Kids, today we have an action figure review of a pervert. But he’s not just any pervert; he’s a pervert … of justice.
What do you get when you take an introverted high school student and put panties on his head? A restraining order. In addition, you also get an action figure that I knew I had to have the moment I saw it.
I have to be honest, I try to keep up with a lot of weird things — especially weird Japanese things — but somehow this failed to blip on my radar until Robo put up a solicitation for Hentai Kamen back in December of 2016. After a couple of months delay, it has finally hit. And hit hard. With golden balls. Or something. I’m not entirely sure. Some context with the source material would be great, however I have neither read the manga (it was a comic first) nor have I seen the movie (no American blu-ray release? You’re killing me!), so all I know is that it’s a dude who unleashes his pervert power by putting a girl’s panties on his head.
We have all been there. Don’t even try to deny it.
Hentai Kamen, which apparently means “Pervert Mask,” is the superhero we pretty much both deserve and need, fighting crime in fishnet stockings and head-panties. And also a thong swimsuit mankini-thing. Those are his balls, ladies and gentlemen. Get to know them, make your peace with them, because you will be seeing them a lot throughout this review, if you’re still here.
The greatest thing about this figure, other than the fact that it exists, is the time and effort and quality of it. If you own figma anything then you know they put out quality product with plenty of options, and they didn’t skimp at all here. This has to be as niche as it gets, which means they could have just pooped out a bare-bones release with maybe a separate set of hands. But no, they went all the way to pervert Valhalla and gave him two heads and a made-you-blink eight pairs of hands, two face-plates, and a separate set of crossed arms for display options. This pervert was not half-assed. You get the full ass, which means both cheeks, baby.
GRATUITOUS YET TOPICAL ASS SHOT!!!!
The figure aims for the comic-booky, cartoony manga style, which fits perfectly with figma’s overall aesthetic, which seems to skew a bit more stylized than Figuarts, at least for a lot of the product I’ve seen. But the movie looks to be so faithful to the source material that it’s really a 50-50 split between cues from the movie or comic. For me, it doesn’t matter, because I’m pretty much going to be posing every other figure I own in front of this one, kneeling, while he flaunts his mighty testicles at them.
The articulation is impressive as always. There are a lot of ball-joints and ball-and-disc joints, and they all work very smoothly, allowing him to get into a wide variety of perverted poses. Out of all the articulation, my favorite is actually the little bit he has at the back of his hair, which allows him to look up. How many times has a character’s hair interfered with a good “looking up” pose? A lot of times, is the correct answer. Hairticulation should be standard on every figure with longer hair in the back, male or female.
His costume is barely a costume at all, but what is there doesn’t seem to restrict any of his movement. At times you’ll have to rearrange his pegged crotch so everything is straight, but that’s very minor. I don’t know how durable the straps will be overtime, but I haven’t noticed any issue with them.
He comes with a pair of folded arms. I have a couple of figures that have had this feature before, and while it’s not something I use a lot, it is still a really cool addition, because even with hyper-articulated figures it is very hard to get everything to look just right when doing a folded arm-pose, so having the option to install a dedicated set of folded arms adds to the overall aesthetic in unquantifiable ways. Hasbro should take note on any Dr. Doom figure and find a way to include a set of swappable folded arms.
As mentioned, he comes with 8 sets of hands. I think between the 16 hands you can get a fairly wide array of gestures that cover almost everything you need for him to do. I particularly love the pointing hands. I mean, I usually love pointing hands anyway, and they seem to be a very standard alternate hand set for a lot of Japanese product, but they’re especially appropriate here because if there’s anything you need for this particular figure to be doing, it’s pointing at his junk. Sure, he might be pointing at the bad guys, or a lovely lady, or at a bird, or at some random dude, but we all know that nine times out of ten these are junk-pointers.
And that’s ok.
In addition to the junk-pointers, he has spread hands, calm hands, fists, devil horns, thumbs up, grip hands, and karate-chop hands. He has the karate-chop hands because he’s a martial artist. He is a panty-wearing, ball-tugging martial artist. That’s actually on his LinkedIn page. And now mine as well.
I’m assuming there’s a very specific reason why he has two different types of panties. Obviously one of them belonged to what I can only assume is a very understanding girl named “Aiko,” because she thoughtfully put her name on them, but who was the original owner of the blue-and-white striped ones? Was that Aiko as well, or were they just a pair of random panties that he pulled on? Did he acquire more power from the one’s bequeathed to him by Aiko than the random blue-and-white ones? Who owned those blue-and-white ones?
These are questions that I burn with but will forever stay just out of reach until this damned movie receives an American release of some kind.
Am I giving too much thought to Asian girls and their panties? Actually, not as much as usual, but that is a complete digression.
When I look at these fishnets and how nicely they’ve been executed without sacrificing an iota of articulation, I kind of retroactively shake my fist at the DCUC Black Canary figure.
You also get a stand, a little baggie to keep all your hands in, and a single extra hand joint, just in case you break one. That is very polite.
If you have reached the end of this review without contacting the local authorities, then you know by now whether or not you need this figure in your life. You can get it at Amiami or HobbylinkJapan.