By Ray H.

Kotobukiya's Bizarre Toy Adventures

Kotobukiya's ARTFX division has offered up some new action figures recently from JoJo's Bizarre Adventures.

JoJo's Bizarre Adventures is a Jump Manga/Anime OAV series/ Video Game that's come out for the Sony Playstation and Sega Dreamcast platforms. In the series the characters use "Stands", these super powered spiritual-like entities to fight with, so each 2 pack consist of a character and their accompanying Stand.

The JoJo toys come as "Static and Dynamic" action figure sets. Which means the human characters have almost no articulation, but the Stand characters that do a lot of the fighting feature a nice amount articulation on them.

These toys have phenomenal paint jobs, a very nice use of gloss on the Star Platinum figure that gives it a spiritual effect. So far ARTFX has offered, Volume 1: Kujo Jotaru and Star Platinum, Volume 2: Kakyouin and Heirophant Green, Volume 3 Polnareff and Chariot, and Volume 4: Dio and the Worldall.

These figures stand an impressive 7 to 8 inches tall, and retail for about $45 a set in Japan. Previews will be offering the first volume soon for U.S. collectors, and possibly the others will follow later.

JoJo fans should also keep their eyes peeled for the new JoJo Gashapon set, and the prize items set. These new Banpresto prize items are neat, they feature a character from JoJo with the stand "emerging" from their backs, very nice little display items.

ARTFX has even more cool toys on the way with their upcoming Armored Core 2 action figures.

Based on the video game. The "Armored Core 2: High-End Action Model" line are fully pre-assembled action figures like the ARTFX Front Mission 3 line. These figures feature a very astounding amount of articulation along with superb sculpts by Ryoich Itoh. These come with an impressive amount of accessories too, such as chain guns, missile pods, giant cannons, and arm Sabers - all the goodies you'd expect of heavily armed mecha.

Armored Core 2 toys stand about 6 inches tall. These two Armored Core Mecha are slated for fall/winter of 2000 release in Japan.

Distribution for a U.S. release is still being worked out.