Batman: The Dark Knight Trilogy (Play Arts Kai)

Play Arts Kai Batman: The Dark Knight

Just looking at this new Play Arts Kai Batman figure out from its package gives me goosebumps; like he's actually here ready to bring some excitement with his crime-fighting skills as that music from the Dark Knight rises plays inside my head. I remember the same feeling when I watched the third movie in that scene where this dude finally showed up during a police chase on Bane's motorcycling henchmen. What excites me more with this action figure is the amount of details it has, laced with standard Play Arts Kai-style articulation. Everytime I get my hands around on any of these action figures from this toyline, I always get that positive feedback with less complains. And without further adieu, let's check this out.












Even with Batman's type of colour scheme, Play Arts helped this figure come alive by adding not just black, but a couple of different colours that have been useful with contrast. If you look closely, you'll see that the "blackness" on his bat suit is not purely black. Most parts are covered with some grayish paint that is close to being black. Batman's gloves and arm guards, however, are a clearer type of gray. There is some kind of a brownish paint sprayed around his chest area, while some are around his thighs. Moreover, there are some light touches of darker blue on those creases around his cape. And, of course, Batman got this gold/yellow belt, which seem to be the only thing that's shimmering behind all these darkness.

Looking at the sculpt on this figure, I can't complain anything with the head sculpt, body mass and proportion. It is all well balanced and highly detailed. Everything in his bat suit- from its outer layer to the inner layer are sculpted "movie-accurately"; reminds me of how well he engineered this suit along with his other bat gears. Speaking of design and engineering, Play Arts got one minor mistake, and that is the top part of his cape is not actually touching the shoulders; like it's hovering there and this is bad engineering right here. Furthermore, I wish the cape is a little smoother instead of having this rough and sandy look. But overall, the entire figure just looks amazing!

All of Batman's features are completely intact like these rows of shark fins at the side of the arm guards, the geometric patterns around his suit, and, most importantly, the things around his utility belt. Now the belt doesn't have removable parts. If only Play Arts made the belt better by having all these things hanging around completely removable, and having an actual holster for the grappling gun, this figure could have brushed me off my feet.

But Play Arts made up for it by giving Batman some decent amount of interchangeable hands to choose from. We have a pair of fisting hands, a grabbing hand, a pistol-gripping hand, a batarang hand, and last but not the least, a bomb-holding hand. And these hands goes right into these pegs on the wrists with ease and smoothness- something I  don't come across more often on figures with interchangeable parts. So... good job on this!

Certainly, we also got the weapons that goes with these hands. We got Batman's primary weapon, the batarang... and it's painted with gold and I'm not quite too impressed about it. It should be silver instead (don't remember if it's gold). Then we got this kick-ass weapon, the grappling gun that I like best of all his three weapons. And then the third ones are a couple of these hand grenades or smoke bombs or whatever it is, but one is sort of activated and the other one is armed and ready to be thrown. Fire in the hole!

Like every Play Arts Kai action figures, the Dark Knight Batman is highly poseable with a little pain in the butt. Batman's cape has a considerable weight in it enough to drag his upper torso down and back. And so I had a bit of a hard time keeping him at a desirable pose. One awesome thing about his cape is that it is attached to these ball-hinged joints at the back. So you can flip it up and somewhat get him do an aerial assault pose.

To name all joints, Batman got both ball-jointed articulation on the neck and just above his sternum. He's got armpit joints that lets him move his shoulders halfway to his chest. He also got swivel around the biceps, ball-hinged elbows and ball-hinged wrists. His torso has both diaphragm swivel and waist swivel. Ball-hinged and T-joints are incorporated on the hips. He got double-jointed extending knees, ball-hinged ankles with pivots.

Now for size comparison, and I know I shouldn't be doing this cause it'll just make me upset having to look something that this toyline shouldn't be doing. Someone should talk to them personally about how their action figures should have its height interrelating with each other. As to why they do that, I really don't know.

This action figure should get everyone's eyes bedazzled. For something that captures the likeness of Batman from the movie, deserves not just being in these geek talks, but also having to own one. Well, you might going to complain about the price but... hey, this is way way cheaper than the one from Hot Toys! Plus, this could serve as your memoir of the great Dark Knight Trilogy.