Sodom

For their Street Fighter line, SOTA has said that they want to make every character who's ever appeared in one of the games, that they're going to create figures of the characters who have always been overlooked before. They're living up to their promise, as evidenced by Series 1's inclusion of a definite minor character, Sodom. How minor is Sodom? So minor that he's not even technically from Street Fighter. Part of the Mad Gear gang, Sodom has been trying to reunite his former cohorts. He entered the Street Fighter tournament to crush his former adversaries and recruit new members. Sodom desperately wants to be Japanese, and has studied various Japanese customs and cultures in an attempt to fit into Japanese society. He is routinely mocked by the Japanese for too aggressively seeking to be like them. Sodom came from a Street Fighter rip-off game called Final Fight that used wrestling as its base rather than martial arts. He was one of the bosses in that game, but was relegated to just another playable character when he appeared in Street Fighter Alpha. Sodom's got a weird look. The samurai helmet and oni mask are definitely Japanese, but his huge shoulder pads look like something a football player would wear. His stripey socks look appropriate, and he's wearing a pair of sandals, but overall it's no wonder that the Japanese make fun of the poor guy. The Street Fighter line is done Marvel Legends style, with tons of articulation allowing for almost any pose you can imagine. Sodom moves at the toes, ankles, knees, thighs, hips, waist, torso, shoulders, elbows, wrists and neck. The detailing Will Harbottle put in the sculpt is great - for instance, take a look at the bottoms of his sandals. Where many figures would just be bare and smooth, SOTA sculpted the grain of his wooden footwear. The attention to detail doesn't stop there, either. The wraps around his stomach look like real cloth, the giant wrinkles caused by his shoulder pads are realistic, and his hat could pass for woven straw. Excellent stuff! Sodom's got a few accessories. First is a pair of sais that he can hold in his fists. 2¾" long, the weapons have a white string dangling off the end. In Final Fight, he carried katana, but those had changed by the time he joined the other street fighters. To portray his pre-fight appearance, Sodom also includes a straw hat, a striped cape and an alternate left hand holding a fan. How dainty! The crescent crest on his helmet is removable, allowing you to plug the hat in place. SOTA could have easily loaded the first series of their Street Fighter line with the big popular characters, and for the most part, they did; but by giving us Sodom, they've showed that they're serious about mining the depths of Street Fighter history. Ryu | Chun-Li | Sodom | Sagat | M. Bison -- 11/17/04

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