Figure Review: Soul of Chogokin - Getter Robo Arc

CHANGE, GETTER ARCCC!!
THUNDER BOMBERRRR!!!

Getter Robo Arc marked the return of Getter Robo to the screen after 17 years. The epic final saga of Ken Ishikawa’s cosmic horror Super Robot manga finally get adapted for a tv series. The series act as a culmination of not just only the mangas but also the various OVAs that Getter has before, closing off a chapter of Getter while opening another door of possibility. To commemorate that, Bandai has made the 99th product in their iconic Soul of Chogokin line the Getter Arc – making it the final double-digit SOC.

Get yours here!

+ Design: The GX-99 Soul of chogokin Getter Arc is menacing at the first glance. Unlike its animation model, Bandai decided to changed a lot of its proportion to give Arc a more beefy look to it, but still manage to retain the original feel of the unit. Compare it to the HG or the anime, there are many differences. The chest is inflated, the torso is lengthen, the thighs are thicker, the shoulders are broader, etc… For short, it looks viciously badass and that is the point the Soul of Chogokin trying to deliver.

And deliver it they did, even the weapons and wings are sharper and bigger than usual, giving them a more significant presence. For the head, the menacing glare of each eyes with and without pupils. But there isn’t a head sculpt for Ark with its mouth fully closed. The normal head will have this little teeth exposure. The paint job is clean, the white bare parts are matte finish and painted parts are glossy white. The greens are metallic and there’s 2 tone of red(metallic and candy).

+ Articulation: In short, it’s very posable. To accommodate the changes that Bandai made, the figure gave us alot of posability to play with. The torso has 2 points of articulation, one for the chest and one for the waist. For the chest, you can lean forward and backwards quite a bit, even the yellow part on the chest can move outward for more crunching. There is a ball joint in the waist as well. And for the lower half, there are a lot going on in the crotch of Ark. The crotch have ratchet joints to swing out the legs for more range. The hips have basic hinge joints. Furthermore, we have springs loaded piece of armor on the thighs, give it more clearance for the thighs while bending forward. The legs have double ratchet hinge joint and the toe can bend slightly.

To the upper half of the body. Shoulders are ball jointed and can be swung out for more range of motion. The arms are double jointed but with the other joint isn’t able to bend more than 90° . There are hinged ball joint for the wrists. The neck is on a ball joint and a hinge joint at the head. The back armor of the head is able to flip up allowing more range of motion. There is 2 rotation on the arms, one in the upper elbow and one in the shoulders.
As for the backpack , there are 9 blades and each of them have hinges with pivot point at the base.

The toy is posable, its fun to handle but the stand are fairly useless to pose Ark (if you want dynamic pose). The claw can’t barely hold him on and the other one is just Ark resting his bottom on it. My suggestion is find a base that can grap him by the hips (since most of his diecast is on the legs, its best to hold him by the hips instead of the waist) . Speaking of that, due to his lower half is heavy, holding him by the top half overtime would resulting in loosen up the ball joint. Which will lead us to Getter Ark problem, due to the amount of diecast it has. Ark hips joint will eventually loosen up due to most of the diecast are located on the leg, luckily the double hinged joints are ratchet.

+ Gimmicks: The face replacing gimmick does feel odd, it requires you to slide off the face. Even though that might sound like its a bad thing, but considering the head design. The installing process is to prevent any possible breakage from applying it too hard. But in my experience, its solid, you dont have to apply too much or too little pressure. The relax hand is molded in this awkward sculpt. His fingers doesn’t feel relax but rather look inflated. The seam line running down the thighs are noticeable ugly. With handling overtime, the seam will caught dirt and such making it more noticeable than before. I suggest making sure you have a glove on or just holding the thighs with that in mind. There is no other gimmick than the back pack flip up to deploy thunder bomber attack. It is neat and well executed. Nevertheless it has a job and it did it. The arm blades aren’t detachable unfortunately, resulting we probably will never get the warped up blades.

+ Accessories: Getter Ark come with 2 tomahawks , a base with hands storage, 3 getter machines, launching pad for the get machine, a stand with 2 types of adapter for Arc (a crotch holder and a waist holder), an attachment for connecting 2 tomahawks, a back gap filler(if you do decide to display Ark without his wings), 2 pairs of fist, claws and relax hands, 4 interchangeable faces (mouth opening, normal face and same with the previous 2 but with pupils).

+ Conclusion: The figure is far from perfect. But with it badass redesign, that itself is worth the pickup. As the last Getter of Ken Ishikawa’s work, that magically got adapted. I would say if you’re a fan or just like mecha in general, its not a bad display piece to own.

At the time of this writing (May 2022), the figure is discounted roughly around 6k or 7k yen (perhaps the anime failed to attract buyers). There is no sign or prototype of Getter Kirik and Khan for the time being(other than those 2 jointless model). Aside from that, judging from the prototype Soul of Chogokin Shin Getter from Getter Armageddon, it somewhat used the same legs joint as Ark. Maybe they wanted maximum posability for Getters with no real gimmicks (other than combining)

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