Bandai has released their latest movie-related action figure in their successful S.H. Figuarts line: Bruce Lee. He is the greatest martial arts movie star and set the bar for just about everyone that followed him. He was handsome, charismatic, a pretty decent actor, and and could kung-fu like nobody’s business. His life fell short when he died on the set, but his legacy continues.
This action figure is an amazing piece of art. It is beautiful sculpted, and Bandai’s new face-capture prototyping works perfectly on little Bruce. Looking at each interchangeable face, you see Bruce, and even close up this figure looks better than some of the other face captures. The physical sculpt, the arms, and the chest capture Bruce’s wiry, ripped frame to a “T.” The rest of the sculpt is basically his pants, and Bandai’s done a a great ob sculpting these.
The articulation is amazing. At first I was bit concerned because the knee joints are single-ball hinges and I thought they might lose some of the range of motion. But like Figma, these joints have a huge range of motion. Bandai also went out of their way to ensure that the knee joints fit with the rest of the sculpt. All the joints in the figure are solid, nothing loose and floppy and they all have a great range of motion. And they are stable; I put him in the crane stance and he stood there for 48 hours without falling over. I am impressed.
The figure has a ton of accessories: extra faces, hands, and some weapons. All of these are great to play with, and you can recreate some classic Bruce Lee looks. You can even have some fun posing him with his faces in different settings. I already expect Instagram to light up with pictures of Woody and Bruce, Naruto, Luffy and Goku on some crazy adventures.
Bruce is not without fault, however. As much as I love this figure, he is tiny. I mean really tiny. Sure, the actor topped off at 5 foot 7 inches, but this figure is even small for S.H. Figuarts standards. It makes him impossible to display with Marvel Legends, and you’ll have difficulty finding a spot for him in a 6-inch collection.
Despite his scale issues, this is an amazing figure. I’ve been waiting for companies to adopt the Hot Toys standards of sculpt, quality, paint, and realism into the 6-inch scale, and Bandai is certainly picking up that gauntlet.
You an pick this figure up today at:
