So last year, I placed an order months in advance with the hopes I’d receive it in time for my sister’s birthday. And if not in time for her birthday, for Christmas. Well, let’s just say, I was pretty disappointed it didn’t get here in time for both.
Anyway, it came recently and, man, what a beauty! A beauty that I had to buy with a golden coin but a beauty nonetheless.
I bought her a 1:6 scale resin statue of one of her favorite One Piece anime characters: Roronoa Zoro.
Here’s a picture of him assembled so you can admire him as we did the day we put him together:
My lordy lord, look at that detail (those veins, mm!)! He even has an alternate head, too!
Now the deal with these statues is that they’re expensive and they take a long time to get to you, and you have to put in a deposit to pre-order them (you want to try your best not to buy these after they’ve been produced cause the price just skyrockets – reason being, they’re pretty limited). But! They are totally worth it for the die-hard fan because they look absolutely amazing and the quality is way up there (for context, my family grew up with One Piece so we’ve been there since the beginning – this is around the 90’s).
This particular Zoro statue is from Zuoban Studio, a studio that has convinced me that they do an excellent job on One Piece statues. So much so that I might buy from them again.
I mean, look at that:
(Whew, is it hot in here or is there too much shmexy going on?)
Now admittedly, while I’m very happy with the final product, there were a few small things that I felt could have been handled a little bit better, like his swords. Some of the smaller pieces, and one of his half-drawn swords, just didn’t fit very well. The pieces kept falling off and so we kept putting them back in, which in turn made them more and more brittle and more and more scuffed of paint. Now, these pieces are supposed to hold themselves together, but the studio sometimes the studio will provide you with a bit of gummy rubber to put in between the pieces if it’s delicate enough. However, that didn’t work for the swords so we had two alternatives: glue them or place them down gently and never pick them up again. Well, we don’t like the idea of permanence so glue was out of the question; we went with the ‘put them down gently and never pick them back up ever again, cleanliness be damned’ method (but just for the sword!).
Luckily, the larger pieces are hefty and have no problem sticking to each other like glue.
Who knows, maybe we’ll eventually glue these tiny pieces together. For now, we’ll just have to hope the dust spray doesn’t knock a piece of him off for good.
As for the rest of the statue, well, hold on while I stare at it for a bit longer.
Just a bit longer.
Yup! It’s still beautiful.
And heavy!
Honestly, we should’ve assembled most of it on the shelf it was going to sit on but we were too excited about it.
For anyone curious, this is what the interior of the box looks like:
(Obviously, was too excited to pull all the pieces out so didn’t think to take a picture until after we had gotten most of it assembled. Will know better next time!)
Each of the pieces easily slide onto the others and though it seems like a lot, it’s not very complex so don’t feel daunted by how many holes this box has.
Overall, a very nice statue. I have no regrets whatsoever about buying it, and it made my sister very happy! That’s mission accomplished, if you ask me.
In truth, I’d only recommend these statues for those who are comfortable with the cost. For total transparency, I put about $200 down for the deposit in order to reserve the statue and then about a little more than $200 for the rest of the statue, AND THEN a little more than $200 to ship it out to me from across the sea, (it’s real heavy, and this is not including the payment/processing fee). I was a little late to reserve this statue, which might be the reason why it’s a little higher than when more pre-orders were available, but you get the idea about the cost. And that’s only for the 1:6 scale (a lot of statues have 1:4 scale)!
Anyway, it’s a real nice statue and I hope those who end up getting it also end up thinking the same.
And, that’s about it. I hope your journey into the world of statues starts off great.
Alrighty then, talk to you guys later! Thanks for reading.
EVERY DAY A MYSTERY 