Star Wars The Black Series Kanan Jarrus figure review
I’m still rolling through my Star Wars Rebels figures from the Star Wars The Black Series line. I’d waited a while to get to the elder Jedi/co-lead Kanan Jarrus, one of the more intriguing members of the Jedi we were introduced to on TV. In my binge through Rebels, Kanan quickly became one of my favorite Star Wars characters and he had one of the best character arcs in the entire saga. Let’s see how his original appearance figure turned out.
Packaging: If there’s a connection to a character and the accent color, I’m going to assume the purple is a tribute to Sabine Wren since she constantly changed up her hair color.
The bios are written in a sense to be open-minded and not reveal too much for people unaware of character’s story arcs and/or fate.
Likeness: This is Kanan in his season 1-2 attire — yes, I definitely want the final seasons blinded and beared look as well. Hasbro puts an impressive level of detail into these figures and it’s especially noticeable with characters that have different costume elements.
Kanan has a ton of elements with his outfit from the shoulder pad on the right shoulder, nehru collar, gauntlet on his right shoulder, the double strap holster, kneepads and high boots.
I didn’t appreciate how intricate his outfit was from the cartoon, but there’s a lot to his costume. I’m actually curious to see how Hot Toys would handle Kanan and the rest of the Ghost crew as well.
I love the head sculpt. It’s always hard to properly sculpt a figure from a cartoon or a comic yet Hasbro keeps doing an amazing job on this front. Kanan might be the best translation yet. His sculpt conveys his inner strength and determination, fitting for the Ghost’s co-leader.
Paint: This is Hasbro’s second crack at Kanan in this attire with the face printing for the paint job. The result is a much stronger paintjob on the head sculpt that looks more realistic and less like one in need of a customizer to bring out all the details.
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Scale: Kanan should be the tallest of the Phoenix Squadron save for Zeb. Hasbro has been very consistent with the scaling of the Rebels and Kana is ideally scaled to the others.
Articulation: Kanan still uses the older articulation model although his basic set up is better than most.
It’s easier to talk about what’s lacking. He needs better range in the elbow and torso. It’s really close though.
Kanan’s shoulder pad restricts his right arm’s up and out movement, but he can raise it for an overhead lightsaber strike without any problems. As I have some lines with loose joints where it matters, Kanan has tight joints with his knees and shoulders.
Kanan Jarrus has:
- neck
- ball-jointed shoulders
- elbow
- wrist
- wrist hinge
- torso
- hips
- thighs
- knees (double jointed)
- ankles
Accessories: I wouldn’t mind having that half mask he wore even if the outfit isn’t accurate for that look beyond the initial blinding episode.
Kanan does come with his lightsaber. I always like seeing the details of the various Jedi lightsabers and Hasbro doesn’t disappoint. The blade is a strong shade of blue — a noticeable improvement over earlier faint coloring for the saber.
Finally, he comes with a blaster. There’s some silver wash over it to give it more of a worn look as well. It fits in the holster, but the saber hilt does not have anywhere to latch onto his belt.
Worth it? I got Kanan for $20. I started getting interested in the Black Series again when Hasbro originally introduced these characters in the line, but they quickly got out of my price range. That said, I’m perfectly happy just paying $20 for him.
Rating: 9.5 out of 10
I’m not gonna ding Hasbro too much for not upgrading the articulation. Hopefully Seasons 3-4 Kanan does sport that improvement, but this is a really fun figure and one of my favorites of the Rebels subset line.
Where to get it? I still haven’t seen any of the Rebels figures in stores including GameStop, but they’re not hard to track down online. Amazon has him in stock and Entertainment Earth has him up for pre-order with a January release.