A lot of people say 'Hiya is better for accuracy, but SHMA is better for articulation.' But is that really true?
I think that starting in 2025, Hiya's articulation has completely surpassed SHMA for the same designs. The main reason for this is side-to-side rotation.
SHMA tends to focus almost exclusively on up-and-down movement. Both the neck and waist move up and down, but hardly move side to side. Hiya, on the other hand, pays a lot of attention to rotational articulation. Especially from their 1991, even with a single-segmented waist, it maintains a very natural silhouette.
(I excluded the comparison between Hiya 1991 and SHMA 1989 here due to X's photo upload limit.)
The first photo shows the neck turning to look sideways. The Hiya 1999 neck can rotate 360 degrees, but I turned it just enough to form a natural curve. The reason I didn't over-extend the SHMA 2000 neck is the same—it exposes a black hole-like gap. As you can see, Hiya can look sideways naturally, whereas SHMA totally can't move.
Photo 2 shows the waist rotation. Hiya rotates 360 degrees, whereas SHMA freeze. On top of that, Hiya doesn't just rotate—it maintains an extremely natural silhouette and allows for an additional side-to-side tilt while rotated. To achieve this engineering, Hiya used several clever solutions, such as making the largest dorsal fin on the 1999 extend from the chest piece. SHMA 2000 also rotates 360 degrees, but tilting it naturally during rotation is difficult, resulting in an unnatural posture.
Photos 3 and 4 show the actual differences in posing made possible by these articulation ranges. This is the result of trying my absolute best to achieve the exact same pose on both. Hiya looks natural and dynamic, while SHMA can't even look back or ends up in an awkward stance.
Hiya gives you a lot of posing freedom: punching, tail-swiping, looking around, or turning around entirely.
On the other hand, SHMA gives very little freedom—mostly just crouching or looking up at the sky. At best, all you can do is spread the arms and legs to give an aggressive impression.
Sure, SHMA is slightly better at doing the splits with its legs, but that's practically useless.
However, the shoulders and tail on the SHMA 2000 are way better than Hiya's 1999. Though it's barely more useful than doing the splits.
In conclusion, for post-2025 releases, Hiya generally offers far superior articulation compared to SHMA. Claiming that 'SHMA has better articulation' is simply repeating outdated takes from Hiya's early 2019 figures, completely ignoring the real progress and improvements that have taken place.
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