Action Figure #720: STORM Arena Ken

 Sure you can!

 I've wanted a lot of STORM figures before because they cover a lot of Fighting Game characters, but their figures were always too large! Enter STORM Arena, a true 6 inch line they decided to debut with Ken from Street Fighter Alpha 3. Seems JADA has some competition now!

 Well, this is a beautiful figure. The sculpt brings Street Fighter Alpha's anime style to life with angular muscles and vibrant colors. Seems they took a few notes from JADA, because much like their Ken, you can take the top of the Gi off, and the Gi itself is gorgeously textured, as well as given a darker red wash to highlight some of the sculpt. If you ask me, this figure has two things over JADA: Firstly, the anime style of the Alpha series is much more appealing than Street Fighter II's bulkier and rougher art, so this is a much more handsome and cooler looking Ken, and secondly, the accessories. We get two heads, two fists and two Hadoken hands much like Jada's, but this figure also includes a third pair of hands, made up of a hand for his Victory pose and one for his intro animation. Plus, instead of a generic orange Hadoken, Ken gets a much more appropriate Shoryuken flame effect. It also includes a fairly nice stand for the figure. And keep in mind the price point is ver close to Jada's!

 On a more personal and biased take, I'll admit I prefer Jada's Western engineering on the joints. As it can be seen above, the knees and elbows have the more eastern over-engineering that I don't like as much. It uses more parts, making them more fragile, and they don't look as natural. That said, the plastic and feel of this figure feels very sturdy, unlike a Figma or a Figuarts. Much like STORM's usual releases, the chest piece and the butterfly joints are made of very soft plastic, which is something I wasn't a huge fan of. Following eastern action figure standards, the feet and hands connect to ball joints on the wrists and ankles. I've had the hands come off moer times than I would've liked when playing with the figure. Also, the headsculpt's hair disconnects at the ponytail... it kept falling off, so I had to glue it on.

 Articulation is great all around. Elbows and knees are double jointed, he has swivels on his biceps, thighs and on the cut where his legs and pants meet. He has very generous butterfly joints, a ball jointed ab crunch, and a hinged waist that connects to the legs via a ball joint. He has drop down hips, but the pegs look very thick, so I'm not scared of them breaking. He has toe articulation, and you van rotate the tie on his belt. He has been very fun to pose. Most of his joints have been very smooth, although one of his knees is tighter than the other and the bicep swivels are very tight, one was clicking so hard I had to oil it. He is as tall as Jada's Ken and almost as tall as Bucky Cap.

 Update: That was at first... after playing with him for a while, both of his legs got super rigid out of nowhere. I had to oil up his hips, and even now, his legs are clicking really badly. The swivel on the right leg is so hard, that using the swivel pops the leg out now, due to the oil. Horrible. Other people are having this issue from what I read.

 So, I think this figure looks better than Jada's, but that's because Alpha has a much cooler art-style. The Ken is leagues and bounds more good looking... but that's because Jada's is faithful to how Ken looked in his portraits, while this Ken is more faithful to Alpha. Plus the yellow gloves look better than brown. That said, I prefer Jada's simpler engineering. Overall, I'll be getting more Storm Arena figures, this Ken is fantastic, despite a few minor complaints, although I won't double dip on characters I already own... which is why I cancelled Storm's Sagat, since Jada's good enough! All that said, it's a good time to like Action Figures and Street Fighter!

 Update: The clicking legs made me lower the score from 9.0 to 7.0. Yeah... I'm sticking to JADA as much as I can. these over-engineered joints are too finicky. At least he is not as gummy as Marvel Legends.

7.0