DragonBall Evolve Series 5 review Walmart Exclusive SS Gohan

SS Gohan

First, let me recommend that you inspect the figure (if there are multiple at the store) to find a good one. I noticed around half of these had uneven skin paint around the edge of his purple shirt. To be specific, the difference between skin and purple was not crisp on a few of the ones I saw.

While in the package, SS Gohan doesn't look too special or unique. He looks a lot like previous Goku releases. But once I removed him from the package, I noticed a lot of differences and improvements. Let's first look at him overall:






I'm sure some of you noticed that his feet/shoes look great. Unlike the Figuarts Gohan figures, the sculptor of the Evolve SS Gohan didn't make Gohan's shoes look like they belonged to Mickey Mouse (like some of the artwork for the movie supports...). Now, I don't know your feelings on this, but I absolutely love the consistency of the Evolve figures. Unposed, he looks exactly like I'd like him to look. He looks like previous Evolve figures, and that is a GREAT thing. But let's look at the differences and improvements...!







The neck is like nothing I have seen on previous Evolve figures (or... at least like nothing I remember). It has areas cut out so that SS Gohan can raise and lower his head far more than typical. It's a really incredible idea and makes me wonder if older figures can be customized for similar results, or if it requires a special ball joint in the torso.

For the other differences, I want to start by comparing him to SS Goku. Big fans of the series will immediately notice that SS Gohan is a little bit shorter than SS Goku, which is slightly wrong for perfect scaling. Gohan, at least in Buu Saga, which was very consistent, was always slightly taller than his father. But this is a minor negative, and it's really not a big deal. For all I know, that difference doesn't exist in DB Super.





You'll notice that SS Gohan's neck sculpt is a bit beefier than SS Goku's rather thin neck. Looking at the shoulders, you'll notice that the awkward looking rings and large gaps are completely gone. Gohan has large biceps and more natural looking forearms than Goku. The abdomen is much better fitting in the chest than ever before. This change improves the overall look of Gohan, but limits his flexibility in the abdomen a lot. The leg design is largely the same, but it's impossible to not point out Gohan's biggest negative aspect--the top of his thighs are flared out way beyond what they should look like. And the flares do not seem to offer any additional flexibility, they are just flared for no particular reason. And finally, the ankle articulation is largely the same, and Gohan has very good range of motion in them.

While the revised shoulders improve the overall look of the Gohan figure, when fully extended outward, the shirt sleeves don't look as natural as Goku's.



This cannot be conveyed in pictures, but there's also a major quality improvement that a lot of collectors, parents, and children who play with these figures will care a lot about. The arms, legs, head, etc. do not come off as easily as previous Evolve figures. In fact, I'm not sure if the limbs can be removed without using boiling water or a hair dryer now. This will surely make a lot of parents happy. The negative reviews on Amazon for previous waves of Evolve figures are something that have always consistently complained about the figures "falling apart" (though I'd say "being possible to easily pull apart" would be more accurate). Like I mentioned, none of the limbs on my SS Gohan came off, and in fact, while trying to pull off one of his legs, I was afraid to pull any harder, because it wasn't coming off at all. This improvement hinders very easy customs, but in all honesty, the level of ease with pulling previous waves of these figures apart has been too easy, and surely a choking hazard for pets and babies in households with these figures.

The paint application on my figure is perfect. All the colors look great and everything that is supposed to be painted is painted. His hair doesn't match the same yellow as SS Goku's hair, but I don't see that as a problem. It's still an amazing metallic yellow that looks fantastic.

He is very poseable/posable and he has really nice joints. The only limitation is how little his abdomen can crunch, but considering how good it fits, I think it's a great tradeoff.