I resisted preordering the Figuarts Harry Potter figures for quite a while. At least, “quite a while” in toy terms, which is about two weeks.
I didn’t need to start yet another line, I said to myself. I had never had the slightest urge to buy Harry Potter action figures from any previous attempts, and if I was being honest I was way more a fan of the books themselves than I was the cinematic adaptations. But these were all things I told myself in order to keep from preordering. A few years ago I actually watched every Potter movie, and while they didn’t match up to the quality of the books for obvious reasons, I enjoyed them for what they were. But that still didn’t translate to “I need figures of these actors playing these characters.”
I mean, I wouldn’t turn down Emma Watson if she bumped into me, but that’s another point.
But I kept looking at those damned toys. I know if I keep looking at something, I might as well save myself the future angst and just preorder the damned things, because I’ll just end up regretting it. So I did. And here we are.
Harry Potter was three or four books deep before I finally read the first one. I don’t spend a lot of time seeking out “young adult” fiction to read as an adult, but I’m not impervious to hype, so I eventually had to know what the kerfuffle was about. What I found was an extremely enjoyable series with a great cast of characters that I wanted to continue reading about. Needless to say I quickly caught up with the rest of the series after reading the first one, and bought the rest as they came out. An enjoyable story is an enjoyable story, regardless of so-called target audience, which is meaningless promotional crap anyway.
The movies by their nature had to make some concessions in order to condense the books into a decent viewing time. Sometimes they were successful, others they were less so. Order of the Phoenix, for instance, is like they filmed the synopsis of a Cliff’s Notes version. But one area in which they excelled was casting. Across the board, from students to teachers and beyond, the casting for the Harry Potter movies was nigh perfect, and it all hinged on Harry. Despite a few beginner’s bumps, Daniel Radcliffe ended up doing a god job bringing the Potter character to life. It was an unenviable amount of pressure to deal with.
Figuarts has similarly done a great job translating Radcliffe’s Potter into toy form, but, like the on-screen performance, it’s not without a few rough patches. But overall, I like this figure quite a bit, and am glad I ended up preordering it. And the other two. And Snape, when he has a release date. And so forth.
Let’s start off with the positives. The figure looks great. Having bought mainly adult figures from Figuarts, it’s nice to see the same amount of care given to a figure of a child. There’s no skimping on articulation, and the only impedance to his movement is based more around the clothing than the figure itself. Namely the robe. But more on that later.
Harry features a floating hair piece that allows him to look up without impedance. This will be useful for the flying poses. Also looking up at everybody, because Harry’s a short dude.
The rest of his articulation is standard Figuarts, with ball jointed wrists and single jointed elbows and knees with a very nice range. He does not have the drop down hips, but his legs still are able to move quite far out in front of him despite that.
Now, about those robes. Over time I’ve found that Figuarts (or any import company) often gives you so many options that you often have to pick that one combination that really works for you. For instance, Potter comes with two different robes: relaxed and “action.” While the relaxed robes are fine for standing around or walking to class, I found that I really enjoyed having the action robe as his default robe. The robe is technically intended to be paired with his broom to simulate flight, but just popping this robe on him immediately adds a complete kinectic charge to the figure, and makes everything he does seem much more dynamic. 
Snape would think twice about chiding Harry during class if Harry’s cape was billowing behind him like he had just leapt out of a tenth story window, you know?
Ok, mainly I just have grown to dislike restrictive capes and robes, and he moves much easier with the dynamic robe on. But still…action Harry!!
Harry comes with three different face plates that can be swapped by removing the fron section of his hair. They’re all decent likenesses, although the “determined” one (with gritted teeth) is a little odd looking. It’s just a hard expression to pull off well. The other two heads—one stoic, one with a slight smile—are much better representations. All of them feature that wide-eyed sense of wonder that he had throughout the entire first movie.
The removeable hairpiece does end up sitting a bit too distant from his face, but how much that bothers you is going to be dependent on the individual.
Harry comes with four sets of hands: wand-holding, relaxed, open grip and narrow grip. My default pairing is a wand-hand with a wide grip hand. Because it looks actiony.
The wand fits great in his hand and he can tilt it down like he’s doing one of those funky sounding spells at something, like “Malcontento John Leguizamo” or something.
Harry wouldn’t be complete if he didn’t come with his pet owl, Hedwig. Hedwig looks like he’s about an inch…but it’s an angry inch. Hedwig can balance on Harry’s arm, which takes a bit of fiddling to get right. In addition to just sitting there, you can pop off Hedwig’s ball-jointed closed wings and attach the pair of ball-jointed open wings for flight mode. Yes, this is now the coolest Owl toy I own.
Harry also comes with books, because even action Harry does have to learn all of those spells he’ll need to fight the bad guys like Voldemort and Dormammu and Harvey Weinstein. Books might not be the most exciting thing, but I hear one of these books is Tropic of Cancer.
Finally, his broom, the Nimbus 2000. While an awesome inclusion, I will have to do some major fiddling or something to get this to where it’s not a completely aggravating experience trying to get him to look even reasonably passable while riding it. Between his shoulders not cooperating enough to get him to two-hand the broom handle to his feet not staying where they’re supposed to to the broom not staying where I want it I was ready to rage sweep it into the Disgruntled Pit of a Thousand Empty Howls, which for anybody who has read the book knows is not in any of the damn books. Don’t get me wrong, it’s absolutely necessary for him to come with his broom so he can play a rousing game of Broomballflyswoop, but a way to peg something somewhere would have gone a long way toward helping. Unless I’m an idiot, which is always an option.
If you find yourself saying you’ve never seen a Harry Potter action figure that makes you think “you know what, I’d really like to buy a Harry Potter action figure,” this is probably the figure that will make you think that. Now where’s my Encyclopedia Brown figure, Figuarts?
