Barnaby Brooks Jr, Ichiban Kuji

I cast my lot in an Ichiban Kuji drawing with a couple of friends. My goals were the chibi Keith Goodman and this statue of Barnaby. Wanna guess how I fared? Yeah you’re right I got them both…So here it is the review of my very first (hopefully of many) statue of Barnaby Brooks Jr.

Barnaby Brooks Jr. is the newest superhero to join Hero TV, a reality show where heroes compete for the title ‘King of Heroes’. For Barnaby though it’s so much more than a title at stake. He has a set goal in mind that has nothing to do with heroics, Barnaby is out for revenge. He’s being sponsored in his endeavor by Albert Maverick his adoptive father and CEO of Apollon Media (by the way Capcom called they want their plot device back.), because of this the Tiger and Barnaby duo have quite a bit of pull.

Barnaby Brooks comes to us today in the form of an Ichiban Kuji prize figure. He stands a grand total of seven inches tall without his base. His hair looks pretty good, I like the kind of mustardy shade that they went with for his hair rather than a sunshine yellow. For happier more vibrant characters I think the brighter yellow works well, but not for people like Barnaby. The sculpt of his hair looks really smooth too, at least from the front anyway. And his face looks great, his eyes are casting an angry glare that suits him so well. His lips are actually fairly defined as well. I’ve definitely seen better, but for the average male figure to even have lips is astounding.

Here we go down to Barnaby’s questionable clothes, dear I love you, but the eighties called and they really want their fashion back. The paint job on his shoulder is horrible. The grey paint is all over the place up there and the red line that goes across it is equally bad. The red detailing actually fades in and out, it isn’t even remotely consistent. His shoulder seams look terrible as well. Moving over to his chest now…the V neck shirt looks about as good as a low-cut women’s shirt can look on a full-grown man. In standard Barnaby fashion his jacket is zipped up just below that horrible shirt. The teeth on the zipper is a very nice touch, but the gold paint does stray a little bit. All four pockets of his jacket are zipped shut. Also I honestly have no idea what he’s about to do with that hand, if I had to wager a guess it would be that he’s about to point at someone. His fingers look very chunky..

Barnaby’s hand doesn’t quite rest on his hip right. It’s close enough though that unless you really stare at it you’d never even notice. His pants conform rather nicely to his hips and thighs leaving all the desired wrinkles and folds that come with wearing tight pants. His studded belt has a very nice sculpt but stray gold paint tried really hard to add extra studs.

The wrinkles right by his knees and just above his boots are of course nice touches of detail and very natural looking. His pants are just tight enough to look good, and just loose enough that we don’t have to fear him bursting free of them.

I’m just going to go out on a limb and guess that the boots were a custom job to match the jacket. Ahem anyway….the laces on the boots look great, as does the rest of the detailing. I just noticed that he left the top two eyelets on each boot unlaced. That’s odd to say the least.

He has a really nice profile which is exceedingly rare in anime figures! The little waves that go over his ears look good and do a nice job of covering up the extremely bad seam in his hair. That’s just…ew. There’s a bit of rough plastic on the collar of his jacket as well. His necklace, simple as it may be, looks very nice. The paint doesn’t touch his chest at all.

For a superhero Barnaby really lacks in bulk, check out how thin his waist is. Anyway, there are an ample amount of wrinkles on his jacket too if you pay attention, such as by on his shoulder and by the pocket that’s closer to his tummy. This jacket is apparently a lot tighter then I gave it credit for initially, if you look close you can see a perfectly defined pectoral muscle. Maybe he should go look for clothes that fit better, if the jacket is that tight I don’t want imagine the shirt.

Moving down a bit, his arms look good, his hands not so much. This hand looks portly too! And his ring looks highly questionable. Not what I’d call good.

How does he get his hair to do that? Well regardless of how, it looks nice in figure format and they did a fairly realistic job on it too. If you follow the lines on the back of his head you can tell where each one is going to curl upwards. Nice! For such a tight jacket the lines in between his shoulders is also a nice touch of realism.

The back of Barnaby’s pants is clearly defined. The pockets in particular look really good. Because of the way Barnaby is standing with most of his weight centered on his left leg, the pull of his pants is tighter on that side.

The wrinkles around the bottom of the pants give off the illusion of being tucked into the boots, which is of course a great bit of detail. The lines on his boots representing seams are also very nicely done.

Barnaby’s base looks delicious…I mean well sculpted. It’s the name of the show, and since they made both Kotestu and Barnaby for this particular drawing it made sense to have this as their base. The four foot pegs hold him to the base very securely.