What's Your Obsession

Ace and Smoker – Megahouse Portrait of Pirates Review

These One Piece figures were some of my first statues. There’s not that much to them, so I’ve decided to review more than one at a time. Plus, I’ve got a ton of these still boxed, so I can’t review them until I get more display room, these few Portrait of Pirate reviews will have to do for now!

One thing I wanted to throw out there before the rest of the review. Japanese statues like these, and especially these in particular, are heavily bootlegged. If you buy from a non-reliable merchant, or most in Hong Kong, you can expect to get something that looks much worse than what I have here for the review. In addition, they sometimes re-release these figures as “Neo”, which basically means they took the original and made some improvements. The Ace and Smoker are both originals, the Ace has been re-released with a better skin tone (I own that, but unopened) and the Smoker was re-released in his original form. Ace and Smoker were two of my favourite characters from the series, and two of my favourite One Piece statues for years.

Megahouse has an amazing ability to capture the look of anime characters. The face and body sculpts are dead on, and this holds true with the vast majority of their Portrait of Pirates line. Smoker includes some tiny cigars, which stay in his mouth, and unless you jam them in there, may get dislodged and you could lose them, so be careful. Smoker also comes with his large staff weapon. Ace comes with a large flame that easily attaches to his arm. There are no other accessories included with either of them, except the base.

Both of these, even in their original forms, featured the peg style of stand. I vastly prefer this stand on Megahouse figures over the stand that attaches to their legs (which works great with 12″ figures, not so much on these). Ace and Smoker both share one small feature that bothers me. Their hips are way forward. I understand how thrusting them a little forward is manly and all that, but man, these are way out there. It almost looks like they’re about to start some limbo moves. Properly displayed, they still look fantastic. I suppose if I had to complain about anything paint related, it’s that Ace is too tan, but it’s not a big deal.

The bases are simple, and pleasant looking. They’re fairly uniform across the whole series.

Overall, I rather like the Portrait of Pirates line. They do a great job on nailing the proper appearances, they’re very affordable (until they go out of print, I sold my extra Smoker for an absurd amount a few months ago), and if you’re a fan of the series, they’re the best collectibles you can get, aside from the really limited Japanese ones that come out from time to time.

4/5

Buying Options : If you’re really lucky, you’ll be checking this review one of the times they get reprinted and they’ll be available on HLJ. Otherwise, get ready to pay an assload for the Smoker on Ebay. The Ace on Ebay is cheaper, but watch out for bootlegs. An Amazon third party seller has Ace in stock at least.