Review: S.H. Figuarts Kamen Rider Ryuki & DragReder

After almost two weeks of having no reviews… Here’s a review of Kamen Rider Ryuki! (Yeah, I’m late to the party.)

Do note that I’ll be only talking about Figuarts Ryuki here, and may make occasional references to the figma version. I may probably do a more in-depth comparison between the figma and Figuarts rendition of this Rider when I have more free time.

   

But before I start on the review proper…. Let me rant a little… Why the heck did Tamashii Nations choose to give as a DragVisor accessory instead moulding it directly onto the figure’s hand?! Yeah, sure, when you wanna get Ryuki to hold the Drag Shields you gotta remove the handle of the DragVisor and all, but surely there must be some way to go around that right? I mean, the left fist is like a totally useless accessory since you can’t hold the Visor grip with it. What’s the point of it even!?

*Back to normal tone.*

So to mount the DragVisor onto Ryuki’s left hand, you gotta remove the socket thing on his left forearm, as well as the left fist. There’s a hole on the armour of the forearm, so you slide the handle of the Visor into one of the holding things hands and plug in the back/peg of the Visor to the forearm. Don’t get me? Never mind, when you have your own copy, it’s kinda idiot proof.

And NOW, to the review proper.

   

Packaging: As you can see, it’s a pretty huge box for a Figuarts so as to accommodate the special first release DragReder. I like how the back of the box has the broken mirror effect like from the Ryuki show. May I point out that the red letterings are in a metallic, reflective red colour, like a mirror! It’s pretty neat touch there when Tamashii Nations could have simply opted for a matte red colour, but it’s nice to see them go the extra mile even on the packaging. So, kudos there.

   

   

Figure Aesthetics: Ryuki’s very nicely sculpted under Tamashii Nations. The head sculpt looks very crisp and clean, and they even managed to work in some kind of ‘glow’ look to the eyes of Ryuki. Now, that’s good toy design. All the curves that were in the show’s suit are nicely represented on the figure as well. The DragVisor is very well moulded, and the Advent belt is moulded on, not painted on like the figma’s.

But, Ryuki seems to be made of cheap plastic when you compare it to other Figuarts. The plastic doesn’t feel as dense, and feels like some cheap China counterfeit product when you compare it to other Figuarts. If you have a S.H. Figuarts ShinkenRed, that’s the kind of plastic Ryuki feels like. I didn’t really expect such a crappy kind of plastic to be on a Rider Figuarts. I guess you have to have some form of trade off for a big shiny dragon figure to be thrown in as well in the set?

   

 

Gimmick 1: The advent deck can slide out of the belt… For what good reason? Good question, I have no idea myself! It’s kinda pointless. It seems that Tamashii Nations just included this so that they can beat the figma one in every possible way.

      

Gimmick 2: The DragVisor can slide up and down like in the show! Now that’s sweet, that way you get more show accurate poses! Let me also mention that when you open up the DragVisor, there’s a slow for you to insert the Advent Cards into as well. Nice going there Bandai!

Count the accessories: So we have a good number of accessories given by Bandai this time. We have the DragReder’s head for Ryuki to perform his Strike Vent attack. We have two arm grips for the Drag Shields. We have a pair of calm open hands, rage open hands, two sets of holding things hands, a holding card hand and a useless left fist. Why the two pairs of holding things hands? My guess is that it’s for Ryuki to hold his weapons at different angles, because the two sets of hands are moulded differently. It’s rather pointless in my opinion though.

The DragReder head is a hassle to attach onto the arm. The armour behind the head is on a ball joint. My suggestion is that you pluck out that armour on mount it on the forearm first. Then align the DragReder head to the wrist ball joint and the ball joint on the armour and plug it in. It’s way faster that way than to pluck in the entire accessory together at one go.

Besides the hand options, you get DragReder in this first release set as well. Sweet huh? I believe this is a refurnished version of the old R&M series’ DragReder, with nicer metallic painting and better sculpt. This could have worked very well as an exclusive, so I was kinda surprised that Tamashii Nations decided to throw it in together as a set. Oh yeah, if you were wondering why Ryuki doesn’t have any weapons, that’s because they are on DragReder! XD

There’s also a special Ryuki stand included for DragReder. It’s nice to see the Advent Deck design on the platform of the stand as well.

Advent Cards: When fans saw the prototype of the Ryuki figures during one of the Tamashii Festival Showcases, boy were they glad. Tamashii Nations revealed that they would release the main Advent Cards that Ryuki had, namely Sword, Shield, Strike Vent, Advent, and Final Vent. The prototypes look good all right, but what we got in the end were five very ugly and dull looking cards. While the back of the card is painted unlike figma’s, so what? The plastic used is too thin for the holding cards hand to hold at the right angle, and the dull colour is just fail. Good effort, but bad product. Sighs… I think they should have used the cardboard thing that they had going with the first release of Decade. The colours on those cards were way more vibrant than these ones.

  

Now, the underside of the boot is sculpted with details as well. Nice…

   

   

   

      

   

   

   

====================

There’s pros and cons to this set. Ryuki feels like cheap plastic. While he still has great paint application and articulation, the cheapness of the plastic is something that bothers me a lot. The cheap and dull looking Advent Cards are another downer, as well as the way the DragVisor attaches onto the figure. The DragVisor tends to fall off the forearm at times, as the fit isn’t a tight fit. DragReder on the other hand is an awesome release. Sure there are little specks of paint that were obvious accidents, but those are pretty minor as they aren’t very obvious when you look at the figure as a whole.

Between this and the figma figure, I wish I could turn time back and not purchase the figma figure. I’ll do a more in-depth comparison between the figma and Figuarts version of Ryuki when I have more free time.

Till the next review~!