mouth and carrying it across a beer stained dorm room. Heck, some collectors only display their figures with stands, sometimes showcased in dramatic “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” sort of dioramas only possibly with one.

That being said, lack of balance is certainly not a perk either.

What gets me is a combination of issues. The real issue I found lies with his aforementioned tiny shoulder joints. Beyond being very obvious and sorta screwing up the otherwise killer aesthetic of the Joker, they don’t hold up to play very well either.

A conservative estimate of 7 out of 10 poses I attempted to put Joker into saw one or both of his arms popping out of joint. I’d just get him balanced, standing upright like a proper homo sapien should, only to fumble while fine-tuning his arms and they’d come right off. The only recourse was to pick him up, pop his arms back into the joint and start over again. Maybe Batman cheated. Maybe the added advantage of his cape giving him balance as well as hiding the unsightly shoulder joint, possibly even assisting in keeping the joint in place, has white washed my view of what this toy should be!

But I can’t erase the past. All I know is what I’ve experienced and what I’ve experienced was that I had a blast posing up and playing with Batman, shoulder rotation limitations and all. On the other hand, I felt like I was trying to balance two fragile finicky toothpicks while messing with the Joker.

sigh…

Despite this, with some work you can get Joker to hold some pretty impressive poses. The arcs of his sculpt really look great when they successfully hold ground. I even managed to get him to balance on one leg. If there is one thing Play Arts Kai did absolutely right with this toy, it’s infuse in it a dramatic sense of movement.

FINAL THOUGHTS

I wanted to love this toy. The Joker has been my favorite comic book villain since I was a wee boy. To this day, my ears perk up when I hear about a new Batman or Joker action figure coming around. Batman was my very first Play Arts Kai toy and I’m really happy to have him in my collection. Sure, he had a few things I’d like to see improved upon, but I had a lot of fun playing with him. With Joker I had a ton of expectations and a few body blows of reality once in hand.

Maybe my Joker is the exception and yours won’t have the same finicky shoulder joints that pop out every five seconds. I think he looks great, even with the very exposed shoulder joints that kind of jack up his silhouette. As a colleague of mine once said, “I’m not trying to pretend my toys aren’t toys.” What it really boils down to is the functionality and whether or not it detracts from the overall enjoyment of the toy to you.

All that being said, I still hold to the idea that you can’t have one without the other. What are you going to do, just buy Batman? Think about how lonely he’ll be. It’s natural to have both. If you have Bats, you darn well NEED Joker.

They’re the Yin and Yang/peanut butter and jelly/mashed potatoes and gravy of my collection. And no one eats mashed potatoes without gravy. Fact.

Pros:

Once again, a really nice sculpt
Truly great details abound!
I love the chompers accessory
The Jelly to Batman’s Peanut Butter… They look great together

Cons:

Dude is pretty tricky to balance
Shoulder joints will constantly pop out and are extremely apparent

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REVIEW Play Arts Kai Arkham Asylum Batman

Posted on March 29, 2012 by Knives

INTRO

It’s hard to believe that Rocksteady’s Arkham Asylum, came out in 2009. It seems like only yesterday I was leaping from gargoyle to rooftop taking out the criminally insane while making my way through the brilliantly laid out story, obsessively collecting Riddler’s clues and knocking out badguys in wonderfully hard hitting and creative ways. I can’t recall any other game that made me feel so much like the legendary comic book hero. Well, at least as much as one can while sitting on an old couch, four feet from a flat screen TV, sipping a delicious strawberry limeade route 44 and mashing buttons on a little plastic controller. It was a fantastic video game experience, in fact one of my favorites. Late last year Rocksteady released the sequel Arkham City, which has gotten stellar reviews and is no doubt every bit as engaging if not more so than it’s predecessor. I’ve nibbled on it but have yet to give it the time it truly deserves.

So all that being said, I find it a little crazy that Square Enix/Play Arts Kai is just NOW releasing their Batman and Joker figures based off of 2009’s Arkham Asylum. I don’t really mind the delay. It’s Batman. The video game version of him, but Batman all the same. As long as they do him justice nobody gets hurt.

There’s only one way to find out, to the Batcave!

PACKAGING

Bruce is packed in a rather large windowed box with a close up shot of himself on the side (just like a playboy billionaire) and various logos. On the back you’ll get a glimpse at Joker as well as a few possible poses you can try out for Batman. I like the fact that you can simply cut some tape on the top and slide out the clear plastic cage that holds Batman in place without completely destroying the packaging. Sorry bubble card fans, I am not one of you. Aesthetically, yes. The nostalgia resonates pretty heavily off some of the more well designed bubble cards. But as a collector who actually enjoys posing and displaying his toys few things fill me with more distress and anxiety.

So yes, box design = good. The only thing that bugs me is the extra bat cape accessory which is bubble sealed to the back inside of the pack. If you want to play with it at all you’re just going to have to tear it free with no do overs. Kinda hate that, but at least it’s on the inside.

WHAT’S INCLUDED

“Where does he get all those wonderful toys?”

Ok, two toys. Batman comes with two toys. Bats isn’t over burdened with a ton of accessories, but what he does carry is fairly iconic to the character. The ever important batarang and the incredibly fun (in the game anyway) grappling gun. He also gets a couple extra hands, one for holding the grappling gun and another we’ll just call his “jazz hand”. These easily pop on and off to suite the pose you’re going for. Last of all he comes with a spare cape piece. The default setting, if you will, has one side of the cape sort of wrapping around Batman. The spare piece is sculpted to flow behind him and out of the crime fighter’s way.

THE BREAKDOWN

This is my first Play Arts Kai figure so I was REALLY excited to check out first hand if what I’ve heard about their quality via the World Wide Web was true. The toy itself has a nice solid feel to it. Standing roughly 10′ tall, he’s fairly heavy. Despite being loaded down with various joints and swivels, he seems as though he could withstand a tall shelf tumble or two.

The first thing I noticed was that the head sculpt was dead on with Batman’s game rendering. This isn’t a “nod” or a “homage” to the game character, this IS the game character. They did a really fantastic job with it. The paint on the face is nice and tight too. Occasionally when a mass produced toy has painted iris/pupils, at least one out of ever ten turn up with walleyes or something that just looks.. off. Batman looks just as stern and ready to take on the Asylum as you’d hope.

Moving around the toy I found myself very impressed with with the details and sculpt of this toy. Play Arts Kai did a bang up job in accurately capturing everything from the kevlar mesh type quality in Batman’s suite to the dynamic folds and lines in his cape. His arm guards have nicks and scratches molded in and there’s nice “cloth” wrinkles and stretches here and there to add to the overall believability.

The paint application on his body is pretty straight forward. A light blue-ish grey base with dark blue tints in several of the recesses. The armor bits have a purple sheen. It’s not a mind blowing paint app, but it looks good and suits the toy very well.

The cape is one of the coolest features of this figure. It’s sculpted incredibly well and just adds so much movement to the figure. But it’s the way that Play Arts Kai handled the articulation of his cape that makes it borderline brilliant. Most action figures that come with plastic capes get just that, a single solid static sculpted piece of pure posed plastic. (How’s that for alliteration?) You’re usually stuck with whatever the default look of the cape is. Draped or flowing, it is what it is so you better be OK with it. What the good toy cobblers did with Bat’s cape is actually split it in twain and attach the parts to hidden ball joints.

This allows you to do so many different fun things with the cape and really opens up the possibilities of what type of poses you can achieve with Batman. The joints themselves reside under a sculpted rubbery bit of cape that drapes over Batman’s shoulders in a cloak like fashion. You can see the dividing lines and can obviously tell that there are several parts at play here, but the look still manages to be cohesive and awesome!

The batarang is my favorite of the two accessories he came with. It looks razor sharp (fear not parents, it isn’t) and like it could deal out some pretty heavy damage to the wayward thug.

One of Bat’s spare hands is sculpted to hold his grappling gun and does so well. However, that same hand is also meant to hold the batarang and does so poorly. You kinda have to wedge it in there and remember not sneeze in it’s direction if you want it to stay put. You can try to use the “jazz hands” and squeeze the batarang between his fingers, ninja star style, but that doesn’t really work much better. Also, there’s nowhere to put any of his wonderful toys when he’s not using them. A way to clip them to or at least slide them under the belt would have been a nice addition.

Being my first Play Arts Kai figure, I fully admit it took me a good ten minutes to wrap my head around the way Mr. Wayne is articulated. There are just SO many joints going on in this figure it’s almost silly. I stopped trying to count all the various places that bend and twist on Bats, but I can assure you it’s a lot. If you think he should bend a certain way, most likely he will and then some.

He has your standard affair of swivel ball joints at his elbows, wrists and ankles. His torso is multi-segmented to let him twist and turn however his spine might allow. His shoulder joints are interesting because they actually swivel away from his body in what would be a rather unsightly way to allow for more range of motion across his body. You won’t mind the look as it’s completely hidden by the top of his cape. Of course he sports Play Art Kai’s now standard double knee joint. Personally, I love/hate it.

It does give Batman a little bit of extra flexibility, but it also looks pretty bad when taken full advantage of. While the rest of his body is detailed and sculpted, the double knee joint is smooth save for a simple line meant to continue the appearance of a knee pad of sorts. Why even bother with that little of a detail if you leave off all the rest? It just looks odd. The same could be said of the elbow joint as it’s also completely smooth with no mesh pattern or weathering to speak of, but aesthetically it works better there and doesn’t detract from the overall look.

Another thing that I found a bit odd is that Batman’s.. “loins” for lack of a better term, are not locked into position. Unlike his upper torso, arms and legs, his groin is the same thin rubbery plastic that the cape draped over his shoulders is made from. It’s basically floating there, hiding the joints that allow for movement in the thighs and waist. It’s a little loose too, seemingly favoring one hip or the other. I kept having to rearrange his “situation” to get him looking right. It’s not a big detractor, I’ve just never seen a toy where I was required to continually fidget with it’s crotch.

The last thing I want to bring up about the articulation is that, while it’s here in troves and allows for an absolute massive range of pose possibilities, it’s not perfect. The main trouble area being the shoulders. Square Enix gave us something akin to a quadruple joint at the shoulder for a maximum movement, yet killed 50% of that with the plastic cape draped over them. You really can’t lift his arms much further than 90 degree’s without risking the possibility of damaging the cape. It doesn’t keep you from getting a million cool poses out of him and with some tweaking you can sort of mimic the look of Batman firing his grappling gun into the air, but it does detract a little from the overall play-ability.

Despite these few complaints, Play Arts Kai has developed a pretty good articulation system that does it’s best not to hinder whatever strange pretzel like arrangement you might have in mind for The Dark Knight.

FINAL THOUGHTS

As my first Square Enix Play Arts Kai action figure, I’m very happy with this toy. At almost $70 shipped from most distributers, these are not cheap by any means. It’s nice to know that the quality of them warrants the somewhat steeper price tag.

As a Batman action figure, I’d dare say this is the best one money can buy for under $100. (For the best OVER $100, look over here) I’ve had a blast posing and re-posing him in attempts to get that one “keeper” pose to display him on my shelf. There are a few hiccups with the way his shoulder joints are hindered, the lack of a true batarang holding hand and a few finicky design choices but overall I think he’s a great toy. I’ve really enjoyed playing around with him. Every time I glance over at him, lurking on my shelf I can faintly hear the first few notes of Danny Elfman’s Batman theme. It may not be at all featured in the game this figure is based off of, but I think an emotional/nostalgic response is warranted and in fact a good thing. This guy IS Batman. He’s a fun, good looking, well made toy based off one of the most popular super heroes ever from one of the best video games of 2009.

At the very least, Batman got me very excited for Joker.