By Chris Troy
Possibly due to several minor disputes with my wife over the past few years, I’ve (rather impressively) held off purchasing one of the various Marvel Bishoujo statues; a line consisting of various Marvel Comics heroines based on the work of Japanese artist Yamashita Shunya. Space issues aside, (yay current bigger apartment) I found it hard to justify spending $60 on a very small statue, especially when your average Revoltech/Figma/Gunpla kit is cheaper and roughly the same scale. For the record, my wife has to this day not given me any crap for the Queen’s Blade Revoltechs we own. However, since Kotobukiya started handling DC characters as well as marvel, the scale of the statues has grown while the price has managed to stay the same! And with entries like Black Cat, Catwoman, and Batgirl, the temptation to drop the money to buy one has grown as well! Then the Ms. Marvel Bishoujo Statue dropped, which made the line a ton more tempting. Granted, in terms of comics, I’ve read more- and probably prefer- both Cat-ladies and Ms. Gordon. I LOVE Ms. Marvel’s design, and since it’s a great big statue I couldn’t resist picking one up.
I took two photos just to try and get across how big this statue is. On the left is the VERY LARGE 3-window box that Ms. Marvel comes in. As well designed as the packaging is, Ms. Carol Danvers is not meant to stay in her package. Oh no, FP faithful, you have to free this statue from it’s plastic prison to do it justice! In the photo to the right, I used the Ms. Marvel figure from the Marvel Legends line to show just how much the two products differ in size. With a $50 or so price difference, you’re obviously getting a lot more plastic for you money; but I figured comparing the two helps to get my point across. Now that I’ve done as much, lets get into the finer details of this statue to see if it’s worthy of your shelf-space!
Let us start with the face sculpt. It’s great and it does the character justice, even if the photos aren’t the best in the world. The face is sculpted so that she looks sexy and confident; the black mask, blue eyes, and red lipstick contrast nicely against her skin tone and hair color. Speaking of the hair, in person it almost looks as though it’s glowing, which is something you really need to see for yourself to appreciate fully. It’s worth noting that the overall sculpt is fantastic, even to the point where it’s worth repeating. Also repeating words ensure that this article is over 500 words long! SYNERGY!!
Ms. Marvel doesn’t exactly have the most detailed or modest costume in the Marvel Universe (nor the most revealing, isn’t that right Ms. Emma Frost?) but the fine folks over at Kotobukiya definitely made good on what they were given to work with. The black one piece leotard/boots/gloves ensemble was given a shiny black paint job, which not only goes nicely with the shiny gold symbol on her costume, but also ensures the costume pops out at you. Her red stash is also shiny and metallic, which is fine a little bit odd given that it’s suppose to be cloth, but who cares; overall it looks great!
Another thing that pleased me about this statue is the base. It’s sculpted so that Ms. Marvel is in a mid-take off pose. The debris base she stands on is incredibly sturdy, light, and a lot more visually appealing than, say, a generic black base. Also, as the character is capable of energy projection, the two energy spheres that the statues wields are another nice visual treat. They are sculpted from a clear yellow/orangish plastic, enabling you to see her hands at the core of each sphere. A risky gimmick that could have ruined the statue, but it paid off in the end.
Overall, I’m very pleased with this statue. The $60 price tag was warranted as it’s an amazing piece of merchandise, especially given the size. Granted it kind of stinks that Ms. Marvel is not in the same scale as any of the other previous Marvel releases; I’m sure once the next wave of statues drops that will change (90s era Jean Grey by the way). If you’re a fan of the character, or just want to get into collecting the Bishoujo statues, this is an excellent starting point, one that I can’t see being around on shelves for much longer.
