Star Wars The Black Series Chirrut Imwe review
Chirrut Imwe basically had no chance of not being one of the standouts in Rogue One: A Star Wars Story for me. I was sold the second it was announced Donnie Yen was cast. And he was just as cool in the film as the Zen-like Force follower despite not being a Jedi.
I’ve been anxiously awaiting getting all the Rogue One crew into my Black Series collection, but the price hike to $22.99 prompted me to hold out until some decent sales arrived. With the holiday season, I was finally able to nab all the crew for impressively lower prices. Let’s see if the Force is one with this Black Series figure of Chirrut.
Packaging: I appreciate that the Black Series uses a different accent color for each film/series. Rogue One has a duck egg blue shade. Chirrut is No. 4 in the Rogue One lineup. The mural image on the side is terrific as always featuring a stern Chirrut ready for battle.
Chirrut’s bio goes with the same spoiler-free approach of a number of movie figures simply providing a basic background without the larger context of his fate in Rogue One.
That’s fine in this case although I wouldn’t mind a bit more connecting him to the other characters.
Likeness: Chirrut is a warrior monk presenting Hasbro with a unique challenge in how to best approach his figure. Ultimately, they decided on a hybrid of a plastic, sculpted top and cloth below the waist to best simulate his flowing robes. His chest strap/belt device provides a natural break point, so it doesn’t look bad.
The sculpted portion of the outfit looks great. His right sleeve hangs naturally like fabric while his left arm has a wrap and a wrist guard for aiming his Light Bow.
I love the head sculpt as there’s no mistaking this is Donnie Yen although the hairline is a smidge too far back. The expression is terrific too as it conveys a lot with a neutral expression.
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Paint: A There’s no significant issues with Chirrut’s paintjob. That’s not much of a concern normally with the Black Series figures in general and it’s more of an exception when a figure has sloppy paint.
The face printing allowed for some subtle detail like the light blue eyes and faint facial hair. I thought the off-white shade of his chest strap would be tricky, but it received enough paint applications that there’s no bleed through or overly caked on paint.
In some images, it looks like Chirrut’s robe is dark blue with some black in the left sleeve, but in various figures from different lines it’s black so I suppose that’s the intended color.
Scale: Chirrut isn’t the tallest of the Rogue One crew as he should stand about half a head taller than Jyn Erso and shorter than Cassian and K-2S0.
Articulation: Chirrut needs to be able to move smoothly as he’s the most hands-on of the Rogue One fighters. While he’s not a Jedi, he uses his staff in a similar fashion to a lightsaber and moves with the grace of one trained in the ways of The Force.
This is why the cloth lower half was the right way to go with the figure as a plastic section would have greatly restricted his movement. Hasbro doesn’t believe in double-jointed elbows with this line for some reason.
This is an older mold, so he doesn’t have the same range of motion thanks to the deeper single joint cuts. His right wrist has up and down movement allowing for more dynamic staff holding poses.
Chirrut Imwe has:
- neck
- ball-jointed shoulders
- elbow (with swivel)
- wrist
- wrist hinge
- torso
- hips
- thighs
- knees (double jointed)
- ankles
Accessories: Chirrut Imwe comes with his essential two accessories.
The first is his walking staff. Hasbro didn’t cheap out on it as it’s got some stellar detail and sculpted like an actual piece of wood with thicker and slender parts with the pattern changing throughout. The metallic mid-section and end point give it a little something extra.
His other accessory is the Lightbow he used to take out TIE Fighters. It’s actually functional as the bow extensions fold in and out and the barrel rotates. I’m always impressed with the level of detail the Black Series team packs into the weapons and how closely they match the movies and shows.
The Lightbow also features an exceptional amount of paint detail. It’s got a metallic gold and a flat brown accentuating the black and silver base. There’s one downside in that it lacks a strap for Chirrut to actually rest it over his shoulder as he had it during the movie.
Worth it? I bet I could wait out these figures once Hasbro started raising the prices of the Black Series. That gamble paid off as I was able to get him for $15.
He’s been even cheaper than that over the last few weeks if you catch the right time frame. At any point under $20 he’s a great value. Right now, he’s up at Amazon for $17, which definitely isn’t a bad price.
Rating: 8.5 out of 10
The older body holds Chirrut down a bit in terms of articulation. I still like the figure thanks to all the solid detailing and the much-improved head sculpt.
Where to get it? All of the Rogue One figures are going to be hard to find at retail save for GameStop. Chirrut is still available at Amazon.
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