I love dinosaurs, ray guns, skeletons in astronaut suits, comic books where the main character is being run out of town by an angry mob, and robot girls.  You can never have enough robot women around, especially the cute ones, which is why I had to buy the newest Aegis figure.

Aegis is a character from the video game Persona 3.  Having never played the Persona games, I first discovered her when her Figma figure  was released.  I loved her unique design and amazing poseablilty so much that she became one of my top five favorite toys of all time.  This year Bandai took a crack at her in their Chogokin line, and I was quick to preorder.  I didn’t know how well she’d stack up against the Figma, but having more Aegis figures around is definitely not a bad thing.

Something I loved about opening this figure was how the company decided to package her.  Laying in the middle of her plastic tray, Aegis’ eyes are closed.  She’s in sleep mode, waiting to be woken up by her new owner.  This was an incredibly cute idea and really injects the figure with a bit of personality before she’s even removed from the package.  Kudos to the person at Bandai who thought of this.

Chogokin Aegis has a fantastic sculpt.  She’s a larger scaled figure than the Figma, which allowed them to add even more details to the overall design of her body.  My favorite of which are the robotic bits at her shoulders and hips.  Bandai used a mixture of plastic and metal parts to create functioning joints that are spot-on to the designs of the character.

The body itself is very similar to the Figma’s but with a few stylistic differences, which I assume was the sculptor’s choice.

Aegis’ head looks terrific, and I think I prefer the messier hair style of the Chogokin.  Sadly, one of my least favorite aspects of this figure is the sculpting done on two of her four faces.  Her “angry” and “eyes closed” faces look fine to me.  But the sculpt on her “normal” and “smiling” faces seems a bit off.  Especially her smiling face.  Her wide eyed stare and slightly pursed mouth give her a bit of a deranged look.

Meanwhile, her normal face is too emotionless for my tastes.  There’s no personality to it whatsoever and I can’t even think of a reason why I’d want to display her with such a dull gaze.  Speaking of gaze, for some reason they painted this face’s eyes looking to the side instead of straight forward.  This also makes posing awkward, and I don’t really understand why they changed it from the center stare of the prototype.  Continue to page 2…