​大映30CMシリーズ 「ガメラ（1999年版）」

​JAPAN RELEASE: DECEMBER 2013

​SERIES: 30CM SERIES

​MATERIAL: SOFT VINYL

FROM: “GAMERA 3: THE REVENGE OF IRIS”, 1999
ガメラ3 邪神〈イリス〉覚醒

​HEIGHT: 12.25 INCHES / 31.11 CM

​WIDTH: 10 INCHES / 25.4 CM

​LENGTH (NOSE TO TAIL): 14 INCHES / 35.5 CM

​ARTICULATION: NONE

​REVIEW AND PHOTOS: JOHN STANOWSKI

​With the recent release of X-Plus’ 30cm Series Gamera 1999 we now have all three Heisei turtles represented. And I think it’s safe to say that this is easily the most impressive of the bunch.

​I have to admit I was surprised to see Gamera 1999 with such a small head. It didn’t look that way in the movie, did it? Yeah, it did. It’s just a lot more obvious on the figure with no fire and smoke and shadows from the film getting in the way. (This is why I’m worried about upcoming Godzilla 2014 figures with super obvious elephant feet.) Well, small head aside, this is one amazing vinyl!

Not only is this figure a good likeness, it’s pretty big! It stands significantly taller than the Gamera 1995 and especially the Gamera 1996. And without a crouched pose like the other two have to varying degrees, the 1999 figure looks… grand.

One thing I really love about the Gamera figures are the shells. They’re so un-Godzilla-like and shake up the status quo on the X-Plus shelves. The shell on the Gamera 1999 figure is especially impressive. I’m not talking about the sculpt but the suit itself. This time around those armor plates get more jaggy and radiate outward making for a more menacing appearance. And, yes, the sculpt captures that. It’s a shame the wall gets to see it more than I do.

As for non-glued joints, there’s quite a few. There’s one above both knees. (They can rotate, but really shouldn’t.) And, curiously, there are two, TWO, on each arm. One above the elbow and one above the bicep. These seams are worked into the texture of the skin, but I tend to still notice the lines above the biceps. (Grrr).

The head pops off easily at the base of the neck, though I’m not quite sure why you would want to do that.

As for glued pieces, the top half of the body which includes the front, shoulders and top half of the shell are a separate piece. The center plate on the chest is also a separate piece. On the Ric Boy exclusive version of this, this area is battle damaged so the factory probably had used the same body for both and just added on the appropriate center piece. The front half of each foot is also a separate piece; be careful when plopping him down on the table.

​Once again, the pose is pretty standard and I like it that way. Thankfully, this Gamera figure isn’t hunched over like the 1996 version and stands even taller than the 1995 version.

Like the other two Heisei Gameras in the X-Plus catalog, Gamera 1999 is covered in a base coat of black, a dull greenish brown on the chest and dark green on the shell. There are no highlights brushed on the main body (sniff), but the shell is a mix of dark and even darker greens and looks great.

The mouth is a glossy off red, maybe a touch too glossy and the eyes are a sort of light, lime green with black pupils. These eyes are piercing and really stand out!

And a really nice touch is that every claw on both the hands and feet, as well as the spikes protruding from the forearms and shins are made of translucent material that have been touched up with graduated shades of black, brownish tan and finally almost clear at the tips.

​Left to right: X-Plus Gamera 1995, 1999 and 1996. Funny how the bodies kept getting bigger while the heads got smaller. The 1999 vinyl is noticeably taller than its two predecessors. I don’t know if that’s accurate or not but they look good enough together. If you have all three and you’re not anal about displaying them “in order” the photo above might be a nice set-up for your shelf.

The 1999ers! Gamera 1999 and Godzilla 1999 were released in the same month, line up in height, and make quite a pair!

Gamera 1999 is 14 inches long from nose to tail, but only 12 inches from toes to tail. It’s easier to fit on the shelf than a Godzilla, but you’ll still have to place him at an angle unless you’ve got the room. Make sure you have the headroom for this guy, too. He’s over 12 inches tall.

The Ric Boy Exclusive version of this figure comes with battle damage. It has a small hole in the center of his chest and another in center of his shell from where Iris impaled him in the movie. (Though in the movie, this hole was much bigger.) The figure’s right hand… isn’t there. Instead there is a bloody stump from where Gamera burned it off in order to free himself from Iris. Brave turtle! This version is further detailed with green Gamera blood at the site of all injuries.

And as a bonus, this figure comes with an extra piece. An attachable “Plasma Fist” (the thing that what finally done in ol’ Iris) is made of translucent material and highlighted with firey yellows and reds.

I did not get the Ric Boy version so I don’t have any photos of it to share with you. 

The X-Plus Gamera 1999 vinyl comes in the standard 30cm series blind box with art on the front. Inside the main body and a tail piece are wired in to a plastic shell.

ASSEMBLY
The tail connection on Gamera is triangular and this usually requires a little more effort to attach than with round tails since twisting is required to make sure the tail end flange doesn’t buckle. But, I had no trouble attaching it because, again, I used Rich Eso’s “Squishy Soft” method of not just softening the “butt”, but REALLY softening it up (while keeping the tail cool). It popped right in.

I already said it: the X-Plus Gamera 1999 vinyl figure is easily the most grand of the Heisei figures. The detail, height, pose are all fantastic. If you don’t have a favorite, I suggest hunting this one down!

I’m a tad disappointed, though, that there will always be another version of this guy out there that I don’t have. Unlike other Ric Boy exclusive versions, this one doesn’t come with something extra to add to it. The entire Ric Boy is basically a variant. So choose wisely!

​By John Stanowski Originally posted December 18th, 2013​ on Kaiju Addicts. 

​東宝30CMシリーズ 「ゴジラ（1999版）」

​JAPAN RELEASE: DECEMBER 2013

​NORTH AMERICAN REISSUE: JANUARY 2017

​SERIES: TOHO 30CM SERIES

​MATERIAL: SOFT VINYL

FROM: “GODZILLA 2000: MILLENNIUM”, 1999
ゴジラ2000 ミレニアム

HEIGHT: 12 INCHES / 30.4 CM

WIDTH: 8.75 INCHES / 22.2 CM

​LENGTH (NOSE TO TAIL): 18 INCHES / 45.7 CM

​ARTICULATION: NONE

​REVIEW AND PHOTOS: JOHN STANOWSKI

The Godzilla Heisei era ended in 1995 with “Godzilla vs. Destroyah” to make way for a Hollywood attempt at the franchise. Shortly after, Toho Damage Control quickly sprung into action to release “Godzilla 2000: Millennium” (1999) to put things right. Okay, it’s more likely they were trying to cash in on the then recent notoriety of the Centropolis production butcherd though it was. Monster maker Shinichi Wakasa designed a new suit for a new millennium based off original concept work from Yuji Sakai. And thus a new Godzilla was born!

Enter the X-Plus Godzilla 1999 figure, already a vinyl fan favorite!

Just released earlier this month, the X-Plus Toho 30cm Series Godzilla 1999 is a knockout! It’s a great likeness and captures the nuances of the new design very well. I have no problem saying that the sculpt is fantastic and is probably the essential representation for collectors who like it hyper-real (no stylization).

It’s also a nice size. I was so afraid this figure was going to be another shorty like the Godzilla 1984 and 2004. Nope. If anything, this thing is just a tiny touch on the tall side.

​I was a bit alienated when I first saw this new Godzilla suit design back in 2000. It’s pointy head (which some say is inspired by the 1962 suit) and it’s insanely spikey dorsal spines were just too much of a departure for me. Over time, though, I grew to love this look. I mean, check out those fins! I would have to say that if any Godzilla suit was able to be proclaimed a work of art, it’s this one. And the X-Plus figure nails it!

One thing to note on this figure is its especially deep skin texture. I’m not sure if it’s accurate, even after having watching the movie again last week, but it looks awesome. It sometimes looks as if the figure has a slight under-bite. And the fact the head is tilted upward doesn’t help.

This is praise for both the suit and the figure: this design is so dynamic! The shape of the head, mouth, eyebrows and fins just seem to jet out lines to the front and behind. Tell me you don’t get a sense of sweeping motion from the photo of it above.

THE HEAD
Perfect! The teeth are individually sculpted (as per usual with X-Plus figures) and his three pairs of “fangs” located in the front, middle of the side and near the rear are well represented. You can’t see it from the side, but the teeth and gums are slightly seated below the “lip” and there is a super fine line of detail there. This level of attention just blows me away.

One curious thing about the sculpt though, is the figure’s left eye (seen above on the right). I’m not quite sure what’s going on here but it seems sunken in more than the other eye. Plus, the higher the angle from which you look at it, the more it “disappears” under the hood-like brow. I didn’t even notice this curious flaw until collector/reviewer Samson West brought it up. It’s not visible from the sides, nor from the front when your line of sight is pretty low. This bothers me, but it’s not a dealbreaker.

The tail comes in two pieces and both of them fit on seamlessly, except for a slight line at the top of the tail where it meets the body. Legs are attached to the body without glue seals (just like GMK) but, surprisingly, there aren’t really any visible seams but rather creases which seem to be part of the sculpt. There’s a noticeable filled seam on the neck right under the jaw which, thankfully, isn’t visible most of the time. And there are two glue seals right above each bicep. Curiously, the seam on its right arm was filled well, yet its left arm has a sort of rubberband indent around it where a visible line does interrupt the tree bark texture running over the skin. A series of short spikes in the sculpt cover the seams which run down the back on both side of the piece which holds the fins. All in all, not too bad!

​Once again, a pretty standard pose, and once again, me likey! Well, mostly. The legs are spread in a wide stance and I don’t recall seeing this pose in the movie. Though I have seen behind-the-scenes photos where suit actor Tsutomu “Tom” Kitagawa had the legs spread like that.

Either way, it makes for a dynamic figure. Everything about it involves triangles radiating outward from his stance, his claws, his triangular head and fins. This figure seems to emit a feel of swooping motion even when it’s just standing there. This suit is the Nike Swoosh of Godzillas. (Did that make any sense?)

I often wonder if the sculptors for X-Plus base the poses on specific scenes. In the case of this figure, I noticed that if you place it on a table and stand in front of it, it looks just like the scene when Goji was getting scanned by Orga for peeks at his Generator G’s.

The X-Plus Godzilla 1999 vinyl figure is painted with a dark black with a lighter asphalt brushed over a few areas, mostly the thighs and chest. There is also a super subtle dark silver applied on the spikey textures on either side of the back fins. And that’s it.

I didn’t notice this at first but as I scrutinized the figure for this review, I realized that most of the black areas are just black. Other than the few areas mentioned, there are no other highlights. And I am disappointed by this. Now, this base black coat is semi-glossy which gives the figure a bit of a wet look. Because of this, light plays off the paint and deep textures in the sculpt to create a lot of light and specular highlights. But, personally, I really, really would rather have had more paint highlights brushed onto this figure. Sigh.

FINS
The fins on the back of the figure are made of translucent material molded in a purple-ish/magenta-ish color and have black sprayed around the “roots”. The fins on the tail, however, are made of the same vinyl as the rest of the figure. They are painted a dark purple and they don’t quite match the fins on the back. The extent of this difference depends on how the figure is lit. Light from the room can illuminate the fins and make them a brighter color. Yet even when tucked away on the shelf and against a wall, the fins still don’t match up but the difference is less noticeable.

I sampled colors from both sets of fins and added the circles to make it clearer how the colors differ. This is only a rough demonstration though because, again, the back fins seem to change color depending on where the figure is placed.

Even though it’s mildly entertaining to see the fins illuminate when placed in front of a light, I’d rather the figure was more accurate. His fins were not made of crystals and did not let light pass through them in the movie. X-Plus was trying to save time and money by using the same translucent fin material used on the Ric Boy Exclusive light-up version on the standard. Boo.

EYES
Around the black pupils are corneas which seem more tan than yellow. And beyond those are whites best described as smokey. There really isn’t very much contrast in the eyes to make them look like… eyes. From many angles it’s difficult to even see the pupils and instead you get a sort of GMKish look, or a found-dead-in-the-river/zombie kind of look. It may not seem so in the photo above since this is such a close view, but in normal viewing conditions, the detail in the eyes are often hard to make out.

The 1999ers! Gamera 1999 and Godzilla 1999 were released in the same month, line up in height, and make quite a pair!

The X-Plus Godzilla 1999 is just a hair taller than the Godzilla 2003. But it seems even larger when you consider the mass and girth of it’s neck and body.

THE MILLENNIALS
Godzilla 1999/2000, Godzilla 2001 and 2003. If this is your favorite era to collect, you’ll be glad to know they scale well with each other. Sorry, I forgot to include the 2004!

​Godzilla 1964, 1999 and 1992 come from different eras, but they still line up in the height department.

Another Godzilla figure means another long tail. The figure is 18 inches long from the tip of the nose to the end of the tail. Subtract two inches if you let the nose hang over the edge of the shelf. The tail moves back away from the body in almost a straight line until 1/3 from the end it curls upward and to its right. This figure would fit better on the shelf if it were facing right. If you have a larger space to display him, then lucky you, you’re gonna need it!

The Ric Boy Exclusive version of this figure came with a light-up fin gimmick plus something extra no one was expecting: a light emission from the mouth depicting Goji gurgling up an atomic loogie! AND, DAMN, IT LOOKS GOOD!

Collectors, myself included, were worried about how X-Plus was going to be able to make purple/magenta fins glow orange when the light gimmick was turned on. Looks like they managed to do a fine job of it.

I can’t comment much on these features since I haven’t seen one in person. I was getting sick of the whole light-up fin thing so I ordered the standard version. I had NO IDEA the fins would look as cool as they do in the photo above. And that mouth light… I’m… such a…. fool.

Special thanks to “Ryu Hayabusa” for the use of his photo!

​The X-Plus Godzilla 1999 vinyl comes in the standard 30cm series blind box with awesome art on the front. Inside the main body and two tail pieces are wired in to a plastic shell.

ASSEMBLY
As already mentioned, the tail comes in two pieces. I would recommend attaching the larger piece to the body first and adding the rest of the tail last. If you’re going to need to do some twisting, the shorter the tail, the better.

I can usually tell if I’m going to have trouble inserting a tail when I first see it. It seems every other figure I get gives me trouble. In the case of this figure, the tail has a huge ‘flange’ (the part that hooks inside the body). Before I would have winced at this, but after having seen Rich Eso’s video on how to connect X-Plus tails, I wasn’t expecting to relive my Space Godzilla and Hedorah tail nightmares.

In his video, Rich says to heat the body with a hair dryer (not the tail), until it was “squishy soft”. Up until now I had gone as far as ‘just’ soft. This time I heated up Godzilla’s butt until it was as soft as rubber. And just to make sure I had zero trouble, I had earlier cooled the tail off in the refrigerator. When assembly time came, it literally popped right in. After that, attaching the second part of the tail was even easier. From now on…. squishy soft for me. Thanks, Rich!

​Though I’m not happy with the dorsal fins being made of translucent material, the lack of highlights and the overly shiny black skin, the X-Plus Toho 30cm Series Godzilla 1999 is still a fantastic likeness and one of the best vinyl figures to come out in 2013. Get it! Doooo eeet!

By John Stanowski Originally posted December 13th, 2013​ on Kaiju Addicts.