Review: Bandai D-Arts Zero Type 1

Bandai D-Arts Zero Type 1 

Original Release Date – 8/11/2011

Original Price - $34

I'm so tempted to just say that me actually getting my hands on one of these for a reasonable price is all the good I need, but that would be cheating you out of some of the high points of this figure.  It took me a long time to hunt this one down and by the collecting gods I was able to do so at NYCC this year. So without any more babbling let's jump right in!

The Good

This Figure has some great points of articulation, for starters the shoulder alone has two points! It has both a ball joint to hit those nice rotation marks plus a slit to allow for the arm to move in an up and down motion.  The Elbows are also double jointed. You have a point at the elbow that allows for traditional movement than you have a point at the lower elbow giving you a full range of motion for the forearm. The legs feature similar construction; with a single ball joint at the upper leg and a double jointed knee, similar to the elbow. Even the Foot has two points of articulation on it!  You've got one on the upper ankle that connects the leg the foot, allowing for 360° rotation, than one at the lower ankle connecting directly to the foot. The direct foot peg allows for range of motion from front to back. Even though the head is on a single ball joint it offers a good range of motion. You even have a joint in the hair to give you left and right motion.

Zero also comes with a nice assortment on accessories to toy around with. You have 6 hand options (3 left and 3 right), 3 face options (neutral, angry and cautious), 2 arm options (Blaster and normal) and a charged blast effect option.

 The Bad

The D-Arts line offers tons of articulation for their characters, but the design of some of the characters severely hinder those points, Zero is one of those characters. His bulky design severely hinders the movement that should be offered by the elbow, knee and feet joints.  Another hindrance is the use of a square peg system to connect the joints to the limbs. The forearms are connected to the rest of the arm by a square peg and after a certain level of movement the forearm will just come lose and fall off. The same goes for the lower leg.

Another character design issue is the hair. Making it out of a solid, thick piece of plastic does give you that accurate video game look, but it adds a lot of weight to the back of very light figure. This makes some poses impossible to do without the help of a base to hold him up. This wouldn't be an issue if he came with one, but he doesn’t.

The Ugly

Probably the worst thing about this piece is the paint application. The red portions of the figure seem to be cast out of red plastic so you have no issue with it, but these red parts have white accents on them.  Now if you ever try to paint white over red you know what a mistake this is. Some of the accents on the left leg are a very light pink.

There was also a decision to not coat the hand accessories in a clear protective coat like the rest of the accessories. Just from the light handling they had for this review a few of the hands have chipped paint on them.

Lastly the hair has far too many mold marks on it! It’s a two part construction that looks like someone gave up halfway through filling the gaps. The parts that are filled are sloppy and not smoothed out, but the rest doesn't look to bad. The decision to do half a job just makes it look terrible, but at least its covered by the back of the figure for the most part.