The Weasley family gingered up the Harry Potter franchise by a factor of a thousand, and the release of the Figuarts Ron Weasley does the same to our burgeoning collective display.
Ron Weasley is “the friend.” In most stories with a definite protagonist, there’s usually going to be“the friend.” He’s not destined to be the savior of the entire storyline, he’s a little awkward and occasionally screws up, but he’s got a good heart and is as loyal as they come.
Ron’s figure doesn’t add much of anything different to the formula established by October’s Harry Potter figure, and that’s mainly a good thing. With two kids in school uniforms that are both roughly the same height, it should be no surprise that Ron and Harry both share the same exact body, so if you liked the Harry figure and the way it moved and played, you know what to expect with Ron. In short, it’s a fun figure that does most of what I need it to do. It’s well articulated at the neck, elbows,knees torso and hips, with the requisite Figuarts articulation. The shoulders are the only area that I’m missing some articulation, and that’s to do with the school robes. The shoulders do have a slight bit of a butterfly hinge to them, but it’s not the easiest thing to navigate due to the robes. But for most poses, you won’t run into too many problems.
With both figures sharing the same body, it falls to the facial expressions to do most of the work. Like Harry, Ron features the familiar Figuarts faceplate swapping to give you a separate expression, and it works a little better on Ron than it did Harry, as he doesn’t seem to suffer the slight “floating sideburns” issue Harry had.
Harry got three faceplates, but Ron only gets two. But since I didn’t much care for one of the Harry faces, it ends up evening out, because both Ron heads work extremely well. If you’re familiar with the movie, you will no doubt see that both of these heads are as Ron as they can be. One is almost dopily happy and one is essentially getting across the notion that Ron is fairly uncertain about this current event that is transpiring and he would indeed like to not be participating in it.
I think we’ve all been there.
Harry’s expressions were very subdued,but they really went all out with Ron. In a way that’s tricky, asspecific exaggerated expressions can sometimes look off (or terrifying) in 3-D form, but both of these work very well. The faces swap out easily, and nothing looks out of place once they’re seated.
For hands, Ron also carries over the same hands that Harry had: wand gripping, regular gripping, slightly open and fully open “relaxed” hands. These all pop onto ball-joints and do a decent job, even if the robe sleeves do get in the way of some more extreme movement. He comes with a set of books that the slightly open gripping hand does a nice job of hanging onto.
Ron has a wand, of course, and a broom. The broom is a nice inclusion but, like with Harry, is probably the least-used of the accessories for me. It’s hard to make them look natural on them, mainly due to the shoulders. Still, better to have them than to not have them.
Like Harry and his Owl, Ron wouldn’t be complete without his pet rat, Scabbers. Scabbers looks great and can convincingly be perched in Ron’s hand or elsewhere. I think this is the first miniature rat I’ve ever had in toy form, so that’s new.
The last accessory that both Harry and Ron share is the robes. There’s the “relaxed” robe and the “action”robe. Both work very well—the relaxed robe is good for standing around or reluctantly going to class and so forth—but for me I keep the action robes on them. A good billow adds much more personality to a figure even if it’s just standing there, so Ron is going to stay“Action Ron” in the display, wand up and ready to probably mispronounce a spell and screw up somehow. And as a bonus, when two figures are both wearing their action robes the combined awesomeness factor is ratcheted way way up. It’s just a shame that it seems like Hermione won’t have her own own action robe. I guess the thought of all three of them with billowing robes would be more unbridled actioning than Hogwarts could contain.
Or something.
Regardless, this one’s another fun figure that I didn’t know I wanted, but enjoy having, so that’s a win.