SIC Volume 56: Kamen Rider Kuuga

This review is mainly going to cover on Kuuga;

SIC Volume 56: Kamen Rider Kuuga, this new version of a SIC-fied Kuuga has a more humanoid look compared to the previous one. It comes with a few accessories and has only one alternative form which is Amazing Mighty to change into, as compared to being able to change into every form for the previous Kuuga. The accessories are;

a pair of opened hands

one hand for the henshin(transform) pose, and one thumbs up hand. For what would make him Kuuga if he doesn't have a thumbs up now that he has a new pimping body?

Oh and he also comes with a Kamen Rider Decade belt, I don't have pictures of that however. The hand guards(not sure what they are called) can be changed, which makes me wonder are they doing this because it saves Bandai the money to make a few more hands for Amazing Mighty or did they do this so that we can play around with future releases of other forms of the new Kuuga?

Now that we are done with the talk on accessories, let's talk about Kuuga's companion, Gouram the horse armor. 

At first when we got news of that this volume is going to come with yet another F.F.R.(Final Form Ride) gimmick, I set my mind to skip this one, no matter how painful it was to not get my hands on a Kuuga SIC. Later, we found out that Gouram can be displayed even without the help of Kuuga, unlike the Kabuto Zector, and this time the figure is not required to split in half or be folded. Regardless of whether that caused problems for SIC Kamen Rider Kabuto is another story. I was surprised by the details on Gouram, especially on the back of the wings, and all the little details on Gouram. The writings especially.

However, my Gouram's front legs are very loose and can fall off any time, not to mention that the joints weren't produced very well, took me a while to actually put the piece of plastic that attaches the two front legs. The back of it is all hollow so that Kuuga can sit inside it. the back of the horns on Gouram were painted badly on mine. the paint basically ran to everywhere. Sorry that I don't have photos, but I mainly played with just Kuuga, since Gouram's front legs were too loose for me to also play with him. 

The red paint on Kuuga doesn't look very impressive in real life. But he's hella photogenic. Cameras are said to put on pounds for people, but the camera sure pimp up Kuuga's colors.

Due to the shoulder pads, his arms can't more than 90 degrees. But that's only bothersome if you're nit-picky about everything. This figure can pull off lots of great poses. I seem to have problems with pulling off the kicking pose that is on the back of the box however. I couldn't make the leg go up that high, I'm not sure have anyone else tried this out though. So don't quote me on that. I also have some complains about his arms being a bit on the loose side though.

Also, the hands are using pegs like the one above, probably for articulation reasons, but the problem with that is the peg might not be strong enough for lots of swapping. So it's best not to play around with the hands. I take deep breathes everything I change the hands when I was taking pictures. 

Next up! Amazing Mighty Kuuga!! At first I didn't think I'll like Amazing Mighty much, but looking at it in person, it gives off a very royal vibe from it. The chogokin shin guards, almost the whole lower parts of the legs are made of chogokin. Mighty has a mighty sweetass red paint job, and Amazing Mighty deliver this amazingly classy feel.

The details on Kuuga himself is pretty nice too. Many of us had complained about the face sculpt before, but it looks pretty good actually. 

Overall, I give this volume a 9/10. Good articulation, amazing details, fair price, very nice packaging, I strongly recommend this volume! More pictures can be found at this link below;

http://s11.photobucket.com/albums/a175/TyCKenshin/SIC%202011/SIC%2056%20Kamen%20Rider%20Kuuga/