Ah, Zenos - the face of villainy in FFXIV, despite being only one of many villains. Picked as XIV rep for Dissidia NT, Zenos first appeared within XIV proper as the main antagonist of the second expansion, Stormblood (2017), later reappearing in Stormblood and Shadowbringers (2019) patches before making a proper encore in Endwalker (2021).
Originally packaged for the Collector's Edition of Stormblood, which came with a special art box (a gold box with wraparound art by Yoshitaka Amano in red), a Zenos figure, an art book, a reusable sticker and cloth world map of the world of Hydaelyn, as well as some digital in-game items (FFV's Syldra as a mount, FFV's Bartz as a minion, and FFV's Chicken Knife as a glamour weapon for the Red Mage class).
The statue is static, standing on a plastic base around 1cm tall, with the figure itself standing approximately 18cm tall (and wide, when measured from sword-tip to sheath-tip).
Stormblood box art.
He's a pretty sturdy figure, with only the helmet spikes feeling like they're the weakest part of the whole sculpt and liable to break if you put too much force on them. So we won't be doing that. The plastic is hard, but with some give - you can wiggle the sword a little, or jab yourself in the hand several times turning him for photos - though again, I'd advise against putting too much pressure on it. Specifically, Zenos wields the ame-no-habakiri, a katana stolen from a Spoken tribe and said to belong to the primal Susano'o.
The real ame-no-habakiri comes from Japanese mythology and is currently enshrined at Isonokami Shrine after the kami Susano'o-no-Mikoto slew the eight-headed serpent Orochi with it.
The sword's blade features a nice pattern, and a gorgeous copper colour. The sheath in-game rotates and bears three swords at a time - the other two swords are known only as Storm and Swell. Why does a man need three swords on the battlefield, you might ask yourself? To which I ask: why not?
Close-ups of the back and front. I love the movement the hair has at the back, and the colours of the sash and bustle. You can see here the scabbard doesn't have holes for anything else to be inserted, and only one additional sword is present in the scabbard. Wonder what happened to the third?