S.H. Figuarts Lord of the Rings figures!

Yeah, the face sculpts seem off.  Everything else looks great.  The attires, the Elven Cloaks, and all the accessories.  But those faces look like they aren't made to look like the characters from the motion pictures.

Links to Aragorn and Frodo/Gollum. I think they absolutely crushed the Orlando Bloom likeness:

https://www.instagram.com/instamashii/p/DCVgkaVAGSJ/

Viggo Mortensen is the real miss IMO. Aragorn looks even more Jesus-y than usual.

It's neat that they threw Gollum in with Frodo. It adds some value to an undersized figure.

Oops, forgot to add these two from the upcoming anime movie.

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One of the things that's kept me from getting into Figuarts over the years, aside from the price point, is the soft likenesses and shiny hair. It's not always that bad, but it's noticeable. Oddly enough, I think it works pretty well for Legolas, since he's supposed to look ethereal and ageless. Frodo and Aragorn don't fare quite as well, I don't think, but I would be cool with fudging the likeness a bit if it means better range of motion and being able to hold weapons with both hands. Like others said- everything else on the figures looks great. I can just consider them to be a hybrid live-action/book version of the characters.

One big surprise is making Gollum so pre-posed. I know he's just a glorified accessory here, but if there's one character that the Figuarts articulation would work well for, it would be him. Then again, I can't say I wouldn't mind a pre-posed figure. That's probably how I'd keep him anyway, and less chance for breakage is always welcome. My poor DST Gollum lost his leg right out of the pack, and any attempt to pose any other parts since has left me feeling he was about to lose another. I wonder if they aren't releasing him as an accessory now, and then giving him his own dedicated Smeagol/Gollum figure down the road.

I kinda agree about the faces on these. DST looks better than these photos. Maybe the end result will be better. I’m hoping SH Figuarts does horses because I really want mounted Nazgul to replace the Toy Biz ones I used to have!

I tend to like how SHF stylizes faces. I feel like they are trying to make a likeness that captures the actor, while being stylized enough to make it not clash against their clean/action figure bodies. So you don't have an uncanny valley head on a toy soldier body, but have a rounded, holistic aesthetic. I also think their heads usually look better in hand, when you are seeing them in 3D, like an optical illusion.  

But they also woof it sometimes, and these guys may be the case. I wonder if in those cases it's bad manufacturing. Good sculpt, but the paint job is just too saturated or subtle or off when it's finally executed. 

As an anecdote, I remember reading that Viggo Mortensen wouldn't allow his likeness to be scanned for the OG Toy Biz figures, so his always looked particularly rough compared to the others, which progressively got better. 

Really wish Frodo came with his traveling pack and a pipe holding hand (Merry and Pippin better!), instead of Gollum. Gollum would probably sell on his own with a bunch of alternative heads. 

Man, the Legolas looks great!  Likeness and all.   I really like the look of all of these, even though I do still feel the likenesses on everyone, but Legolas is a bit soft.  Not horrible or anything, just a bit lacking. But maybe they will look better in hand.

Aragorn looks fine. Frodo looks fine. Gollum as a statue is disappointing. I had the same thought @joshsquash729, about them redoing Gollum as a regular figure later. That Legolas head is so good it's spooky. I was genuinely shocked by it after looking at the others.

Kaiju Daddy has a video from the Tamashii event, and he shows off the three (plus Gollum) new figs at the ~15:36 mark. Honestly they look way way better than the promos, especially Aragorn. It's the weird SHF portrait trick. Throw some shadow on Aragorn's face and he looks ten times better. 

I really like these, but I also have that aversion some others have where I look at photo-realistic humans in SHF and feel like they're off somehow. I want them to be a bit darker.... dirtier? I'm not sure. Still the best Ranger Aragorn ever made, I expect. By a wide margin, and not counting 1:6 figures, of course.
Blows my mind that they'd rather include a borderline slug of Gollum than just release smaller characters at a slightly lower price point. I'd rather have, for example, a 40 dollar Frodo and a 40 dollar Gollum, than a 50 dollar two-pack where Gollum is immobile.
Also, the Aragorn thing really applies triple for Gollum. He NEEDS some paint apps to dirty him up. Gollum just doesn't look good with the bare minimum paint apps, in my opinion.

Also, something I'm sure only I care about, Aragorn's kit is positioned improperly. He wears his sword lower than that, and his knife is more on his back than at his hip. I imagine the knife is moved to accomodate the candy shell duster thing he wears.

Wonder what the full compliment of accessories/parts will look like. I hope the Hobbits all come with their Barrow blades, if they do them all.

@hopethisworks 

Thanks for posting that video.  They look a lot better there than the promo images we got. 

Now, I don't really collect SH Figuarts.  So, to those who collect some of their lines, do they tend to go deep into a line?  Like, if I buy Aragorn, Frodo, and Legolas, does history say I'll probably get quite a few characters to go with them over the years, or will I just end up with two or three more key characters and that's it?

@supercamel-1982 Tamashii has a reputation for abandoning lines. In same cases it's well deserved. But they also let lines go cold and then rejuvenate them every so often. Dragon Ball Z is probably their most fleshed out line, with some relatively deep cuts, but it's also an incredibly popular line, too. Gundam and Kamen Rider go pretty deep. 

For Harry Potter, they put out the three kids, initially, and it seemed dead. Now they are putting out Voldemort and a variant Harry. Star Wars has been going for a while, but slowed down over the years. It is now picking up steam again. For SW, they certainly had a bunch of releases, so in that sense they went deep. But there's a lot of SW content - in reality they went very shallow with each release. Same with MCU.  

For LoTR, I could see them completing the Fellowship and maybe doing a Lurtz or another Orc. But I could also see them stopping at these three. I suppose it all depends on how these sell. Unlike Marvel and Star Wars, there's no Hasbro 1/12 to compete with, and these might show up in Barnes and Noble stores. We'll see. 

Yeah, I mean, I think the easy answer is ALWAYS going to be 'it depends on how they sell.' But Tamashii's handling of licenses is just fuckin' weird and I don't actually think there's any true rhyme or reason to what gets made and what doesn't. There's stuff coming out for DBZ this year or last year that I can't believe they didn't do five years ago. My gut tells me to just not go into this expecting a complete Fellowship. Maybe they'll do it. Maybe they won't. But I don't trust them to do it and I won't buy the figures assuming they WILL and get upset when they don't.

That does make it hard, though. I'll toss an Aragorn or a Boromir on the shelf. But I'm not really sure I want to even spend the money on anyone else without being sure we'll get them all. I imagine selling them off will be a lot harder five or six years down the road when it's obvious nothing else is coming out and everyone has kind of abandoned the line.

I haven't purchased any LOTR figures since the Toy Biz days. I'd be happy with the Fellowship minus Merry, Pippin, and Boromir, but I'm not even sure they'll go that deep. I'll be furious if I wind up with just the three they've shown and Gandalf.

I suppose if Gandalf, Gimli, and Sam are all we get in addition to the three already announced, that wouldn't be the end of the world. If they can't even get that far, that would be horrible; that is absolute minimum. 😆