With all the main mecha and extra limbs out of the way, it's now time to see what Zyuden Sentai Kyoryuger has to offer in the way of big additional robots and movie exclusives. First up is the Zyudenryu I've been looking forward to the most - Kyoryu Violet's Plezuon.I say Violet, but sadly Red seems to use him more often. Alas, this is a rant for a different post.
Plezuon is a hefty robot, and so takes up three boxes all to himself (though his "wave" also saw re-releases of Gabutrya, Stegotchi and Dricera too). One box contains the torso and head, the second contains the arms and Plesiosaur head and the final one the legs. Inside you'll find the figure moulded in purple and white plastic, which each box also containing the obligatory piece of soda candy. As usual here on out my review photos will be of a painted kit, so check HERE to compare to a fully-stickered version.
PLEZUON
It seems being a plesiosaur isn't different enough for Plezuon, as this Zyudenryu has quite a different aesthetic to the previous ones. After being upgraded for space travel by original Kyoryu Violet Dr. Ulshade, Plezuon becomes some sort of strange-yet-cool rocket/dinosaur hybrid. I was originally slightly put off by this as I was hoping for a proper plesiosaur mecha, but the chunky design has grown on me since. Being made up of three boxes worth of contents means Plezuon is a pretty hefty model, with surprising quite a few moving parts. These include the thrusters on the back, the white ski-like pieces on the bottom and of course a snapping jaw.
Overall the stickers do an excellent job of covering all the necessary details (although the gold chest emblem falls a bit flat) with only one really noticeable thing missing. The head and neck section is moulded in solid purple, yet the areas above and below the battery are white and black respectively. There are a few white stickers for the top bit, but the black area is left completely untouched. If you're going for the all painting route you'll need gold, grey, yellow, white, black and a dab of silver to get the job done.
PLEZUOH
But enough about spaceship dinosaurs, let's talk about the main draw of this set - PlezuOh. The transformation into this mode features a fair bit of parts swapping, with the leg section having to be rebuilt almost entirely. Once completed, PlezuOh stands tall as by far and large the best thing the Kyoryuger minipla have to offer thus far. Two standard arms are supplied, however as the dinosaur head/neck section is usually the right arm the space can be neatly stored on the robot's back.
So what makes PlezuOh so great? ELBOWS! And multi-directional shoulders! Finally a Kyoryuger figure gets the kind of articulation they should have tried to implement in the first place, making PlezuOh feel like more like a standard minipla and less like a scaled down version of the DX toy. As you can expect the dinosaur arm doesn't have any articulation (aside from the jaw that is) but it looks damn impressive as a huge snapping weapon. Other articulation is of the usual minipla fare, including a fully rotational head, multi-directional hips, knees and feet. The only thing it's lacking is a waist joint, but due to the nature of the design this articulation was probably redirected into the hip area.
Just like Gabutyra and PteraidenOh, PlezuOh can also make use of Stegotchi, Dricera, Zakutor, Parasagun, Ankydon and Bunpachy. To connect the arms all you need to do is remove the lower arm (slotting it into the back just as you would if you were using the dinosaur headpiece), leaving the standard connection peg you'll see on the other main Kyoryuger bodies. Doing so of course removes any sort of elbow articulation, but the wider range of shoulder movement still makes things a lot better than they are with previous releases.
BAKURETSU KYORYUZIN
To round the review off we have the next ultimate Kyoryuzin combination - Bakuretsu Kyoryuzin, the combination of Gabutyra, Plezuon and Bunpachy. Though turning Gabutyra's body around gives this design Magi GokaiOh levels of ridiculousness, it makes a nice change of pace from the relatively boring Raiden Kyoryuzin. Once again the transformation involves quite a bit of parts-forming, but it's interesting to see where different things end up (PlezuOh's legs becoming shoulders for example). My only real complaint would be that the torpedo feet look a little odd under Gabutyra's giant dino feet.
While here I've only played around with the standard Bakuretsu Kyoruzin configuration, there's plenty of potential of interesting fan combos here. You could switch out Bunpachy for one of the many other arms, or alternatively drop the dinosaur head arm altogether for a more cohesive look. If you're prepared to drop some of the stability, you could even take off the standard PlezuOh arms and use the pegs to add a further 2 arms! With such glorious overkill the only question that remains is what you'd do with the spare parts lying around.
Oh, and you could probably throw in Tobaspino instead of Gabutyra too. I'm sure blue and purple go together just lovely.
After a few disappointments with the Kyoryuger minipla, I can finally say I'm completely happy with what we got here. I've given up expecting the additional Zyudenryu attachments to have any sort of elbow articulation, but since PlezuOh FINALLY has additional shoulder articulation that is much easier to overlook. Giving the standard robot mode proper working arms is also a huge plus, even if the dinosaur head is completely static. In short, here you have a plesiosaur (how often do we get those in Super Sentai?) with an interesting dinosaur/ship mode, a brilliant standard robot mode and an imposing combined form. If you were only to get one entry in the Kyoryuger minipla line so far, make it this one.
No comments:
Post a Comment