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Kotobukiya T-X

Tonight we have a new guest reviewer - Ardiatma Mardhika!  He's here to talk about the T-X from Koto...take it away, Ardiatma!

Hello everybody. First of all, Thanks to Michael for letting me to write this review. I’m find that his site is giving me a lot of info and I’m intend to give something in return. I hope my review helps a lot of people who share the same hobby as I do. Now, shall we…

Enter T-X from Artfx series by Kotobukiya. It’s labeled as vinyl figure kit. Which mean you have to assemble a few parts to display the figure properly. This is one of the reason I start focusing my collection in 12 inch figures. I Love terminator movies. So when this figure put on a very tempting price, I snag it right away. So, is this the deal of the century that I made? Let’s find out…





Packaging - **1/2
For me, packaging had to be: 
1. Secure enough to protect the thing that you put your money on
2. Attractive enough to “take” your hard earned money
3. Compact enough so shipping won’t be a problem
4. Informative enough so you know what you buy and know there are other series to complete your collection

Start with point one. T-X come in a window box. The box seem quite strong. Inside, she’s being held by 8 twisties to a clear plastic. It seems it can take a few beating and still protect the figure. 

Point two… As you can see in the picture, the package comes with T-X head with the blue glowing eye. It has dark blue as background. Although it’s not going to attract kids… adults and collectors will recognized that this is the female butt kicker robot from T3.

Now, point three is the weakest point of this package. The box measures 10cm x 25 cm x 45 cm. Now that HUGE! Compares to others 12 inch figure package like BBI, it’s suffers. Especially when so much space being unused. Shame.

Now to the last point. This figure is Japan Made figure. So most of the info is in Japanese. But you probably already watched the movie anyway that you know who T-X is. The backside of the package give you picture of the figures and other item in the series line (which T-850 and t-850 battle damaged version, incase you wonder). Oh, one of the important things. Since it’s a window boxed, you can see what you buy and choose the best item in a whole bunch. 

So, overall I give it two and a half stars.

Sculpting - ***
Kotobukiya, maker of this figure, usually made their own interpretations of the real things (Neo for instance). For T-X case, me is about OK. 12 inch figures really depend on face sculpt for strong points and she’s looking fine. A bit like Kristana Locken (for me at least). For other areas, the reptile like outfit that she wore in movie (except in the beginning, which were she being naked, one of my favorite movie scene, he he) is fairly done. Because the outfit mostly the same from top to bottom, there’s not much to tell. But she comes with her “bionic” hand, so this is one of few points that we can look at. The bionic hand itself pretty much detailed with all the little cable and machine parts. For the base, it doesn’t have the same detail as the hand. Is looks like a base with metal parts scattering around. If only it had much more details, it would have been cool. Btw, she has a necklace sculpted, nice addition though. Although not great, she had a good sculpt for me. Three stars should do just fine.

Paint - **1/2
Like I said before, her outfit is only one colored, so not much to tell. Is okay, but nothing special. The skin part paint with some shading. Neat. That bring us to the face pain jobs. And form my point of view, it’s quite nice. No miss and paint blobs as far as I know. Good job Kotobukiya. 

But like life, there a good times and there’s the bad ones. If we look at the “bionic” hand, we can see a lot of paint miss. So very pity. Aside from the face paint, the rest pretty much average. Two and a half stars. 

Articulation - Bupkis
This is purely a vinyl statue. So this category is off for T-X.

Accessories - ***
She came with 3 interchangeable hands and a base. For action figures, this offer would be standard. But for a statue, this is a good offer. Three stars, baby.

Assembly - *1/2
I put this category since this is a Vinyl kit. The box says “snap fit.” I figure that I can put this figure together less than a minute (specially with my kit modeling experience under my belt). But I was wrong. Although the head and torso fit perfectly, the hand and arm fail to connect. So I had to use my modeling knife to modify the joint. For a figure with “snap fit” tagline, this is totally unacceptable. I don’t know wheatear mine is a defect one. Maybe we’ll find out when I review Mr. Governor of California from the same line, sometimes in the future. One and a half stars.

Fun Factor - *
As I say before, it’s a statue, not an action figure, so keep your children and minor from T-X even tough it’s strong enough to take any beating since it’s made from vinyl. 

Value - ****
When released, it’s costs 7800 yen (which I believe it’s around 55-70$). The sale price that tempt me to buy is around 19$. 19 bucks for good Vinyl 12 inch figures is a good deal don’t you think? So I give a full stars for this category. If you buy it at normal price, subtract 2 stars from it. Why? Because with that price, you can afford a fully posseable figures from BBI or sideshow. 

Things to Watch Out For:
Since it’s window boxed, see if you can find one with the best find ops. As for joints, you can’t check until it opened. So, prepare your knife incase you’ve got some remodeling to do. 

Overall - ***
With it’s low price and good quality, you can have a good 12 inch figure with low price (considering you buy with a sale price). So, if you see this baby at low price and you like Terminator movies or 12 inches, my suggestion, take it. This is a good bargain. Overall I give it a three stars.

Score Recap
Packaging: **1/2
Sculpting: ***
Paint: **1/2
Articulation: Bupkis
Accessories: ***
Assembly: *1/2
Value: ****
Fun Factor: *
Overall: ***

Where to Buy:
I bought mine at a local hobby shop called Multi toys. I think HLJ had some. Maybe your nearest hobby or toy store have some too.


Figure from the collection of Ardiatma Mardhika.

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