Donald Duck is yet another entry into the Figuarts Kingdom Hearts line, which takes Disney character mainstays and thrusts them into a completely different world and story-line. Once again, I have no idea what’s going on in general with Kingdom Hearts as a property, but it boils down to a Figuarts Donald Duck so even if it doesn’t resemble the “classic” Donald, I had to get it.
In the Kingdom Hearts mythology, Donald is the Royal Magician in service to King Mickey. Trained by Merlin, Donald is capable of doing a bunch of magic stuff in the story, and teams up with Goofy (coming soon to Figuarts, coming soon to my collection) for adventures and so forth.
Going on in-game pictures of Donald, his figure looks to be faithfully on-model to his Kingdom Hearts design, which ends up being very similar in overall tone and color to his classic sailor suit, but just run through a medieval-styled grinder. There’s the requisite addition of zippers and buckles and pouches to liven up the design, all of which are very well done. The softer plastic used in his clothing doesn’t impair his ability to articulate. Much like his regular version, Donald doesn’t wear pants. Donald’s all about the naturist lifestyle, at least from the waist down.
Like the Figuarts Mickey, Donald is a smaller-sized figure with unique proportions, so articulation is determined mainly by what can be done. Despite his size, Bandai managed to squeeze in a decent amount of articulation, with only a few issues. Overall, his mobility is a lot more successful than Mickey’s, due to not having to wear a leg-hampering robe.
Donald has a ball-jointed neck and torso, along with shoulders, elbows and hips. He has no knee or ankle articulation. At first I was a little bummed that his hip articulation seemed very limited. There’s a picture on the back of his package where he’s sitting with his legs straight out, and there was no way I was going to be getting him to do that. Then I discovered that if you tugged downwards on his legs he had drop down hips hidden up in his lower body, and that gave him a much larger range of motion. It’s still not perfect, however; for some reason the peg that goes up into the hip section doesn’t swivel a full 360 degrees, which is a little frustrating when trying to achieve some poses. You have to get creative here and there, and it does take some fiddling to get everything to go just the way you want it to go. So essentially there’s room for improvement, but still better than it could have been without the drop down hips.
Despite his stubby arms, he can get into a lot of poses with what is there, at least as much as I wanted to, even down to allowing him to two-hand-hold his staff. The best part is the large range in the wrists, which facilitates much of what you can do with his staff.
The neck and torso do much of the heavy lifting in terms of expressiveness, which means Donald can do a lot of Donald-esque things, and I’m sure can do a lot of what he does in the video game I will one day try to play.
Donald comes with three swappable faceplates. You remove the pegged hat and then pull the front of his head apart. They are connected quite well, so there’s no chance of them falling off once you’ve attached it. He comes with a happy, side-eye and angry head. Donald has never been a duck of minimal temper, so the angry head is perfect for him.
For hands, Donald comes with a pair of fist/gripping hands, a pair of neutral open hands and one right-handed pointing hand. The combination of these different hand styles allow him to get across a wide range of emotions. Mainly the anger. He’s just so angry. Again, the wrists have a great range, so he can do quite a bit with that staff.
The staff, called the Mage’s Staff, is Donald’s lone accessory. I like the design of it a lot; having the tip of it be an actual sorcerer’s hat gives it a lot of “Disney-esque” personality.
Overall, Donald is another fun entry into Figuarts’ Kingdom Hearts line. While it doesn’t scratch the itch of wanting Figuarts versions of the classic designs, as an alternate universe approach it works very well. Oh, it also makes me want a Howard the Duck with the same level of articulation. So yeah.
