Ultraman Ace

Review by Gazbot

Here we have the Ultra Act release of Ultraman Ace, also known as Ultraman A in the video game, "Ultraman Fighting Evolution 3", I continually refer to him incorrectly as Ultra Ace.

I have not yet seen any episodes with him in them, but I always thought he looked cool with his metal mow-hawk/pompadour. When I saw him on Ebay for the original retail price, (since the box had been opened once), I jumped at the chance to get him.

On a side note, I recently bought a small light tent/box to better photograph my figures. The resulting quality of the pictures was a little uneven, but overall I think it was a step in the right direction.
He comes in the same silver/red box deco, with the windowed front that all the recent Ultra acts do.

Again, like the other figures in the line, he comes in a clear plastic tray with all his accessories, extra hands, color timer, ect. There is a extra tray in back for the Ultra Guillotine effect part.

Here is a quick turnaround:

There are no noticeable paint or other production flaws. He has the usual 2 back plugs, for stands/mantles. He is a bit thicker overall than my Ultraman Hayata figure, closer to my Ultraman Leo 2.0 figure especially in the legs. He also seems to have a lot of original tooling like the chest and gloves.

He is super pose-able as are most of the figures in this line. His joints stayed relatively tight and he had no trouble standing on his own in a variety of poses.

One minor complaint is that if I arch his torso back, a gap can appear. It's not a big deal, but I didn't remember this happening with my other Ultra Act figures. I double checked my Ultraman Zero 2.0 and Ultraman Leo 2.0 and neither had any gap there.

The head/helmet seems a bit smaller than it does in the show. I have heard some people complain about that, but to me it looks better smaller. Some of the stills from the show I've seen make his head look a little bit caricature-ish in proportion. Screen accuracy is for XPlus and RAH, I see this as the "ideal version" line.

Unlike the other Ultra Heroes in the line, his eyes do not have the tiny holes that the actor would have used to see though. A strange inconsistency with the rest of the line, but otherwise I didn't mind.

He has a odd neck joint that I haven't seen on my other Ultra heroes. I think maybe it was supposed to allow him to look strait up, but even if so, it doesn't function well and is just awkward.

He comes with three effect parts, which were less impressive than others I've seen. First up the Ultra Guillotine effect, which I was the most excited for, as it was so different than anything my other Ultras had come with them.

It was, however, disappointing. the wave was attached to two hands you needed to swap on the arms. It was a pain as they just barely fit and were forced into a very limited range of poses. It might have worked better to have just one side attached to a hand, or, maybe have the effect snap on to the hands or wrists. Here, I only attached one side, and other than having an extra hand hanging off the end of the wave effect it seemed to work much better.

Next up the Metallium Ray, which is Ace's version of the Specium ray

The sculpt is fine and it fits well, but that paint is terrible! It doesn't even seem to be emulating the colors from the show,...what were they thinking?

Last up the Ace Blade, (sword), it's OK, but nothing special, I imagine it resembles the show prop well enough.

Here I tried to pose him with his head up like He-Man, and you can see that weird neck joint doing it's thing.

Line up!

Here he is in my chosen shelf pose.

Overall a really solid figure, well worth the retail price, the effect parts were weak, but I mainly wanted him doing the old two finger "up the punks" sign.
8 out of 10