Toy Review: Back to the Future x Transformers Collaborative Gigawatt

Review:  #703

Name:  Gigawatt

Brand:  Transformers

Allegiance:  N/A

Line:  Back to the Future x Transformers Collaborative

Year of Release:  2020

Size Class:  Deluxe

Mold Status:  remold of Siege Sideswipe

PACKAGING AND CONTENTS:

As part of the Collaborative line, Gigawatt comes in a G1 inspired box, one that actually looks pretty decent and definitely feels more premium than standard retail releases.

The back shows off the classic artwork from Back to the Future, as well as tech specs.

In true G1 fashion, the sides have simplified transformation steps as well as other shots of the figure.

Opening the packaging up, the figure it in a clear plastic insert, the figure itself doesn't have many accessories.

The instructions booklet is a little bit more fancy, being bigger and having the Gigawatt artwork on the front.

VEHICLE MODE:

Gigawatt transforms into a silver DMC DeLorean, an iconic vehicle thanks to the Back to the Future movies.

It's a customized version with all the stuff at the back, as inspired by the movie.

The vehicle has a brushed metal look to it, so it's not bare unpainted plastic (thus you need to be careful of chipping it).

It's well painted all around, even the rear lights and license plates are filled, which is to be expected considering that this figure, despite being the size of a Deluxe, is at the price point of even higher than a Voyager.

While Gigawatt is a remold of Sideswipe, it is effectively a new toy borrowing the engineering of Sideswipe.  Little it reused here (mainly limbs in robot mode), and it's quite impressive actually.

Thanks to the squared aesthetics of the vehicle, Gigawatt is slightly larger than Sideswipe, and is average sized for a Deluxe.  Above is a comparison against TLK Bumblebee.

The figure has a ton of detail, particularly around the back.  It might look like a mess of sculpted detailing at first glance, but pay attention and there's a lot of intricate details present.

The doors are able to be opened, although as there are no bottom door frames, it can look somewhat weird.  The option is nice though.

You can also fold the wheels down to simulate the flying mode, and he comes with a mini Mr Fusion generator accessory that can peg on the back.

Finally, he comes with the wire hook that we saw at the climax of the movie.  This is made of soft flexible plastic, which is understandable, but this does warp out of shape too easily.

The wire hook can peg onto the back.

Looking underneath, you can see how packed the figure is, and you can also store the robot weapon beneath, another nice touch.

This is a fantastic vehicle mode, and it's great that Hasbro ended up listening to fan feedback from its initial reveal and decided to make the windows much darker, to lessen the visibility of the hinges (as that was definitely distracting).

TRANSFORMATION:

Gigawatt's transformation is largely the same as Siege Sideswipe's, with a few smaller touches of difference.  Basically, the back unfolds to become the legs, the arms fold out from the middle, and the hood of the vehicle folds down to form the chest.  The differences are:  the hood has a flip out piece to reveal the flux capacitor in robot mode; his shoulders have small pieces that flip out to lock in car mode; and perhaps best of it, the panels where his shoulders sit now peg against the torso, preventing it from becoming loose like it did with Sideswipe.

ROBOT MODE:

Robot mode is initially a bit of a hit and miss.  In particular, the chest is humungous and overwhelms the figure.

In person though, it's a lot easier on the eyes, and actually looks pretty good.  The photos definitely make him look worse.

The head sculpt is pretty good, although feels quite generic.

Here's a quick comparison with Siege Sideswipe and you can see just how different Gigawatt is.  The only things they share are some limb parts like the thighs.

In terms of size, here's a comparison with Earthrise Sunstreaker, so Gigawatt is around normal height for a Deluxe.

Gigawatt has a few cool details, like the flux capacitor on his chest, which also shows various dates corresponding to the times that he had travelled to.

Articulation, as you can expect, is excellent.  He has joints for his head, shoulders, elbows, waist, hips, knees and ankles.

Speaking of which, his feet are better designed than Siege Sideswipe's, as his feet doesn't sag forward.

He comes with two weapons, the wire-hook from vehicle mode, and a gun (which has the Mr Fusion generator accessory plugged onto the back, so that's a nice way to store it).

He can hold the gun in either hand, but unfortunately it's unpainted grey plastic.

Thanks to the large chest, his arms feels a bit too short, and is unable to lift high enough up to his eye level.

The wire-hook's default position is to peg onto one of the slots on his upper arm, as a melee weapon.

It's passable as a weapon, but does look a bit awkward at times.

Otherwise, this is a better robot mode than photos initially showed.  He's solid, has a few nice touches to tie him back to the Back to the Future movies, and has enough play value to be fun.

OVERALL:

Gigawatt is a nice figure, and one of the better Collaborative figures in the line.  The vehicle is definitely the stand out here, as it is just pure awesomeness.  The robot mode isn't bad, it has a few minor issues, so it just depends on which mode you'd want to display him in.  At full price, he is a bit pricey, but on sale, he's worth the cash.

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Dora and the Lost City of Gold (2019)

Dora and the Lost City of Gold is a live-action adaptation of the animated series for young children.  As a result, it should be expected that the film isn't exactly made with older audiences in mind.  The casting of the actress for the titular role did a great job at portraying the character but that's about where the positives ends.  Immediately upon the opening scene, it sets the expectations that this is not going to be a serious film.  The special effects are noticeably poor in quality, and when the animated talking fox shows up, you know that it forgoes realism for a more faithful adaptation (which isn't necessary a bad thing if you're a fan of the show).  The film doesn't have much that would keep the attention of older audiences.  The plot is simple in which Dora, having grown up in the jungle, struggles to adjust to city life and going to high school.  Naturally, she ends up being called upon to find a lost city in order to save her parents and her "friends" are being forced to tag along and then appreciate her for who she is.  The villain is one note and it is one generic development after another.  Just when you thought some scenes are okay, the next will have some attempt at humor that can feel forced.  Overall, the film is below average if you judge it as a standalone with no familiarity with the show, but it's a bit better if you're younger and are a fan of the character already.

The Pet Girl of Sakurasou (2012-13)

The Pet Girl of Sakurasou is a 24 episode romantic comedy anime that is based on the light novel series. It follows Kanda Sorata, your typical male protagonist who ends up striking it lucky with the ladies. He’s currently staying in Sakura Dormitory (the titular Sakurasou), which is the school dorm for Suimei University for the Arts. The thing with Sakura Dormitory is that it is for trouble students, so the residents lean more towards the weird side. That said, they are all talented, it’s just that their personalities are definitely not normal.

Sorata got put into Sakura Dormitory not because he was clever, or talented, or even a (true) troublemaker. He plays the nice guy and was there because he wanted to take care of abandoned cats that couldn’t stay at the normal student dorm he was previously at. Shiina Mashiro, the cousin of the teacher overlooking Sakura Dorm, arrives from England to transfer to the school and Sorata ends up with the task of looking after her.

Mashiro, in keeping with the theme of the rest of the residents, is an odd character. Sorata has his hands full just taking care of her as it seems that Mashiro is incapable of doing it herself. She also has social issues, not conforming to the norm and just seemingly oblivious to her surroundings and what is accepted. This easily leads to misunderstandings, although there is a deeper meaning to Mashiro’s background that is gradually explored over the course of the first half of the season.

Mashiro, along with Sorata’s friend Aoyama, are initially portrayed as rivals for Sorata’s attention. Even if they don’t compete with each other in the open, it’s sort of implied with both having feelings for Sorata. However, everyone in the Sakura Dorm has their own aspirations, from Mashiro wanting to become a manga artist, Aoyama a voice actress, and Sorata a game designer. Their chosen career paths are similar given that they are all studying arts.

Sorata is portrayed as having a hectic life and in some ways he does, but it also falls into the usual trope of him being a wish fulfillment character with enough girls vying for him. That said, with the paths that the characters take towards achieving their dreams, they are not always successful and encounter failure more than a few times. There several developments where it is very predictable. In particular, the one where the team as Sakura Dorm creates an original anime for the cultural festival, and Sorata wants to put in several gimmicks to have audience involvement. Naturally, you can easily see how it can backfire as it asks too much from the audience but of course it works when the group kickstarts the process and leads it to huge success. It’s cringe-worthy and hard to watch.

While Mashiro gets the bulk of the focus and screen-time, there are several ongoing stories involving the side characters. These characters have sad back-stories. The anime also finds a lot of opportunities to give several fan service shots, even when they have nothing to do with what’s currently occurring and can feel out of place when there’s a scene transition for the fan service, before instantly transitioning to the next.  Jealously is an ugly emotion and Sorata shows bouts of it, which is really unfair to those that he takes it out on. While it is hard to avoid the emotion, the way that Sorata acts by lashing out, even unintentionally, to others like Mashiro, does not paint Sorata in a good light. At the same time, he’s confused about his feelings and his indecisiveness is also unfair to Aoyama.

Mashiro has the curse of being too talented and too amazing at what she can do, that she completely overshadows everyone else. Even if you don’t want to, you’ll end up at least feeling a little bit of resentment when you’re just a normal, or even an above average talented person and failing at every turn. The anime actually does a good job at conveying these feelings of unfairness but not in a way that’s overly negative.

The anime impressively turns what was a casual carefree story into one with a more serious front packing an emotional punch. The ending, as with all endings where the characters have to say goodbye to each other, is sad. While some of the developments are crazy and idealistic, it manages to rouse the atmosphere quite effectively, keeping you enraptured. You’ll end up empathizing with the characters, feeling their sorrows and gratitude at the same time. The ending is well balanced between an idealistic happy ending and a more realistic picture that not everyone will succeed. It gives the message that even if you fail, you will continue to grown from the experience so that you will eventually succeed.

Overall, The Pet Girl of Sakurasou started off as yet another generic romantic comedy where the male protagonist gets the adoring love of several female characters, however, it turns into a surprisingly good and meaningful story. The obstacles that each character has to overcome as they journey on to achieve their dreams allows you to appreciate their efforts, doubly so when they do not immediately succeed and has to experience several failures along the way. The second half of the second, and in particular the ending, is where it truly shines with how it shows all the characters maturing and marching on despite time forcing everyone to separate and move on.

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Dirt 5 (PS4)

Dirt 5 is an arcade racer for the PlayStation 4 (as well as every single other system available). It doesn’t have much of a tutorial but since it’s a racing game, the controls are pretty easy to pick up anyway. The right trigger is used to accelerate, and the left trigger to brake / reverse, while the circle button is used for the handbrake. This is an arcade styled racer but unlike Need for Speed, you don’t have a boost so drifting relies purely on using the handbrake at the right time.

The game looks amazing, on the PS4 it has HDR and for the PS4 Pro, you can either allow it to focus on higher frame rates or have it render in 4K. That said, even on the setting to prioritize frame rates, there are still slowdowns and noticeable frame drops. The cars themselves look good, and you have the option to just check them out, opening the doors and customizing their color scheme. As you race, it does take on damage and gets dirty, particularly if you were racing in the mud.

There is a single player campaign which is comprised of races chained after each other. There is some voice-overs commentary from time to time but it’s basically just winning as much as you can. The tracks takes place all over the world and even when you go on the same track again, the weather effects or the road conditions are different enough that it takes a little bit longer before it becomes repetitive. There are some uncommon effects like dust storms and fog in addition to the ones you’d expect like rain, snow and thunderstorms. While there are some really great looking races, the night time races on frozen rivers with all the lights is simply breathtaking.

There are a lot of customizable options. As you win and level up, you also get in-game currency. These can be used to get new vehicles, new decals and other bits to decorate your vehicle. There are various camera angles to choose from, although a few of them feels a bit too low, particularly on tracks with various elevation. This can make it hard to realize a tight turn is coming up if you’re unfamiliar with the track, and end up relying on the mini-map.

The levels in the campaign are separated into different types. One type may have you racing on ice, so it’s much more slippery. Another will have you rally racing in mud, or you’ll have to use a specific car. This adds variety but also means that there will definitely be some types that you do not like. At least since progression is fairly relaxed, you can safely skip some events and still move ahead to the next level. Each level also has three optional objectives. Sometimes it is easy such as hitting another vehicle or drift a certain number of times, others are a bit more annoying. Since they’re optional, you can ignore them if you want.

The handling takes some time to get used to, particularly in learning how to take the curves. The default difficulty seems to take this into account as you’ll take first place in the earlier races with ease. There is also a plethora of driving aids to help you if you want it, such as better handling and traction over and above the actual vehicle’s stats. Most of the maps have tight turns, so you need to get used to the handling in order to get past these without bumping into the sides.

The game is quite easy on the default difficulty. You won’t have too much trouble getting first in most of the races in the campaign on it. However, it does make the AI feel very rigid as they seem to go on a predetermined path more often than not. It’s also quite annoying in the beginning of races where with the amount of opponents, it ends up being a bumping match instead of using technique to overtake each other. Once you’ve overtaken most of the opponents, the races are a lot more fun since you won’t have them wrecking your turns.

Despite the easiness, there are also times where AI is very cheap and there is obvious rubberbanding where it not only manages to catch up and keep you with you, but then shoots far ahead. At the speed that you’re usually going, and the way the cars handle, the tracks can feel too narrow at times to take those corners. However, this makes getting clean laps and races really satisfying. It is absolutely no fun at all when you have twelve cars all bunched up together trying to fight to turn the corner at the same time. You cannot overtake, you cannot make your turn properly without hitting another car, and it’s terrible.

There’s no sense of progression with getting better and better cars. You can get decent cars from the beginning, and then soon after, are able to get very nice cars that you end up using for most of the game. As if the game is not repetitive enough, the later campaign levels require you to do five laps instead of three, so you eventually just go through the motions, all excitement lost. Considering there are over 100 levels in the campaign, even accounting for variations like weather, modes and reverse layouts, there aren’t enough tracks to keep you from seeing everything within the first two hours, let alone the ten to twelve hours required to complete it.

There are several online modes, the main one of course is just racing against other players. It has cross-play so you can match-make against players on other systems, but you cannot pick the track and type of race you’re doing. Another mode is the Playground mode where it uses player generated content but these are limited to modes where you score points or checkpoint time trials.

Overall, Dirt 5 is an average arcade racer. It’s fun for the first hour or two. The more you play, the more obvious the flaws are, from the track design, crap handling, poor visibility at times, annoying and cheap AI, pop in, stuttering frame rates and the repetitiveness. It leads to a mediocre racing game that lacks its own unique identity and feels generic as a result.

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Toy Review: Transformers Generations Studio Series Jolt (Deluxe)

Review:  #702

Name:  Jolt

Brand:  Transformers

Allegiance:  Autobot

Line:  Generations - Studio Series

Year of Release:  2021

Size Class:  Deluxe (Wave 13)

Mold Status:  new

VEHICLE MODE:

Based off his Revenge of the Fallen movie incarnation, Jolt transforms into a blue Chevrolet Volt.

It's a pretty slick vehicle, and actually makes the vehicle design quite desirable.

In a rarity, he has silver painted hubcaps, although the rolling wheels is his only play value here.

He has a black roof but unlike the DOTM vehicle, is not molded to have 'carbon fibre' sculpting, so looks much better here.

The robot weapons peg onto either side of the vehicle, you can tell that they are long since they are longer than the vehicle itself.

This is a fantastic vehicle mode.

TRANSFORMATION:

Jolt's transformation can be fiddly.  Effectively, the whole vehicle is a shell that becomes kibble in robot mode.  As a result, he relies heavily on panels and they get in the way of each other.  The front and roof forms the backpack, the sides stays on his legs, while the rear forms his arms.

ROBOT MODE:

Jolt's robot mode is okay, he looks fairly awkward to be honest.

The back is filled with kibble, and while the kibble supposedly form wings, the roof / side windows are angled too far down to look good, so they situate too closely to the torso.

Combined with the huge panels that are attached to his thighs, and the robot mode is too ladened with kibble to work.

The head sculpt is supposedly based upon the final version used in the movie (rather than the concept as per previous figures), but it doesn't look that great.

The torso is brimming with sculpted detailing, it has a nice layered look.

In terms of size, Jolt is also short, above is a comparison against Siege Sideswipe.

As part of the Studio Series line, he comes with a cardboard stand, but shows off a scene from Dark of the Moon, which he never appeared in.

Thankfully, he avoids the terrible arm design of the DOTM figure, and has decent articulation, with joints for his head, shoulders, elbows, wrist hinges, waist, hips and knees.

Sadly, and this is to be expected, but all the kibble gets in the way of articulation, particularly his legs.

For weaponry, he comes with a pair of electro-whips.

These whips are long, way longer than they need to be, and because they're straight as well, they're very unwieldy.

Perhaps more annoyingly, in order to attach the whips, you need to take out the thumbs.  The thumbs can then peg onto the door kibble on the legs.  The thumbs are small pieces that's easily lost so this is not ideal.

The whips themselves don't have anywhere to store if you're not using this, which seems like a design oversight.  You can try and peg them on the door kibble on the legs, but it would have been so easy for the designer to mold in some slots on the back kibble.

The feet are also in need of ankle joints, like most of the figures in this line.  His feet aren't perfectly flat, so he tends to be wobbly and needs adjustment.

This is a flawed robot mode, with the only saving grace being that this is the most screen accurate figure yet...

OVERALL:

Jolt is not a great figure.  The vehicle mode is perfect, it's the robot mode that needs improvement.  This feels like an early design that needs further refinement (a trend for toys of this character).  The annoying transformation that's overly reliant on panels, and the absurd amount of kibble in robot mode lets it down.

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Alita: Battle Angel (2019)

Alita:  Battle Angel is based upon a manga series, which is a cause for concern as Hollywood adaptations don't have a good track record.  The good news is that Alita:  Battle Angel is a solid film, even if you have no idea about the source material.  It takes place in the future where a war had ravaged the planet, and what's left is a city in the sky known as Zalem, and the city below it.  The people living in the city below makes due, and no one ever goes up to Zalem although a few dream of doing so.  Alita was rescued from the scrapyard and given a cyborg body but had lost her memories.  The bulk of the plot has her interacting with Hugo, a boy she met (and given that he's the love interest, is quite weak), and just learning about this world.  Considering it was only given two hours, the film does a great job at world building.  By the end of it, you feel that you are familiar with a lot of its elements and workings.  The flipside is that there isn't a clear objective for Alita.  There is so much in its story that it simply cannot fit it all inside the film, which leaves the ending somewhat lacking.  There is an absolutely reliance on CGI given that a lot of the characters are cyborgs, but there are some excellent action sequences that is a thrill given the fast pace.  Yes, the bigger eyes on Alita is distracting (and weird considering no one else has it) but you'll get used to it.  Overall, Alita:  Battle Angel is a solid film that does a lot of things right.