Aayla Secura - Unleashed

Beautiful, graceful, powerful. Aayla Secura displays the innate elegance and charm of the Twi'lek species even as she wields her lightsaber in battle. She is a striking figure with cerulean blue skin, distinctive head tentacles – and the focused intensity of a lightsaber blade. She stands unyielding in the face of attack, a shimmering promise of strength and defiance to all who confront her in combat. Beneath her captivating appearance and calm exterior roils a dark past, in which her memory as a Jedi Knight was ripped from her and she was deluded into joining the dark side. That time of torment and confusion is behind her, but it has left its mark on her, deep inside, and comes to the surface unexpectedly when memories of past betrayal flash quickly in her eyes as she gazes on her enemy, ready to fight to her last breath for the sake of peace.

It would make complete sense that the perfect line in which to accentuate the beautiful female form of the most popular female Star Wars characters would be Star Wars: Unleashed. Hasbro respectfully didn’t just exaggerate the bosoms and buttocks of these fit and athletic heroes and villains, they captured their raw intensity just as well as any other male in the line. Females play an equally important role, but when it comes to Aayla Secura, let’s just say she has a slight advantage. Born out of an Expanded Universe section of the Star Wars saga, Aayla Secura was such a powerful character that George Lucas decided that she had to appear in Attack Of The Clones…. and she did much to the happiness of her fans across the globe. The attractive Twi’lek Jedi Master didn’t have much screen time in the film, in fact most would consider her role more of a cameo appearance. So you’ll have to catch her in full action in the many Expanded Universe sources in which she appeared. Making her first appearance in Star Wars: Republic in 2000, she is one of the fastest EU characters to gain universal popularity with the more mainstream fans. And we’re thrilled that Hasbro acknowledges her in the toy line in multiple ways as well.

We must note that for the Unleashed Aayla Secura that her likeness is not entirely perfect. She of course looks quite a bit like the onscreen character, but her actual likeness needs a bit more tweaking. That being said, her silhouette is beautiful. Hasbro did a phenomenal job sculpting her. She has been tooled in a very action-packed pose. Both arms are outstretched behind her as is her right leg. Her left leg is firmly planted on some Geonosis terrain, most likely within the Geonosian arena. Her belt straps have been elongated in an exaggerated way to give the appearance of fluid motion. And in her right hand she is holding the hilt to her lightsaber which comes with an alternate lightsaber blade attachment to give the collector a few more options. She may appear delicate to you at first as evidenced by her arms and pretty facial features, but then you see the musculature and athletic propensity she possesses throughout her frame and realize just how powerful of a Jedi Master she is. She is curvy where it counts too, but don’t misinterpret that to mean she has any problem areas. She doesn’t Her sculpt is pure perfection and we’re thrilled with the job Hasbro has done with her.

The only details that might outweigh her sculpt are her paint operations. Hasbro did a splendid job at capturing the spirit of Aayla Secura perfectly with the proper use of color and decorative finer details (like the specks on her lekku for example). The tight leather costume she is wearing has been given a gorgeous sheen to it while providing varying layers of color. You’ll find shades of darker brown and medium brown throughout her costume. Her skin tone and brown outfit nicely contrast against the reddish brown terrain of the Geonosis base on which she stands. It’s quite reminiscent of 2003’s SW [S - P2] Aayla Secura (Jedi Knight) (’03 #11) figure from the Star Wars “Saga” line. Yet, the Unleashed figure truly possesses its own personality wonderfully too. If we had to find fault with this figure, we’d have to comment that we’re not entirely crazy with the “pink” shadowing Hasbro used to frame the texture of the facial features as well as the contour of her skin (especially in the hands). The onscreen character didn’t have this and the Unleashed figure certainly didn’t need it either. But overall, we’re quite pleased with the final outcome of Aayla Secura. She is a Star Wars lady, and we all have soft spots for them, don’t we?

As a bonus feature to this review, we have provided the original artwork created for this Star Wars: Unleashed figure. Click the thumbnail to the left to see the amazing illustration.