Figure Review: 12"PM Wild Tiger & Barnaby Brooks Jr - Tiger & Bunny

Good Luck Mode!
3, 2, 1! Tiger & Bunny, over and out!

Bandai 12”PM Wild Tiger & Barnaby Brooks Jr.
Wild Tiger released in December 2012 priced at 26,250 yen
Barnaby Brook Jr in January 2014 priced at 28,350 yen

12” PM – which stand for 12 inch Perfect Model – is an attempt from Bandai making 1/6 scale figure at the highest quality and most accurate to it on-screen counterpart ( May 2022 is the time of this writing , there have been 6 figures made for this line, 4 of which are Tiger & Bunny’s and the remaining 2 are from Star Wars). The Review will be covering both figures since they are technically the same figure with minor differences.

Here we have Wild Tiger and Barnaby Brook Jr, displaying all of their glory in 1/6 scale form, at the height of 12 inches (roughly about 30cm). Their appearance is without a doubt the best representation of Wild Tiger and Barnaby Brook Jr. With the collaboration of Studio K2R (Katsura Masakazu the character design of Tiger & Bunny), both hero’s suits are finely designed for the best representation on screen and in toy’s form as possible .

Side note : as my figures are pre-owned item, the appearance of won’t represent every figures out there. Apologies for the any further misunderstanding or misleading imageries.

+Appearance : as we mentioned before, with the participation of K2R studio, the designing of both Tiger & Barnaby figures are heavily supervised by the character designer. As the result, we have a this near-perfect model of Tiger and Barnaby in their hero suit. For the look, if we compare it to the anime model. This would be the best with no competition (compare it with the S.H.Figurart and Figure rise MG). But it is still not as anime accurate as we hoped it would be. Mainly the slight differences proportion in the shoulders and the legs of both figure. Tiger’s shoulders are a bit sleeker than it’s anime counterparts. Their legs are a bit skinnier compare to the anime model. But personally, i think Wild Tiger suffer less of this minor differences. But Barnaby legs is more noticeable especially on the back of his legs, where it should be thicker.

Other than those minor flaws in the design, the overall figure looks great. Especially the open mask head, where the character’s face are well sculpted. With every necessary details, carefully painted and designed in toy format, they are perfectly portrayed. Personally I feel Kotetsu’s skin tone is a bit darker than the anime and his expression is a bit too serious. Barnaby on the other hand is perfect. Then we move on to the hands, they are perfectly sculpted, with all necessary and painted details . For the look, they are as good as they can be.

+Gimmicks: With hundred power activated, their suit will glow up (purely for aesthetic reason). The figures recreate this effect with LEDs feature placed all around the body. To access the LEDs, each places has its own section, which require you to turn on the switches on each of the respective sections. It is tiring sometime to turn them up, but considering the fact that each part has it’s own power supply. The light up gimmick doesn’t drain the batteries (LR41) as much as it seemed. (With my experience with soul of chogokin gipsy danger, it drains the battery fast especially in the chest area where it also light up the head).

For accuracy, Wild Tiger’s LED is near perfect, every parts are lit up appropriately. It isn’t overwhelmed by by it’s own lights. Mostly due to Tiger initial design, which gave the lights more breathing room between each sections. As for why it is only near perfect, if we consider the anime accuracy, the greens on the biceps are supposed to lit up.

Which lead us to Barnaby’s suit. The design itself already hindered it’s own lighting capability. Where lights on the panels of the shoulder, the “bunny” ears or the back binders won’t travel to the rest of the part. You can only see the lights spot on some section. But Barnaby’s LEDs are lit up in every necessary places.

Since the LEDs are covered in this pure white plastic underneath each parts. The LEDs doesn’t feel overly bright or too dim.

Accessories : Both figures come with their base, a head for light up gimmicks, a head for mask opening, 5 fingers articulated hands and each pair of their respective hands. As for Wild Tiger, he has his wild shoot. Both have interchangeable logos for the Tiger & Bunny: the Beginning movie. FamilyMart shoulder for Tiger and Amazon hand armor for Barnaby.

Due to Wild Tiger’s wild shoot placement, you can detach the arm to install it easier. 2 of the aforementioned heads with opening gimmick to reveal the character’s face. As disappointed as it sound, the helmet requires some dismantling and reattaching it into position to reveal the face. But it isn’t too bad if you got used to it.

Posability : As for a 1/6 scale figure, they aren’t too bad. Same with the SHF, their torso movability isn’t any different. Hindered by their own design, rotation are limited and abs crunch is impossible. Their legs have double jointed knee and their hips( which are diecast) are able to pulled down for more posability. But as great as it seem, kneeling pose or any real dynamic pose are not possible. With that, their thighs swivels are different, while Tiger can rotate outward and inward fine, Barnaby is unable to rotate outward making his standing pose seem unnatural. Their neck articulation aren’t any better, which are also hindered by their neck guard. But funnily, Barnaby has a tad bit more better movement at the base of his neck, making his neck somewhat better than Tiger’s.

Both of their arms are double jointed, with minor differences are the arm rotation. While Tiger’s rotate on the bicep part, Barnaby’s rotate on his upper elbow. Their differences are also in their hand, there isn’t any real wrist movement as because it is simple ball joint. But due their design, Barnaby has more clearance for his hand to rotate. While with Tiger you could try to install the hands in different angle but trying to squeeze it in would damage the paints.

Their shoulder articulation are the same, hinged ball jointed and a swing out movement in the base of the joint, making them fairly posable . Other than that, they have 5 finger articulated hands, even though they are articulated, but at the base of four fingers other than the thumbs are straight hinge joint. Making it hard to make the figure holds things or make usual hands pose. Different from Wild Tiger, Barnaby has 2 binder behind his back. Those are connected on a single ball joint. They both have single toe bend and a ball jointed feet.

In conclusion, as for the time of this writing ( May 2022 ) these 2 figures are the best representation of Wild Tiger and Barnaby Brook Jr compare to every other iteration up to this point. Their posabilities is not the main focus, but their appearance is. The beautiful representation is the main selling point. Mimicking hundred power light up, well made character head sculpt and near perfect recreation of the hero suits. These are display pieces with little fun, I would recommend these for any Tiger & Bunny fan, as there is no better looking figures than these at the time of this review . But if they ever make somethings better ,I would not recommend you to buy these. Though if you want to experience it, i would recommend picking up Wild Tiger simply because of his legs posability is better than Barnaby and his lights up gimmick is more pleasing.

Gallery: