One figure I’ve been looking forward to for a while is the Giant God Warrior from Good Smile Co’s Figma line.  Not only is he a visually interesting character, but he’s also the first collaboration between the Figma line and Studio Ghibli!

This particular version of the Giant God Warrior is from the recent short film A Giant Warrior Descends on Tokyo.  The film was produced by Anno Hideaki, most notable for Neon Genesis Evangelion, for a special exhibit at the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo.  The entire short film can be seen below and is safe for work.  Unfortunately there are no subtitles, but the visuals are pretty amazing, if not a bit bleak.

The history of the Giant God Warriors goes all the way back to Hayao Miyazaki’s 1982 Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind manga, which was also later adapted into an animated film.  Taking place in a post-apocalyptic future, the story centers on Princess Nausicaä and chronicles her attempts to bring about a peaceful coexistence between warring kingdoms, as well as between humanity and nature.

In the story, God Warriors are giant biomechanical creatures that played a large part in the apocalypse, known as The Seven Days of Fire.  They have the ability to fly by “twisting space” and can fire devastating energy beams which are powered by their nuclear core.

At the beginning of the story, the God Warriors are considered extinct and remnants of their ceramic skeletons are a common sight across the landscape.  But later, one is discovered and accidentally activated.  It has the mentality of a child until Nausicaä is able to unite it with its missing core component.  Once complete it begins to mature considerably, even discussing justice and how he is “tasked to judge mankind”.

The figure itself is one of the most detailed Figmas I’ve ever seen.  The line tends to lean towards the simpler design of anime characters, but being from more of a live action source, the God Warrior has an amazing amount of detail.  Like an anatomy drawing from a horror movie, he is covered with visible muscle and intertwining veins.  There are even areas like his spine and joints where bits of his skeleton are poking through.

While the God Warrior’s head shows strands of muscle and nerve, it is mostly a helmet shaped skull.  Large gangly teeth hand down directly off the top, while much smaller ones sit in a more natural position on his bottom jaw.  The figure is given even more life by his eyes, which are separate pieces that are made out of a translucent green plastic.  Although my camera had a difficult time catching it, they tend to look glowing when light glints off of them.

The figure is molded in a dark muddy red plastic with plenty of dry brushing in light brown to bring out all the different textures of his muscles and veins.  These dark colors mostly go unbroken except for a few small metallic green circles that dot the front of his torso.  The spikes that stick up out of his upper chest and back are also a bit different.  They’ve been done in a translucent plastic and colored with a yellowish energy look.  Continue to page 2…