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The Bandai Namco Anime Heroes figures are ones you basically get when you want some sort of memorabilia based on an anime character, but are willing to compromise when it comes to things like accessories, build quality, pose possibilities, and 100% accuracy. They’ll be serviceable, but you get what you pay for. So like instead of getting the $94 SH Figuarts One Piece Gear 5 Monkey D Luffy with multiple face plates, arm and hand parts, and an effect part, the Anime Heroes figure is just the character with some bendy effects for $19.99 to $23.99. It’s fine, but not as striking and has issues when it comes to posing.
Right out the box, you just get Luffy in his Gear 5 form with this Anime Heroes One Piece figure. There are no extra hand parts. You have no extra effects to create the illusion of certain attacks. So you can’t replicate Gum-Gum Bajrang Gun by popping on a huge fist or get two, huge, flat hands for a Gum-Gum Dawn Cymbal clap. While the SH Figuarts option included a part to recreate Gum-Gum Lightning, that’s not happening here. There are no face plates either, so Luffy has a perpetual wide grin. Which works, since that’s a typical expression for this form.
The paint job is quite good for a budget figure, though admittedly there aren’t too many parts with much nuance and there tend to be solid blocks of color for things like his coat, scarf, hair, pants, and belt. The scar on his chest is handled well. His face is also painted crisply with no paint overlapping from his teeth and his eyes and left scar being well-defined.
There are a few accents that help provide a little extra definition. His hair is also made of same rubbery material as the scarf, to give it some fun texture. There’s a soft rubber Straw Hat affixed around his neck and on his back. That can’t be removed, though it is loose around his neck. He also has a bendable cloud “scarf” around his neck that feels flexible. This can be removed, but there are two obvious gaps where it slotted into place and it will be a pain to reattach if you do so. Like I didn’t even intentionally remove one side in an attempt to see if I could slip the hat off over his head! It came loose on its own, and now it refuses to stay in the slot if I reattach it. Now that I covered the figure, I’m tempted to glue it into place.
The other issue with this Anime Heroes One Piece figure is that it is incredibly difficult to pose Gear 5 Luffy for a number of reasons. One is that there are rubberized arms for the whole arm and from his knees to his feet. While you can bend them to get an approximation of some of the stances and poses from this form, they will not hold. Worse, I found that while fresh-out-of-the-box Anime Heroes Gear 5 Luffy could stand on his own without support, he lost that ability the second I did try to adjust the positioning. Even though it was easy to get the hips in the right position again since those use traditional joints, the rubberized parts weren’t having it. It’s even why I had to actually hold him for some of the photos, as the other stands I own from different figures just didn’t work with him.) And, because his arms are covered with a flexible plastic for his sleeves and don’t seem to have shoulder joints, I couldn’t do much when it came to posing his upper body. Where there are more traditional joints, such as his neck, waist, hips, wrists, and ankles, he’s fine. He’ll hold a pose there. It’s just everywhere else.
I think I liked the Anime Heroes One Piece figure of Gear 5 Luffy best when it was fresh out of the box. The right side of his cloud scarf wasn’t taunting me by refusing to stay in its slot. He could still stand on his own. The face paint and general paint job isn’t bad and it’s an okay budget figure as long as you leave it alone. The downside is the second you start posing it, you might find it difficult to get him to stand on his own again or fine the nature of the materials means he won’t be as expressive as the SH Figuarts version.
The Anime Heroes One Piece Gear 5 Luffy figure is available now. Viz Media handles the manga outside Japan, the anime is on services like Crunchyroll and Netflix, the first two live action seasons are on Netflix, Lego One Piece will be on Netflix in September 2026, and a new animated adaptation called The One Piece is heading to Netflix in 2027 as well.
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