When a toy line is as long in the tooth as Bandai’s S.H.Figuarts Dragon Ball Z line, producers tend to start looking in all of the various crevices of the property for new material. We recently looked at a figure that did just that in Mecha Frieza, a version of the chief villain of the series that appears briefly in the series and gets summarily dispatched with relative ease. Today’s figure appeared in more episodes of the show, but is still a fairly nuanced look at a popular character.
Depending on who you ask, Vegeta is either the most popular character from Dragon Ball Z or just one of them. Everyone likes the bad boy and Vegeta fits the bill as he started off as a brutal antagonist of Goku before becoming more like a rival with a conscience. When Vegeta first showed up, he was a little guy with outrageous hair and big shoulder pads. He also sported a tail and what was basically a skirt of armor. Following his defeat by the Earthlings, Vegeta winds up on Planet Namek in search of the Dragon Balls so he can have his wish for eternal life granted. And when he showed up on that planet, he was basically in the same attire as he featured on Earth minus the tail and also minus the skirt. And that’s what we have here in Vegeta 24,000 Power Level, the latest delivery from Premium Bandai.
First of all, before we get into the figure do we really think this Vegeta needed to be a Premium Bandai release? Vegeta is immensely popular and this version has never seen release before. The Scouter Vegeta is old at this point and it’s the most similar to this release. I think this should have been a general release. There’s enough new stuff here that I get why it wasn’t one of the $35 Target releases, but if the recent Super Saiyan Gohan (Cell Saga) can be a general release then surely this could have been as well. It being released as part of the web store means it was $65 and required a shipping charge of $10.
That out of the way, let’s talk about the figure. This Vegeta is mostly new and it takes some old problems and attempts to rectify them. In some ways, Bandai and Tamashii Nations are successful, but in others not so much. Let’s start with the good and it’s that this Vegeta is short. To the top of the exposed flesh of his famous widow’s peak, Vegeta is just a tick over 5″. To the tip of the hair he’s more like 6.25″, but either way it’s shorter than Goku and noticeably so and that’s the way I like my Vegeta. When he became a good guy he basically had height creep as the show and manga went on. He never got as tall as Goku, but he definitely got much closer. And since he is shorter in stature it means he’s mostly new parts. The engineering is the same, but the muscle definition when compared to the Super Saiyan Vegeta release is a touch softer which is a nice detail. It’s very true to the look of the series at this point as this is before the characters became more defined and Toriyama incorporated more straight lines into his art.
And speaking of, the thing that will likely stand out most are the included portraits. Bandai took care to make sure Vegeta’s facial features reflect the artwork of this era, something I don’t think the old Scouter Vegeta attempted. It’s ultimately a subtle thing, but likely anyone who has spent a lot of time with DBZ can spot a face from this era vs a later one. The lines around the eyes are rounded off and the chin is less angular. He has more pronounced cheeks and overall the faces look terrific. The rest of the body is true to the show with the broad chest, yellow shoulder pads, and all-white boots. As is often the case with this line, paint is minimal. The white portions are more off-white and it almost looks like there’s a wash, but I don’t see any difference between the exterior whites and the interior so I’m guessing there’s nothing here. The yellow paint for the armor looks fine and the faces look great, but more shading would have helped.
One thing that has plagued characters from this era of the show when making the move to plastic has been these damn shoulder pads. Bandai’s solution over the years has been to make them hinged which allows access to the full range of shoulder articulation, but the trade-off is the shoulder pads look bad when the arms aren’t in a neutral spot. For this figure, Bandai opted to ditch the center hinge and instead use a hinge and peg system located at the base of the rear of the shoulder pad. This allows the shoulder pad to rotate back in addition to hinge up. It’s better, I suppose, but still not ideal and the most annoying aspect of the figure is that the shoulder pads just won’t sit flush against the chest no matter what position the arms are in. It’s worse on the figure’s right side, but it drives me nuts. I don’t like the old hinges, but they at least didn’t have this problem. Really, we should have multiple shoulder pads that peg in so we have a neutral one and one for when the arms are raised. They did this with Jeice of the Ginyu Force, but I don’t know why they’ve never done it again.
The accessory loadout with this Vegeta isn’t great, but it’s not terrible either. We get four different portraits: neutral, smirk, teeth-showing, and really angry. The really angry expression is nicely stretched and looks really expressive. It’s very much of the era. For hands, we get fists, clenching, splayed open, and chop with the thumb in front, otherwise known as Big Bang Attack posed hands. Even though this era of the character didn’t feature that move, he still held his hand up in such a pose to fire energy blasts. And since the Super Saiyan Vegeta and Super Saiyan Blue Vegeta lacked this hand, it’s nice to get it here and the whites match well enough. We also get a scouter and a left ear for when he’s not wearing the scouter. It looks great, though going without means there will be a seem in front of the ear. It doesn’t really bother me, but I also plan to always go with the scouter anyway.
Lastly, we get a new crossed-arms piece. Previous figures have had this feature and it’s always been done as one piece that connects at the bicep swivel. With this figure, Bandai made the piece the entire arms so they plug into the shoulder, ball, joint. It’s a little harder to work with, and there’s a floating shoulder cap that might go flying when you first pull the arm out, but it does work. The left arm and right arm also separate where the blue sleeve meets the glove of the left arm. This makes it a lot easier to focus on getting the shoulders in place before moving onto adjustment. At first, I couldn’t get the arms to fit on the figure in a way that would allow the shoulder pads to sit in a neutral pose. Even the image on the back of the box couldn’t pull it off and the shoulder pads are up. After more fiddling, I did get it to work better. If you want the arms towards the bottom of the chest, it’s do-able. If you want them higher, you’ll have to rotate the shoulder pads back or up. Either way, while I don’t know if I’m sold on this piece attaching at the shoulder vs the bicep, I do like how it’s two pieces instead of one and it works well enough. Much better than the same for Raditz, anyway.
Articulation for this release is both familiar and yet not. Some of it is pretty good, and some not so good. We already talked about the shoulder pads so we’ll start at the head where Bandai is, once again, using a hinged ball peg. It’s not great, especially if you lose track of what direction the hinge is facing. It’s also tight, which means the much looser lower neck joint will do the heavy lifting when moving the head. The problem there is that the piece sits really high and gets very gappy. It’s ugly, and I can’t think of a figure in this line with a neck joint this unpleasant. The shoulders are on ball pegs with a hinge in the shoulder itself so you get a butterfly joint, but it doesn’t work that great. You basically pull the arm out first to bring it around the front, but the chest is so broad that it would need to move out much farther. Biceps swivel, double-jointed elbows, and wrist ball-hinges are all fine.
The torso features a joint in the diaphragm that feels like a single ball peg. It does very little. The upper torso will rotate and shift side to side, but it gets almost nothing forward and back. The waist joint is just a ball and socket that only swivels so you don’t get to leverage the joint for more forward and back. The legs kick forward and back nicely, but splits aren’t possible as the legs only go out to the side about 45 degrees. The thigh twist is fine and the double-jointed knees as well. The ankles are back to the old ball pegs which are very limited in all facets aside from rotation. There is a toe hinge, but it doesn’t have much range.
For an S.H.Figuarts release, the articulation is pretty mediocre. We’re used to that when it comes to figures with this style of armor, but there’s no excuse for the lower half being as poor as it is. I’m surprised they didn’t go with a hinged peg in the diaphragm to get more crunch as his articulation there is worse than older figures in armor. This type of thing should be getting better, not worse.
When it comes to this edition of Vegeta, I’m a bit torn. Visually, it works for me as a representation of the character. The shoulder pads drive me nuts and the neck is pretty ugly, though I can at least pose around that to some degree. And the new crossed-arms piece works well enough. As for the rest, the articulation is lackluster and the paint is minimal. We get a nice array of faces and hands, but no effect part. He breaks one shoulder pad pretty quickly in the show so why not a swap-able piece for that? It also would have been nice if they made this figure convertible to a Saiyan Saga one with an included skirt and tail, but oh well. With a little more love, this could have been exceptional, but instead it’s merely passable.
We have plenty more Saiyans to look at:
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