2012 marked the 20th anniversary of the Sailor Moon Franchise. By spring 2013, Toei announced plans for a new Anime series along with a ton of merchandise celebrating the anniversary. Among the new merchandise was a new line up of figures from Bandai's S.H. Figuarts. Sailor Moon kicked off the line in August 2013, followed by Mercury a few months later, and is who we'll be taking a look at today.
The Smart and Sweet Sailor Mercury comes in a mostly blue, yellow and pink package, similar to Sailor Moons, but with a different layout and colors. I should note that I have the localized version put out by Bluefin, which is why there is an unsightly "Don't be a stupid parent" sticker on the front. Why they chose to block part of the text and not place the sticker just above the 20th anniversary logo is beyond me.
The sides and back feature more pictures of Mercury in various poses, along with text(some in English, oddly enough) explaining S.H Figuarts.
At this point it should be obvious that the localization Bluefin did for these figures is limited to just stickers telling you not to be an idiot. Unlike the localized Zyuranger figures as Power Rangers, this is the exact packaging you get in Japan.
This extends to the instructions too, though you won't really need them.
When you pull the figure out of the box you'll be greeted with a tray with it's own bubble separate from the box. Once you pull the bubble off, you will have access to the figure and three accessories; the mini super computer(closed) another mini super computer(open) and a hair piece with goggles. The figure and the accessories simply lay in the tray and are not held in by any means after the overlaying bubble is removed, so be careful. To one side of the tray we have yet another tray with it own overlaying bubble. This is where the alternate faces and hands are kept.
And finally, taped to the back of the bubble the figure came in is Mercury's final accessory, a custom display stand, which we
shall get to later.
Sculpting
Sculpting across the figure is nice, capturing the anime ascetic. I was concerned about the figure being rather fragile due the the somewhat thinner nature of the build, but this does not seem to be the case at all. The face has a wonderful sculpt, capturing the look of the character head-on while not coming off as too flat from the sides. The seam along Mercury's bangs is a bit more noticeable than I would like, but it's nothing I mind too much.
If you happen to have Usagi, then Mercury is pretty much the same body wise, with the exception of a few different sculpts such as the broach. The most noticeable aspect is the legs, which are longer than Sailor Moon's and of course Mercury has different boots. (In the Manga, Moon stands at about 4'11 and Mercury at 5'2)
Articulation
As you might expect from a Figuart, Mercury has a plethora of movable joints. Her hands are on ball joints, her shoulders are on a pin disc universal joint. She has single jointed elbows and knees, however these are on a disc joint similar to a figma, so while they're not double jointed, they come close to having the range of a double joint. Her legs are your usual S.H. swivel down ball joint, her feet are on ball joints allowing you to pull off a full on tip toe if you so wish and they can even swivel. Her upper torso has a slight wiggle do it, but don't expect much. Finally, her head is on a ball joint, with the only real hindrance being her hair sculpt preventing her from looking up.
Mercury's skirt is made of a softer plastic, and it even has a very well hidden split, which allows for the legs to move far more than one would expect.
I've heard people complain about her legs not being able to come together as shown on the package, but the only thing I can say is these people don't know how to operate a toy.
Figure Paint
Paint apps are very clean nice. Her hair is nice dark blue color and an even finish across both hair pieces. Her leotard, gloves and stripes on the collar feature a nice pearlescent shine to them, and the collar, choker, skirt, boots and end of the gloves have a metallic Blue to them, along with a more shiny blue used for the broach. A flat paint the same color as the metallic blue is used on the ear rings as well at the gem in the tiara. Two different shades of a flat blue are used on her eyes, although they noticeably pop under the right lighting conditions. Her tiara has a metallic gold finish. Her boots are accented with light blue and this color is also used on the frontal and back bows.
There is one little problem with her right leg, it seems to have a bit of skin showing.
This is thankfully very small.
Accessories
We'll start off with Mercy's mini super computer. She comes with two, an opened version and a closed version. Both are cast in a green-blue plastic with yellow paint apps. They're both very clean and the yellow is quite strong for what is normally a problematic color. The open version features a really nice dark metallic blue on the screen.
Mercury also has three additional faces to choose from: shouting, stern, and smiling openly, all in addition to the smiling face already on the figure by default.
The sculpting for all the faces are fantastic, fully replicating some of Mercury's expressions in the anime and the paint is just a clean here as it is on the standard face. Switching out the faces is fairly simple, just grab the hair piece and gently wiggle it back and forth until it's loose.
You can then grab the face and repeat the same as before until it comes undone.
Yeah, that's not creepy.
From this point, you're free to add any of the faces you choose, you can also add another accessory, the Mercury Goggles, used to analyze enemies in conjunction with the super mini computer.
The goggles are cast in translucent blue and follow the shape of the anime goggles as opposed to the boxy design featured in the original Manga. The great thing about this is that because the goggles are on a separate hair piece, you can use it with any of the faces.
Finally we have the hands. Mercury comes with a total of 5 pairs of hands plus one extra left hand.
The starting hands are best described as relaxed or calmly open.
Starting from the top for the extras hand, the right hand is in a typing formation, and the left hand can be used to hold the closed version of the computer.
Below that is a pair of semi flat hands with an upward curve intended to be used as part of Mercury's bubble spray attack pose.
We then have splayed open hands, also for use in her attack, but like all the hands, can be used in any pose you dream up.
The last pair of hands are closed fists, for punching or for Mercury's post transformation pose.
And the final hand is a left hand used for holding the open computer, as seen above.
Like the faces, switching the hands is simple if not more so. Just give a nice tug and pop the new ones on. Unlike Moon's straight pegs, Mercury has a ball on the end of each peg, possibly due to complaints of Moon's hands being too easy to remove.
I've not had any problems with Mercury's hands for the most part. When I was fiddling around with her hands for the first time, the right hand popped off easy and I almost assumed something was wrong, but I had just moved it too far back and it popped off. Another pair of hands didn't want to pop on fully, and once again caused some worry, as I thought the hole may have been too big. Thankfully this was not the case and they soon fit.
Mercury has one last accessory, or more of a bonus, her custom stand. Unlike the regular rectangle or square stands for tamashii figures, Ami comes with a heart shaped base with her Sailor Scout name and logo printed on in blue.
This is the exact same base that came with Sailor Moon, of course modified for Ami. You have three different areas to peg the figure clamp into and can fill the empty pegs with a round bit of plastic if you wish.
The stand is fairly sturdy and can support Mercury in all of the poses I tried with her, be it on the ground or in the air.
She stands fine on her own but I do highly recommend using the stand.
I do wish Mercury would have come with a few more accessories, a communicator or some type of attack effect part would have been nice, but I'm happy to finally have one of my favorite Sailor Senshi added to my shelf. She's the figure I've wanted since I was a kid. I hope one day to say the same about Jupiter. But in the mean time, I'll focus my attention on less official products.
