[FiguReview]Figutto Ryuk

Another review, yeaaaah! Today I'll brought you a new figure line I haven't reviewed here yet, Figutto line that manufactured by Griffon! They separate the line into 3 sub-lines, Figutto Girls, Figutto Characters, and Figutto Mechanicals which the title is speaking for itself. The one I'm going to review is one of important character from popular series Death Note, the shinigami Ryuk!

Figutto Ryuk
5700 yen | Dec 2011 | Griffon Enterprise

Character History

Ryuk is the shinigami (angel of death) that responsible to drop the Death Note, a note that able to kill any person whose name is written on it, in the human world. Ryuk is bored of his life on the world of shinigami, so he fooled the king of shinigami to give him another Death Note and drop it to human world to see the reaction and condition surrendering human who pick and use the note. Ryuk then follows human called Light Yagami, and even though Ryuk stated he's not an ally or enemy of Light, he occasionally help Light if it also benefits him, mostly for apple which he loves or for more amusement of how things turn out.

Packaging

The packaging is like most of Japanese figures like, a box with window on the front where you can the figures, and some accessories, inside.

The box is quite big since the figure itself is larger than the usual 6" figures I collected, and the dark purple background is fitting Ryuk's evil image. On the back of the box, there's sample picture of the figure along with pictures of the accessories you'll get inside, and again, like most Japanese figures, the content inside is stored on blister. It's actually two-level double blister though since there's quite number of accessories Ryuk comes with.

Set Content

I said Ryuk comes with some accessories, right? Here's what you'll get from this set:

• Ryuk figure
• Interchangeable face plate
• 2 pairs of interchangeable hand part
• Death Note
• 2 apples
• Pair of wing
• Display stand
• Container box 

The container box is obviously to store all the accessories, except the display stand and the wing, if you don't want to store it on the original box or when you want to bring the figure outside along with the accessories.

Sculpt

The figure stands 18 cm tall and it's not even when it stands straight, because he simply can't! They make the knee joint in a way that it can't be set straight, though the upper body joint can.

The details of the sculpt are quite amazing, the feathers on the shoulder and the 'skirt' are made from soft plastic but unfortunately it makes joint movement limited. The hair part is hard and although not sharp, but it makes you have to position your fingers right when you're going to change the face plate so you don't hurt your fingers. Oh yeah, you need to put the back feather first to its back shoulder, where that spot can be changed with the wing part, and I'll get to it later.

And below is the size comparison of Ryuk with SHFiguarts Kamen Rider OOO Tatoba Combo, SIC Another Shadow Moon, and figma Billy Herrington. Although Ryuk, as shinigame, is taller than most people, but Figutto is still bigger so it's not really in-scale with 6" figures, though it's not really a bother as Ryuk is supernatural being, couple centimeters taller won't matter, it looks good to accompany whichever 6" figure you want it to be the Death Note holder.

Size comparison.
Even taller than SIC if it can stands straight!

Paint

The paint is also quite great and pretty detail, and good job on the finishing too, smooth and there's no major messed up.

I personally like the great result the face is done, really horrifyingly well-done with the eyes, teeth, and lips. But that's only for its default face plate, I hate the other face plate because it has crazy eyes where the eyes position isn't symmetric, but that just me, it does enhance Ryuk's craziness but I'm never been a fan of crazy, haha. The paint on the belt, Death Note, and chain are well-done too though.

Articulation

This is where it's going south. The concept page on its official site show us the posing this line can do and it's arguably better than figma, but turn out that's not the case for Ryuk. Like I said that the feathers on the shoulder and the skirt limit the arm and leg movement, unless you take a risk to push it a bit more. The joint on the head (not to be confused with the neck joint) is short so it's quite easy to fall off and little bit hard to put it back again. Feet movement is also quite bad, even more with the elbow joint that also limited thanks to the elbow pad Ryuk 'wears'. Overall, I'm pretty disappointed with the articulation this figure has, because as you may know, I like my figure to be very poseable.

Gimmick

The gimmick Ryuk has is nothing out of ordinary, just the usual interchangeable face plate and hand part you can see on most Japanese action figures nowadays. To change the face plate you don't really need to remove the head from the neck, but just I mentioned before, be careful not to press your finger too hard on the hair when changing the face plate because the hair is hard albeit not that sharp. As for the interchangeable hand part, just like Figma, there's hinge joint so you can bend it upward or downward, expect the downward movement is very little.

And then there's gimmick to change it's back feather to wing part. The wing is quite long and heavy so Ryuk can't stand by itself if you use the wing. So then it's the time to use the display stand, except unlike figma stand, it still can't hold Ryuk's weight and you can't really do too flashy poses with it.

Action
Despite it's limited articulation, there's still quite number of shoots I took of Ryuk. Enjoy :)

Ryuk needs apple so bad

To eat or not to eat, that is the question

Will you use this note?

Thanks for the apple!

With cross diorama base from Spawn :3

Wrong wing, eh?

My Ayase now have both angel and devil wings <3

The dream encounter of two (different) shinigami!

And now everyone can become the user of Death Note! If other figures get heart attack, I know who I have to looking for...

Combination of chaos deity and shinigami won't
end well, don't you agree?

End Verdict

This figure is actually one that's been on my top wanted list, but looks like I set my expectation too high. Sure the sculpt and paint are really great, but as articulation guy, the lack of articulation this figure has really disappoint me. Plus, Griffon didn't include opened version of Death Note and pen-holding hand so we can't really pose Ryuk's writing victim's name on the note, boo. And perhaps because Griffon didn't produce their figure as much as.... say, Bandai, the market price nowadays are quite high, I got it for $90 and frankly, it doesn't worth that much of money >.>