Damn, this figure fills out that card nicely, doesn’t he? Thankfully, he’s big enough that I don’t think it was even possible for Mattel to package him in an action pose. Just standing straight, he doesn’t leave much room in the bubble.

Ok, so before I get on to the majesty that is this figure, let me get two little quibbles out of the way. first off, his cape/blades are a little warped coming out of the package, but that’s to no fault of the packaging. They’re just made of soft plastic and they’re easy to get back into place. I’m pretty forgiving of this because by making them soft, they’re less likely to snap off. The other thing are the legs. They’re not warped, but they are made of some mighty soft plastic. Mattel may have went with the softer plastic on the legs to accomodate the blades hanging off his calves. Maybe. I don’t know what it is with this wave, but Mattel seemed to alternate between the good stuff and the cheap stuff. Just saying, is all.

I love the way T4H translated the Knightfall armor into this sculpt. The wing blades and the cowl are all one piece. The neck socket does severely impede Azrael’s neck joint, but I’m willing to give it a pass in favor of the figure’s aesthetics. There’s great sculpted panel lines in the gold armor and the cables that run from his back to his gauntlets are nice and flexible and don’t interfere with the arm articulation at all. The paint and the sculpt, going from the blue cowl and gauntlets, to the gold torso and arm armor, to the grey undersuit, really work amazingly well together to give this figure a great layered look. The armor actually looks like components rather than just a flat sculpt.

The figure features a mix of old and new articulation. He has the new double hinged knees, but just the single hinges in the elbows, likely because of the heavy armor sculpt. Azrael has universal movement in the shoulders and hips; Swivels in he biceps and thighs; Hinged ankles, swivel in the waist and the ab crunch hinge in the torso. He does have the ball jointed neck, but as already mentioned you don’t get a lot of movement out of it because of the cowl.