REVIEW: DC Superhero Girls Katana Action Figure

I did not think I'd be finding this girl anytime soon! She only just released and a lot of my stores are loaded with the first figures. Walmart has literally dozens of figures and not one Katana among them. However, I popped into Toys R Us last night and saw not one but THREE hanging on the shelf pegs. And the whole line was 20% off! I bought one for me and one for a holiday gift.

Katana is one of only two pre-holiday new character additions to the DCSG line. There are several new dolls that come with playsets or mission gear and action feature figures, but Katana is the only new character in the regular 6" action figure line and Starfire is the only new 12" doll. Both these new girls were debuted at SDCC back in July.

Katana was easy to debox. The DCSG figures are very easy to open. They're not strapped down with plastic ties or anything. Her sword is curved from the packaging, but that happens a lot with action figure swords, so I'm not shocked. 

The paint job is something you want to watch on these figures. The dolls have great facepaint, but the action figures tend to have more variation. My Katana has a little black blob of paint on her red hair streak, but she had the best mask of the three I saw. But none of them are what I'd call bad by any means. They're just different from each other. 

Katana's white mask is painted on, but there is also a thin line at the bottom of the mask painted to look like a shadow on her face. The line is a light tan color and its width varies from figure to figure. I chose the figure with the thinnest line. The other two were both a little bit thicker. The tan line actually goes onto the white paint in one spot on my figure, but it's on the side and I chose the figure that looked the best from the front. If you want a perfect one, you might be hunting for quite awhile! 

Katana's hair is swept back on the right side and you can see that ear, but not the other. 

The figure's armor is nicely done. That was actually one thing I disliked about the SDCC exclusive doll. Her armor doesn't hold up very well to moving the doll's arms. Not a problem with this figure, because everything is molded on. 

The range of motion on Katana is somewhat limited, which is to be expected from this type of figure. She can turn her head, but only slightly, because her long hair gets in the way. She cannot sit down and her legs have barely any range aside from the knee joint. It's almost pointless to even have a knee joint on her, because her plastic skirt makes it so she can barely move her thighs. She has some slight pose variation with the jointed knees, but I would have preferred articulation at the waist instead. 

She makes up for this lack of leg movement by having decent arm articulation at the wrists, elbows and shoulders. She can hold her sword in either hand or even both. She can also hold the shuriken that came with the SDCC doll, so they can finally be of use! 

I don't have many of the other DCSG figures, because I prefer the dolls, but I do have Harley and Ivy, so I took a picture of all three. Katana is shorter than both girls, which is a little odd. Harley looks particularly huge next to her! 

I do highly recommend the Katana figure, because she can do several things the doll has trouble with. Mainly, hold her weapons. I'm hoping they fix both the armor and weapon-holding issues when they release the regular 12" Katana doll in 2017, but even if they don't, at least I have one version of Katana that can swing her sword with pride. 

I don't think she's for sale anywhere online yet, except for ebay, but check your Toys R Us stores. That's where I've heard of most people finding her.

PHOTO CREDITS: All mine.