Tonight I was able to hold Anakin in my own hands and the lasting impression (from my all too brief encounter with him in my eyes, nearly one hour) these two words come to mind: astoundingly breathtaking! I instantaneously feel in love with this figure as I held him in my hands. What can I say the sculpt is dead-on Anakin Skywalker, the clothing is a work of wonder, and the accessories are top-notch. I was very impressed with mechanical hand. At pre-order time I wasn't totally satisfied paying the extra 5 dollars more because of the hand, but let me tell you it was totally worth it! Once again the detail is great on Anakin and the pictures do not do it justice whatsoever.
Now going back to the head sculpt, it looks like SS Shrunk down Hayden Christensen at the same exact time he was playing Anakin Skywalker in ROTS and then boxed him up. The head detail from the minor wrinkles, scar, eyes, nose, hair, etc...look so much better in person than the photo's we see so often online. The skin tones are very similar to Luke, very natural looking. The eyes in my opinion have the right amount of gloss. The eye brows and hair color are darker than the TF pictures. But when you're looking at the figure in your hand, it really does not detract from the overall impression that you are looking at Anakin Skywalker. Last but not least the lips. They are overly glossed that is for sure and the color is also darker than the TF pics just like the hair and eyebrows. The color of the lips in person is more in tone with SS Slave Taylor figure's lip color except with a heck of a lot more gloss on them. I think this must have been a factory oversight, I can't imagine Sideshow wanting the lips to be that glossy. As I was holding the figure looking at the lips I remembered that there are some tricks to taking away gloss without altering paint. I remember On-set if something is too shiny there are a number of ways to dull a subject up, like Dave mentioned earlier plumbers puddy can work well. That would fix the over-glossiness of the lips without any need for paint alteration or artist background.
Now the costume is just extraordinary, so many layers and fine detail OH MY! The costume by itself I would say is worth $54.99 that's how great it is. I guess I really don't have to get too much into the details because I think everyone can agree from the pictures the costume is spectacular.
So if I had to give Anakin a score from 1-10, 10 being perfect, looking at the whole package: Head Sculpt, Paint, Costume, Accessories he would come out as a 10 on the scale. Getting specific to the paint application, I would say a 9 just because of the glossy lips. The darker hair color to me really does not take away anything from the figure's representation of the Anakin Skywalker character. But the glossiness on the lips is quite high so that bugs me and that is the main reason I score the paint a 9. All the other categories considering the 54.99 price tag we all paid gets high 10's.
As I was driving away from Dave's house I really started to miss Anakin a lot. I was very tempted to turn around and go back to Dave's and play around with Anakin some more, but alas I had some work to attend to that could not be put off. But as I was driving away it really sank in how great of an action figure Anakin truly is and I think most everyone will be truly happy with what they get.
