When I saw that McFarlane would be coming out with a second series of LOST
figures in July of last year, I was excited. Though it was a bit of a
let-down to discover that series two included only four figures and no
diorama, I was still tickled to have the chance to own four terrific
characters. One of these was Jin, whose character I’ve grown to like
more and more since the beginning of the series, when he didn’t make
such a great first impression. He went from distant and domineering to
warm and gentle, making it very easy to understand how his wife Sun fell
in love with him in the first place. Their relationship has been full
of complications, but it’s remained one of the most positive examples on
television of a marriage enduring through a variety of pitfalls.
Sun and Jin are so much a part of one another that it almost seems they
might have been released as a pair with an extra-large landscape and a
scene capturing a moment of tenderness between them. Instead, Sun’s
figure is a snapshot of defiance against her husband, while Jin is
caught in an instant of extreme distress. On the one hand, his figure is
probably the most action-packed of ten that have been released thus
far, but it doesn’t seem quite right to immortalize Jin as a man in
bondage, restrained not only by the handcuff that remains as a reminder
of his unfortunate confrontation with Michael early in the series but,
more substantially, by the stick and ropes used by the paranoid
survivors of the tail section.
Jin’s head is lowered, but if
you look at his face, his mouth is open in a scream of petrified
warning, while his cheek bears a bloody scar. There are three small
holes in his brown pants, and his off-white shirt is torn and dirty.
Jin’s been through a really tough time, and it’s not over yet. Like Sun,
Jin has a sandy base, though his is rockier than hers. Still, the bases
could almost match up, but it would be hard to make a romantic moment
with him in such an unpleasant situation. One possibility: if you ignore
his face and binding and gaze at him from a distance, Jin looks like
he’s figure skating, so you could remove both figures from their bases
and put them on a mirror, perhaps surrounded with bits of cotton for
snow. Instant Olympians!
If I had to point to a favorite Jin
moment early in the series, I think I would have to go with his role in
the birth of Aaron, during which he manages to be very helpful despite
the language barrier. His emotion as Claire delivers her son, meanwhile,
prefigures his exhilaration at learning that he will be a father. It
might have been nice if one of Jin’s quotes could have reflected that,
but the only thing that would have been remotely quotable, I suppose,
would have been “Jack. Doctor.” Out of context, that wouldn’t have made
much sense, but it would’ve been about as good as “Bahlie!”, which is
Korean for “Hurry!”, but I can’t for the life of me recall when he said
it.
Jin actually has more sound clips than any other character
thus far, and the others are more memorable, particularly “Others!
Others! Others! Others!”, which is the frenzied warning to Michael and
Sawyer that accompanies his mad dash away from the Tailies, though if
you don’t know what he’s supposed to be saying, it sounds quite a lot
like a violent sneezing attack. Also included are “I… love… you,” spoken
to Sun and even more romantic than usual under the circumstances; “I
can't talk to anyone. I can't understand them. I need you, Sun,” which
is in Korean; and my favorite, the accentless “Everything is going to
change,” from Hurley’s trippy dream in Everybody Hates Hugo. The
voice box is at the bottom of the base and takes two AAA batteries, and
it’s activated by pressing a large rock toward the front of the base.
For some reason, when I press the rock, it doesn’t always seem to catch;
sometimes it takes two or three tries before I get the sound clip.
Aside from this, however, the base is quite satisfactory, and because
Jin only has one shoe attached to it, he fits into his constraint much
more readily than most of the other figures do.
Finally,
there’s the fun prop of two pages from Sun’s translation book that show
Jin how to say “aft,” “stern,” “wind,” “current,” “hurry,” “help,”
“ship,” “crash,” “island,” “you are welcome,” “survivors,” “flare,”
“conserve,” “danger,” “silence” and “sleep.” This provides interesting
insight into Sun’s psyche, as it shows what words she thinks will be
important, and it’s very cool-looking, with several lines of Korean
characters. Though I really like this particular prop, I find it a
little disappointing that all of the season two props are essentially
two-dimensional products: two slides, a boarding pass sleeve, a letter
and two pages from a translation book. What’s more, because there is no
backdrop to the series two figures, there’s no good place to keep these
pages. I’ve settled on sticking mine in a notebook between protective
sleeves, where I know I won’t lose them.
Jin has arrived at a
very interesting place on the show, and I’m anxious to see where the
rest of the season will take him when we get back to new episodes in a
month. Until then, I have this figure to tide me over. Long live Jin!
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