The release of the Bandai Bagan figure in 2023 is one of the most insane things to happen in my time as a Godzilla fan. Here's a character who was never in a movie, best known for their appearance in two obscure games, but still legendary in the fandom for the notion of what could have been. Never in my wildest dreams did I think that Bagan would receive any official merchandise, and yet there it was - lovingly crafted to almost perfectly resemble the maquette shown in Movie Studio Tour. You would not believe how fast I pounced on that. And, evidently, a lot of other people did as well, as a year later Bandai announced not only a repaint of the mold to reflect Bagan's appearance in Super Godzilla, but a figure of his titular opponent as well. Well, I've always wanted a Super Godzilla figure and didn't think there would ever be one, so even though there were a lot of questionable things in the promotional pictures I went ahead and bought it too. After a good six month wait, it finally arrived.
The figure is a retool of Spacegodzilla, which is a natural choice considering one design evolved into the other. Unfortunately, the Spacegodzilla figure they used as a base infamously kind of sucks, which is made all the more frustrating by the fact that they've been selling it unchanged for the better part of thirty years. The real point of contention is the articulation; it's minimal and awkward, and the Super Godzilla figure makes no effort to change that. The only things things they really changed on this figure are the shoulder gimmicks, which I think they did a nice enough job on, and the stomach detail, which looks fine. The paint is maybe a little sparse, but that's been the name of Bandai's game for a decade or more, so hey.
When the preview images came out and showed the crystal white dorsal plates, a lot of people assumed (for whatever reason) that they would be changed to a sprite-accurate green for the final release. Unfortunately, that's not the case. It doesn't look awful, in my opinion, but it's certainly conspicuous, and really just makes you wonder why. In an affront to typical modern Bandai, the paint on the spines actually does run pretty much all the way down the tail anyway, so I guess at least if the white is wrong it's wrong all the way. It would have been nice if they made the plates look a little more like traditional Godzilla spines, but if they weren't willing to shell out for the green paint here there's no way they'd retool anything else.
I'm not a big tag guy or anything (I usually cut them off), but I do find it strange that they didn't use a picture from the game (or even Godziban) here. Maybe they thought the sprite artwork would look out of place, or maybe they didn't want to call more attention to the inaccuracies (which I doubt, since by the time you see the tag you've already given them your money), I don't know. But just using a picture of the figure itself is very funny.
My Bagan figure is several thousand miles away from me right now, so I can't do a direct comparison between them, but looking at videos and stuff the scale seems good enough. For me, ideally both these figures would have been in the old eight inch scale (since that's what all my other Heisei figures are), but I realize I'm very likely in the minority for that. Also, while a retool of the original, gigantic Spacegodzilla figure would have been cooler, given how expensive this baby version already was I shudder to think of how much Bandai would charge for a big one. I will say that I think it's very funny that Bagan gets a whole new mold made, while all Super Godzilla gets is a half-finished retool (sold as a "premium" figure, no less), but that's the breaks.
There's a lot to be disappointed in with this figure. For a supposedly-premium release, Bandai really did not go out of their way to make it accurate to the game. Considering how deep with it you have to be to want this figure in the first place, you'd think Bandai might go out of their way to please the only people willing to buy it. Then again, I'm the sucker who knew that it was a retool of a figure I didn't like, done poorly, with bad paint and no other improvements, and bought it anyway, so maybe Bandai put in all the effort they needed.
With all that said, though, I don't hate the figure - I mean, I got exactly what I expected, and more-or-less what I wanted from it. All I wanted was a Super Godzilla to go with Bagan, and I got it. For all its problems, I would rather have a lazy Super Godzilla figure than no Super Godzilla figure at all. The fact that we're at a point were Bandai is willing to make these crazy, left field characters says a lot about the state of the Godzilla fandom. Maybe we'll see a repaint of this figure down the line, or maybe we'll get even more non-movie monsters in the Movie Monsters Series. Razin when? Barkley when???