By Loran
I guess I picked a good time to get into Mega Man, huh?
It’s hard to believe such a great franchise went so long without toys that were both good and affordable. Now we have Kotobukiya making the kits for the original series and Bandai making the D-Arts figures for the X series. Of course, the games seem to be going on a hiatus, but that’s alright. I’ve got 25 years worth of games to catch up on… and I need to learn how to get good at them. I grew up in the wrong era of video games…
Much like the previous X figure, Mega Man Zero sports his look from the first X game. This is a welcome surprise, since I’m sure most people were expecting him to look like he does in his own game series. I’m really glad they went for this look. It’s good to have the one from the game I actually played!
Pretty much all of what I said in my review for X holds true here. Unfortunately some of the flaws from X still persist (namely in the legs) but a lot of other ones, namely those associated with the elbow and knee covers, seem to have been ironed out and not as problematic.
I didn’t notice this at first, but Bandai actually made him a little taller than X! Great little touch. Also, the white parts on Zero (namely, the hands) have a reddish tinge to them as opposed to X’s bluish parts.
X and Zero can switch parts as well. I’m sure this was implemented to initially go with the D-Arts Full Armor Zero, coming out this month, so you can make X at various stages of the game. But now you can make horrible X/Zero hybrids! Wooo! Or… you can just give X the Zero Buster like you can in the Sigma stages if you never got the X Buster upgrade. That works, too.
I was a bit curious about how his hair was going to work in plastic form. If there’s one thing about Zero’s design I NEVER liked, it was the hair. It always felt like something thrown in to make the kiddies go, “wow, cool!” and serve no real purpose. I had such a hard time taking it seriously! But, it’s done as well as it could be done here, I think. The piece is mounted to the neck joint, allowing his head to move independently of the hair, which REALLY helps for balance. I also like the reddish highlights in the hair. It really breaks up the monotony.
Zero has a lot of clear parts, many with silver backing to make them stand out more. This is especially noticeable on the Zero Buster, which is much easier to disassemble than the X buster because the whole front comes off, not just the little part on the front.
Like X, Zero has three faces. Instead of angry, angrier, and angriest, Zero has angry, angrier, and… looking to the side!
Zero’s charged shot part is much more manageable than X’s, one single piece that isn’t twice the size of his torso. But there’s one accessory that this figure totally needed and doesn’t have—a sword! Yeah, he didn’t have a sword in X1, but so what? We all know Zero as the swordsman! Instead we get thumbs-up hands for when he was a dismembered torso. Awk-waaard.
Zero manages to be just as fun as his predecessor, and surpasses him on several technical fronts. Really, if you have X, you need Zero. I’m still not sure if I’ll be picking up Full Armor X myself, though. Come into FPNYC to get your own!
WHAT AM I FIGHTING FOOOOOOOR!?
