Villains are a bit of a rarity in the S.H. Figuarts line, particularly when it comes to Super Sentai. We've had plenty of heroes, but so far the only villains have been Juuzo from Samurai Sentai Shinkenger and Basco/Sally from Kaizoku Sentai Gokaiger. Due to Gokaiger's seemingly relentless popularity, we've just got another villain from the show - and the main one at that. Zangyack Prince Warz Gil was released as a Tamashii Web Exclusive back at the end of June, commanding a slightly higher price than the usual exclusive - 3990 yen rather than the usual 3675.
Like Basco, Warz Gil comes oddly packaged in a non-window box. With Basco it felt a little more understandable since it was a bigger box since he also came with Sally, but here it seems more like just to keep a trend going with the Gokaiger villains. Still, the box itself does look rather nice with the cosmic/royal blue colouring and Zangyack logos. The back features the figure in a (very limited) range of poses, and inside is a single tray for Warz and his (even more limited) accessories.
Well if Bandai have done something right with Warz Gil, it's that they've absolutely NAILED the sculpt and finish of the figure. I imagine that the slightly higher pricetag is due to the level of detail on Warz' flamboyant get up, and no cost has been spared on his shoulder pads, headgear, cape and tail pieces. The colours are a beautiful combination of white, gold silver and metallic blue.
With the positives out of the way, sadly the review must now move on to what's going to be a string of negatives. Thanks to Warz Gil's fabulous getup, the articulation is severely limited (even though there are joints in all the usual places for a Figuart). The shoulder pads get in the way so much that you can't really get any more than an "arms face forward" pose out of him. Same goes for the hips, even though they feature the trademark Figuart swing-down joint system. Getting any form of dynamic posing out of Warz without the aid of a stand is near impossible, thanks to a combination of the weight of his own flamboyance and some rather loose toe joints.
This is the part where I'd usually talk about all the wonderful accessories the figure comes with, only with Warz Gil it's not going to be a particularly long paragraph. The Zangyack Prince comes with a grand total of...5 hands. Yep, closed fists, open hands and a pointing right hand - that's it, nothing else. While there isn't really a great deal of other things Warz Gil could have come with outside of things he might have picked up for 10 seconds in certain episodes the accessory count is still INCREDIBLY poor. Given the pretty severe balancing issues the figure has, a personalised Tamashii stage would have not only been ideal but it might have made his slightly higher price tag a little easier to swallow.
It's also worth mentioning that the tassles are easily removable (as can be seen in the pictures), and are worth taking off if you actually want to SEE the figure's hands. Why Bandai included rigid tassles and not ones that look like they've been affected by gravity is beyond me.
To put it short, Warz Gil is a Figuart for Gokaiger completists only. The sculpt is undoubtedly beautiful, but all that means nothing when the whole appeal of buying a Figuart is for the poseability. There's a perfectly good Warz Gil statue out there that's roughly in scale with the Gokaiger Figuarts, and that is in more dynamic pose than this thing can manage.
My love for all things Gokaiger means I'm giving this a 3, but for anyone else I'd say this is a 2 out of 5 figure quite easily.
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