EmencyBlazer Works

NAME: Portgas D. Ace
SERIES: One Piece
SCALE/CREATOR: 1/8, by MegaHouse
RELEASE DATE: November 2007

Here we have the last member of my manly little One Piece trio: Portgas D. Ace! After seeing two Mugiwara Pirates, I’m sure you were expecting the third to be Luffy. Well…surprise!

Remove his hat and fire and he almost looks naked.

While Sanji is my favorite member of Luffy’s crew, Ace is my favorite out of the whole series. Unlike his darling younger brother Luffy, Ace is a relatively sane and intelligent individual. Luffy looks scrawny and lanky most of the time, but when he unbuttons his shirt, he’s suddenly muscular and dangerous looking. Ace is buff all the time and isn’t afraid to travel the world shirtless.

The mark of the Shirohige Pirates. Also, check out those back muscles!

Normally I’m not into muscular men, preferring the slender lads frequently found in shoujo manga and anime. But I can’t deny that Ace is a sexy beast who could probably punch a hole through a mountain. I don’t know if his muscles are anatomically correct, but at least they look good. And they certainly add a lot of oomph to what would’ve otherwise been a plain half-naked figure.

This is why you need to be wary of which tattoo parlor you go to.

Unlike most One Piece figures, I believe Ace was only released once. While his quality is pretty good, I’m once again disappointed by the way the clothes turned out. His skin has shading. Lots of shading. His clothes? None. At least Sanji and Zoro had shading on their shirts, but Ace doesn’t have a shirt! So he’s stuck with really flat looking clothes…but at least he’s not wearing much.

Ace was kind enough to let me borrow his flame for this shot.

Ace’s hat, necklace and fire are all removable. The problem here lies with the fire: While it’s nice it doesn’t use a peg to stay in place (because that means Ace would have a gaping hole in his arm), it could at least wrap entirely around his arm. It only wraps halfway around, so if you move Ace around there’s a good chance it’ll fall off. It’s not a big deal. Just a minor annoyance.

Real men wear shoes! Lose the flip flops, Luffy.

Ace comes on a bright orange base featuring his name, and the name and Jolly Roger of the Shirohige (Whitebeard) Pirates. My only complaint is that there’s a period after “Portgas”. Portgas.D.Ace? Is Portgas an abbreviation for something? Then again MegaHouse does choose some weird ways to spell character names sometimes.

OVERALL: 8/10

+ It’s a dude!
+ Ace has freckles. MOOOOEEEEEEE~
+ Excellent sculpt. Love those muscles.

- No shading on clothes
- Fire is easy to knock off

Male anime figures are pretty hard to find, and it’s even harder to get one of a muscular character! Ace is becoming hard to find these days so I strongly recommend you hunt him down as fast as possible if you want him in your collection.

- G.K. Sil Kamina