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Uighur - Fist of the North Star
Revoltech
"The
following is a guest review. The review
and photos do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Michael Crawford
or Michael's Review of the Week, and are the opinion and work of the
guest author."
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Ridureyu is back with another
look at a great Revoltech figure - tell us all about him, R!
When you make a prison for dangerous martial artists, shouldn't the
warden be the toughest of them all? That's the idea behind
Uighur, a character from the 1980s manga/anime, Fist of the North
Star. Uighur was the warden of Cassandra Prison, "The City of
Wailing Demons," where Raoh, the main antagonist of the series, locked
up all the warriors and martial artists he didn't kill.
Considering this series' concept of kung-fu fighting, that's saying
something. Uighur's sheer brutality turned it from a mere
prison into a living legend of terror with himself at the helm, even
though the prison couldn't have been more than a year old at
most. Its main significance in the series is that Toki, one
of the four brothers of the North Star technique, was kept
there. But before Kenshiro could rescue his older brother, he
had to face down the Warden of Hell. Uighur proves to be a
difficult opponent, but ultimately gets buried in the grave he had dug
for Kenshiro.
Uighur is another one of those tricky names to translate, with his name
occasionally coming up as "Wigul" or "Wiggle." But it's easy
to figure out. The Uighur or Uyghur people (Pronounced
Wee-Grr) are a Turkic ethnic group in central-eastern Asia which traces
its roots back to Mongolia. Since Uighur actually states his
Mongolian heritage in the series, this means that his name is kind of
like calling a cowboy "Tex." But how's that for ethnicity,
folks? Instead of identifying a character as "British,"
"Generically American," or "From somewhere in Africa," Uighur gets to
be part of an obscure, oppressed group of Islamic Mongolians.
Impressive! Aside from his name, the character is famous for
being one of the few villains who actually gave Kenshiro a hard
time. He died in the end, but he won the first round of their
fight and, if he had only capitalized, he could have easily killed the
hero. He also appears in the movie as Raoh's right-hand man,
although he goes down much more easily against a different character.
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Revoltech (That's "Revol-Tech" as in "revolve," not "revolt") is a
Japanese toy company owned by Kaiyodo that is known for their
innovations in articulation, particularly the "revoltech" joint, a
unique kind of ratcheting ball-and-socket combination. Most
of their toys are robots, although they have recently branched out into
more humanoid figures, such as their Fist of the North Star
"Revolution" line. These toys have covered most major and
minor characters of the series, even including a few exploding punks
just for the fun of it. Uighur is figure #08 in the line.
Packaging
- **
Uighur's packaging is essentially the same as the rest of the line - a
large cardboard box with several stacked plastic trays containing the
figure and all of its accessories. It does a great job
protecting Uighur and displaying him (albeit without his cape), but
more impressive is the tetrislike way it manages to fit in all of his
accessories without unnecessarily crushing or bending
anything. The top layer has Uighur and his hands, with the
separate sections of his cape in the next layer (also protected with an
extra shell), and the very bottom contains his stand and four
whips. Everything is insulated either with a plastic shell on
top, or with loose plastic as padding. None of the pieces are
hard to get out of the packaging, and even though it uses a lot of
material, it protects them pretty well. You don't have to
worry about the import getting damaged on its way across the ocean to
you.
Sculpting - ***
This sculpt is perfect, and yet loses a star. Why?
Because of scale. Fist of the North Star has a fair amount of
"giant" thugs and bad guys, yet most of them really aren't that
big. Zeed, the thug in the first episode, is a great
example. If you look carefully, you can tell that he's only
about a head taller than Ken, yet in some scenes he's drawn like King
Kong for perspective and emphasis. Not so with Uighur, as his
size is actually a plot point! He is called a "giant" by his
men, states his weight as 770 lbs, and has to be folded in half to fit
into Ken's grave - Ken is about six feet tall, which just emphasizes
how huge Uighur is. The figure is taller than other Revoltech
Fist of the North Star pieces, but not nearly enough so. He's
about 6 1/2" tall compared to the usual 6", but what this means is that
he's instead even with the average Marvel or DC figure, when he should
be roughly the size of Maestro Hulk! However, there are some
toys Uighur is in scale with - he's perfectly in scale with 3-3/4"
toys. There are some Fist of the North Star figures in that
scale, but they are either 25-year-old GI Joe knockoffs or
unarticulated figurines. As an example, note the picture that
has Uighur standing next to two versions of Rei - the Revoltech toy and
an unarticulated 3-3/4" figurine. Uighur is in proper scale
with the small one, not the large one. I understand that it
would have driven the price of the figure up, but the scale issue still
seems really jarring in light of how overwhelmingly huge Uighur is
supposed to be.
Scale aside, the sculpt is fantastic. His head is
particularly good, with a well-designed beard, a clear, rage-filled
expression, and a great helmet. The mohawk crest looks great,
and even the horns are correct, but more on those later. His
body is equally well-done, bulging with veiny muscles. His
thick torso actually gets a little in the way of his articulation, but
Uighur just wouldn't be Uighur if he didn't look like a steroid
freak. The rest of his skimpy outfit is also well-designed,
particularly the jewels on his gauntlets and boots, or the fur on his
little man-skirt. His hands are bigger than other Revoltech
hands, and have bulging veins in them. The only complaint
besides scale is that the sculpt tries its best to hide articulation
points, but does not succeed - that's the way it is for the entire
line, however, and his cape certainly helps with the shoulders.
Paint
- ****
Uighur's paint is flawless. One look at his face is proof of
that - the eyes, teeth, beard, and even lips are painted with a level
of quality usually not seen in figures under 12" or 18". The
rest of him is just as good, with a wash used to bring out his muscles
in a way that actually looks like flesh. As a side note, some
of the red from Uighur's cape has a tendency to rub off on him if
scraped against his body, but it's barely noticeable (A little bit on
the right arm of mine, if you can spot it). His accessories
are also well-painted, even with the cape's problem. There
really is nothing to complain about with Uighur's paint job, which is
really good. It's surprisingly complex.
Articulation
- ***
Uighur has standard Revoltech articulation, although there are a few
issues that subtract from its score. To begin with, his body
is simply too bulky to provide one of his best poses - the Mongolian
Warrior's Road Shoulder Charge, in which he puts all 770 lbs of his
weight into one big shoulder block, and actually knocked Kenshiro
unconscious with it. The closest you can get to the pose is
kind of a weak flex. This looks good, but it's no Warrior's
Road. If his arms could just close in a little tiny bit more,
it would be perfect. His leg articulation also seems
substandard because of his loincloth. It restricts his
movement, so don't expect Uighur to sit or go into a flying kick any
time soon. Thankfully, the Revoltech joints all pop out with
ease, and none were even remotely stuck. The knee joints in
particular come out if subjected to stress, which helps the figure stay
durable. Unfortunately, Uighur's weight with his cape on
might wear down his ankles and send him tumbling back
eventually. Keep the back part of his stand up at all times,
even when not suspending him. It will be enough to keep him
on his feet. Uighur's articulation is pretty visible, and his
shoulders look awful without the cape, but the knees and ankles are
pretty well-hidden. There's only so much that can be done
with naked flesh, and Uighur wears about as much clothing as He-Man.
Accessories
- ****
The only negative is that Uighur does not come with very many alternate
hands. He has a pair of closed fists, a pair of open hands,
and a pair of hands designed to grasp his weapons.
Unfortunately, the grasping hands are open unevenly - one holds his
accessories well while the other is kind of lose, but these negatives
are made up for by everything else he has.
Aside from a generic Revoltech stand (remember to flex the top part's
ball joint early to loosen it up) which could have been bigger or
thicker to account for his weight, Uighur comes with two regular whips,
two "thousand-streak" whips, a three-section cape, and removable horns
for his helmet, which are the handles for his bigger whips.
Uighur likes his whips. They are major parts of his fighting
style. The two regular whips are his primary weapons, and he
uses them as part of his "Mt. Tai Twin-Streak Whip" fighting style, in
which he attacks faster than a human's reaction time, and uses them to
cut his opponent to ribbons. If the twin-streak whips fail,
he goes for his secret weapon - the Thousand-Streak Whips.
Oddly, Uighur pulls the multi-tailed whips out of his helmet, which
leads to some very curious questions about the shape of his
skull. Those ones have six strands each, and he uses them to
entangle any enemies he could not cut with the earlier
attacks. All of the whips look sufficiently whiplike (with
little spaded scourges at the tips), and the thousand-streak whips fit
nicely over the pegs on his helmet horns. They are made of
loose, flexible plastic, although they tend to want to keep a straight
line. A little bit of hot water treatment can fix them, or you can just
use parts of his sculpt or cape to hold the whips down. They
don't seem to be the type to break from stress or bending.
His right hand is just a little too loose, and takes some effort to fit
either type of whip handle, but they are okay - even the curved horns
fit into both hands. Neither hand is big enough to let him
hold several coils from a whip, however, which is somewhat
disappointing, but overall they are exactly what they need to be.
The cape is also articulated, and comes in three segments.
You can remove either or both of the sides to give him more
articulation room(or give it to another figure), which is pretty
handy. The cape has a central peg which plugs into a hole
high on Uighur's back, although you can remove the peg easily, as other
figures do not have the same hole. There is a lower hole on
Uighur's waist (through the loincloth) for the top part of his stand,
and there are probably a couple of aerial poses you could put him in.
Could this figure have come with more? Possibly, as Uighur
interacted with more than a few props. The stone guillotine
he used on inmates would be too large, although I could see him coming
with a coiled whip, alternate head with a blade instead of the mohawk
crest, the attack hawk he used to savage prisoners, the spiked wall he
tried to ram Kenshiro into, or perhaps even one of the many tombstones
that filled the prison yard. None of those are really
necessary, but they would have been nice. There is a recent
Zartan figure from the G.I. Joe line that comes with the perfect bird
for Uighur, though - it can even perch on his finger, so no complaints
there. He lacks in alternate hands, but he doesn't really
need any others, and the whips and cape likely took up a lot of the
budget. Maybe he could have a hand grasping a few hairs from
his beard to imitate a scene - Uighur plucked hairs from his beard to
determine how many prisoners he was going to execute that day.
Value
- **1/2
I hate how much Revoltech toys cost, although $30 is only $10 more than
the average MOTU Classics figure (much less than E-bay
costs). Uighur is a little hard to find on the secondary
market, as retailers tend to sell out of him early. He should
still be available on Amazon at the time of this writing for roughly
$30, however.
Fun
Factor - ****
Scale issues aside, Uighur
is a great figure. He also doesn't scream "ANIME" for people
who don't really like Japan, and fits in pretty well among He-Man
figures (albeit with a much better sculpt and paint). Just
call him Lashor, Skeletor's Viking Torturer, and you're set.
Unless you think that's too close to Tung Lashor, at which point he
becomes Whip-Man. If you want to keep him in-scale, he's
great for savaging G.I. Joe and Star Wars figures, and there are some
Fist of the North Star offerings in the right scale, they just lack
articulation. For a figure made of one of the random giant
thugs from Fist of the North Star, this one shows a tremendous amount
of quality. And hey, you can learn a little more about Asian
ethnic politics while you're at it!
Overall-
***1/2
Uighur is such a great figure that it's just too bad he's saddled with
that terrible scale problem. Seriously - other things, such
as his open right hand or limited loincloth articulation are easy to
overlook, but he just seems shrimpy in an actual Fist of the North Star
display. Uighur is huge, imposing, and terrifying - maybe not
so huge with this figure, but the character is still
memorable. Who else can turn "I can't hear you?" from part of
a cheer into a forerunner of death? The same number of
Mongolians who dress like Vikings, that's who! 
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This product was purchased for the review by the reviewer.
Photos and text by Ridureyu.
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