After a rather lengthy hiatus, I have returned to the world of Super Sentai minipla to finish what I've started - the Zyuden Sentai Kyoryuger Zyudenryu. This third offering from the 37th series features Kyoryu Gold's Pteragordon, as well as Kyoryu Grey's Bunpachy. What makes it even more exciting is that Pteragordon is able to transform into its own robot mode, PteraidenOh, as well as combine with the previously released Kyoryuzin for even more dino-samba fun.
These dinosaurs are broken up into three boxes - two for Pteragordon (top and lower halves) and one for Bunpachy. As per usual the building instructions are printed on the inside of the box, and each model kit also comes with a single piece of soda candy for you to enjoy. For candy toys, they sure don't come with that much candy eh? Continuing this review you'll be seeing my painted models, so to also see how they look stickered check out the pictures on this blog.
PTERAGORDON
So first up is Pteragordon, which is Kyoryu Gold's Zyudenryu in its pteranodon form. The figure is mostly moulded in black plastic, with a tiny section of dark grey for the head. All of the colouring is provided by stickers, with the gold instead being Bandai's usual sickly yellow colour. If you're a stickler for accuracy, you have a pretty extensive paint job ahead of you there are LARGE sections of gold with plenty of silver bits to do too. The blue stickers look good enough, but since I had a bit of a mishap with mine I decided to paint those details as well.
The build itself is really straightforward (although the end product will be in PteraidenOh mode if you follow the instructions) and upon completion you'll find yourself with a rather hefty looking pteranodon. Looks are only so much though, and it's disappointing to say that articulation is this form is minimal. With no proper shoulder joints flapping wings are a no go, so what you're left with is movable hands (hinged on the back, left-to-right motion on the front) and a hinged beak. With a very obvious head inside, you might want to be careful about opening that mouth too wide though...
PTERAIDENOH
With that aside, let us next turn to the more interesting aspect of this Zyudenryu - Pteragordon's robot mode PteraidenOh. The transformation mostly involves splitting the body in half, doing a bit of repositioning and putting things back together, but the pièce de résistance is changing the masked faceplate out for PteraidenOh's proper face.
Though the shoulders once again only rotate 360° and don't have any kind of up or down movement, the upper arms can swing left to right and PteraidenOh is even graced with the power of elbows...kind of. Okay so they aren't really elbows, but Pteraidoh's oversized hands have a similar range of motion giving the upper body a little more variety. Moving down the body is much better, with a fully functional waist and hinged hip, knee and feet joints. As a final bonus, the ends of the Pteranodon wings can fold out to act as blade weapons.
Just like Gabutyra, PteraidenOh can also make use of the various Zyudenryu arms for multi-dino configurations. To access these the arms have to be changed a bit - as if you were transforming it back to Pteragordon mode, only keeping the wing tips folded and swinging down the connector pegs. While PteraidenOh has used several different combinations in the show, here I've just taken pictures of the best one - PteraidenOh Western.
Unfortunately this is where PteraidenOh beings to suffer from the same flaws as Kyoryuzin. Now that we're dealing with the same type of arms, the lack of elbow come into play. The Western configuration is great, but its not enough to overlook how disappointing the overall design of these minipla have been. We have a gunslinging, sword-wielding robot, and he can't bend his arms to slash? The limited shoulders only add insult to injury.
RAIDEN KYORYUZIN
This brings us to our first big multi-robot combination (limb-swapping doesn't count) of Kyoryuger, the rather epically named Raiden Kyoryzin. Through the lightning combination of Kyoryuzin and Pteragordon, the Kyoryugers can then take to the skies with even more power. Though theoretically it could use any arms, the show so far has only seen it using Stegotchi and Dricera.
Despite looking rather imposing, Raiden Kyoruzin isn't really that exciting. Aside from the the cool new head, it's just standard Kyoruzin with a static wingpack. While the wings don't get in the way of Kyoryzuin's limited arm articulation, the added bulk naturally gets in the way of the waist rotation. If you have a stand handy to pull off some flying poses then there might be a bit more fun to have here, but a grounded Raiden Kyoryuzin isn't as fun as its components are separately.
BUNPACHY
Before we begin the review, can we just take a moment to fully appreciate the sheer ridiculousness of a dinosaur wearing a hard hat? Because that is possibly one of the most genius things in Kyoryuger. Right, now that that's out of the way let's take a look at the Pachycephalosaurus-partner of spirit ranger Kyoryu Grey, Bunpachy. This single-box model is another arm-type Zyudenryu, with a similar build to Zakutor and Parasagun from the previous wave.
Bunpachy is once again a bi-pedal dinosaur, however his unique feature is a ball and chain attachment to the tail. This has been shrunk down really well for the minipla, made up on a number of individual links to give the chain a pretty good range of motion. The ball itself is both missing the bottom and hollow, so that it can be used by Bunpachy as an even fancier hat when he isn't in battle mode.
Like with most limbs the stickers cover most of the important details, but as always a lick of yellow paint will prove much more vibrant and effective. If you choose to use all of the stickers, the only bits you'll really be missing is the silver colouring of the ball and chain, which are moulded in the same dark grey as the body.
KYORYUZIN KUNG-FU
With Bunpachy in hand we can now take a look at the final of the arm-swap Kyoryuzin combinations, the bizarrely named Kyoryuzin Kung-Fu (because a hammer and flail SCREAM kung-fu). This combination uses Ankydon and Bunpachy, and while it arguably looks the most impressive of them all it still runs into the same problem - no shoulder hinges or elbows. You can play around with the waist and legs to get some half way decent poses, but without these things all you're getting arm-wise is up or down. Still, the armaments are very impressive and I'm sure the configuration will look great on the now-released Tobaspino minipla.
So is this set worth getting? Once again it depends how much of a Kyoryuger fan you are. Pteragordon is a fun kit but requires EXTENSIVE painting to look halfway decent, then its combinations are either limited or just plain underwhelming. Bunpachy on the other hand is just yet another limb, even if he is perhaps the best out of all six Zyudenryu arms. Aside from the weapons it's nothing Zakutor and Parasagun haven't done already, and with them being main Zyudenryu they come out on top as a priority choice. For the Kyoryuger fans and completists these are probably essential purchases, but it doesn't necessarily mean they're perfect toys.
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