Aayla Secura - TCW [R] - Basic (CW40)

Jedi General Aayla Secura crash-lands on a planet where a peaceful Lurmen village is threatened by Separatist forces. The athletic and graceful Twi'lek tries to find a way to help the villagers that does not require them to abandon their pacifist beliefs.

Aayla Secura has had quite an impressive run in the Star Wars universe and it all started with her appearance in comic books in the Expanded Universe. George Lucas liked her character so much that he decided to include her in Episode II. Providing a platform for many more fans to appreciate her character, she instantly gained a whole new group of adoring fans. We find it particularly interesting that she has come full circle. For she is now a main character in the popular The Clone Wars television show. While The Clone Wars episodes are really a whole new multimedia event and not exactly the EU, they are certainly stories outside and in between the prequels. As a character that has athletic prowess in Episode II and an unseemly and sympathetic demise in Episode III, Aayla Secura has gripped the hearts of fans everywhere. Sexy and attractive, she is a character that is loved as much for her look as her role as a Jedi Knight. And many are thrilled to see her in action again. Hasbro reintroduces her into the basic line again in animated form and let us state right away that she exceeds our expectations. Never have we been more impressed with a female The Clone Wars action figure since Luminara Unduli (CW30). (Gee, could it be because we love female Jedi?) But Aayla Secura should secure a place in your collection because she is one brilliant action figure.

The figure has been designed so well that it rivals the realistic versions of her we have already received. (So Hasbro has a lot of work to do before they update the 2005 Revenge Of The Sith figure.) Lean and delicate, her athletic body is perfectly proportioned to the very last detail and her portrait looks pretty much exactly like her appearance in the television show. As a result, we are thrilled to add this figure to our collections. Aayla Secura comes to us with a whopping 14 points of articulation. This is no small feat since she has extraordinarily thin limbs as well as a thin body. All the joints function very well and they are all tight. We actually had a bit of difficulty posing her because of her tight joints, and it’s hardly enough to consider this a flaw. Since the joints are tight, this will allow the figure to maintain its stability over time. While it is evident that the action figure was designed from animated source materials, her skin color is a very brilliant blue and it looks just perfect. Sometimes the realistic interpretations seem to have a washed out blue color used. Those figures always looked good, but the skin did look too light in comparison. Her headtresses are long and thin and complement her very well toned body quite well. Aayla Secura has a great center of gravity and she can be posed in a variety of ways without falling over despite her having tiny feet and extremely thin legs. The nice thing about the animated Aayla Secura action figure is that she doesn't vary much from the realistic style. Instantly recognizable as Aayla, we love it when we get figures that are just animated interpretations of the character we seen in the films. The same is true for this figure and is perhaps part of the reason why we love this one so much.

Aayla Secura also has been paired with quite a bit of accessories as well. She comes with her signature blue lightsaber. But she also comes with a Mandalorian-styled backpack in addition to a removable chest plate with a separating breathing mask and goggles. While we prefer to pose Aayla without all of these extra pieces, we must admit that they look spectacular on her just for how incredibly well they were engineered for her body. The pieces are so tiny yet their functionality impresses us in great ways. For example, the extremely tiny goggles hug her face (very snuggly) and lock into place at the horns on both sides of her face. Likewise, the chest plate that lies on top of her shoulders has a little notch in it where the breathing mask attaches and it presses up against her face beautifully. Simply put, we are thoroughly impressed with how well the final product came out. If only Hasbro would apply this micro-manages design to their realistic figures (more often), we would be a very happy group of collectors. They have decided to focus their efforts on Aayla Secura which is more than fine with us. We love her and we believe you will too. If you're not a fan of The Clone Wars, we still think you will enjoy this figure if you just consider her an animated version of the Episode II/III figure (which is what she exactly is). She is a great action figure and we hope Hasbro continues to make the "familiar" characters from The Clone Wars in this fashion going forward. Aayla is absolutely a collector-focused figure and she was designed with you in mind folks!