While I'm aware of the series, I never did pick up any of the Busou Shinki sets back in the day. As luck would have it, a seller in Ottawa had one they were trying to get rid of for a while. Since I was in the area, I figured why not?
Busou Shinki itself is a series of figures based on an IP by Konami Digital Entertainment.. you know, back when you didn't hate them for screwing up Castlevania and Metal Gear. I'm a little foggy on the details, but I believe that these figures were meant as an accompanying product for some online game. Being Japanese and at a time when I didn't have high speed internet, I never even tried to figure out what stuff was all about.
Meet Xiphos, a MMS Type Knight figure. Released all the way back at the end of 2006, this set retailed for about 3,500 Yen, and around these parts somewhere in the $40 - $50 USD mark. Not a small fortune, but for 2006, kind of expensive. Xiphos is one of the full fledged figure releases, but I remember there being expansion set parts sold, so I guess the "collect and customize" aspect of things
Inside the package, you get a ridiculous number of parts, some of which I still don't know what they're used for:
- 1 x Main Figure
- 6 x Accessory Ports
- 1 x Light Armour Set (Chest, 2 Pauldrons, 2 Gauntlets, 2 X Hip Flaps)
- 1 x Heavy Armour Set (Helmet, Chest, 2 Pauldrons, 2 Gauntlets, 2 x Wrist Blades, 2 x Hip Flaps)
- 1 x Waist Armour (Front/Back)
- 1 x Set Thigh Armour
- 1 x Set Greaves
- 6 x Posing Hands
- 2 x "Bonus Hands" (unsure of use)
- 1 x Lance (Defense)
- 1 x Broadsword/Sheath ((Corne)
- 1 x Handaxe (Crinere)
- 1 x Crossbow (Bec)
- 1 x Stand (Some Assembly Required)
- 1 x Armour Stand
So overall, not a bad package from a contents perspective.
This is one of those figures where you can just SEE the age on it. Even before we get to articulation, we can just look at the art direction. The body is... well, she's a stick. He's like one of those Jiaou bodies with affectively no figure. The head sculpt ain't looking that great either, though you can blame that one on source art, at least. The one you can't say is that the plugsuit looks boring because even with the modern day bodies the actual suits are still pretty plain.
The articulation itself isn't so much bad as it is clunky. Effectively, the MMS body has the same types of articulation as a Figma 1.0, so single jointed elbows and knees, no waist, standard shoulders, the whole kit and caboodle. The body actually figures a functional neck joint in addition to the typical articulation at the base of the head. Range of motion is even comparable.
Legs are where things get strange, specifically the hips. Due to the way the wait piece is cut at the thighs, only a very little degree of leg spread is possible to the sides.
EVEN stranger is the jointing for the hips. Side movement is handled by a dedicated ball joint, but front and back motion is a separate hinged joint. At first I was worried about fragility, but so far it's been alright. The legs are jointed that you can almost have the thighs make contact with her torso. It's effectively the range of motion you'd get if a modern figure had pull down hips, but the way the limbs are cut it looks really, really weird.
Gearing Xiphos up requires the separation of various body parts and in this case, sliding on pieces of gear in the gap. For other sets, you'd attach the accessory ports into the spaces between the body section for some 3 mm goodness.
Here is Xiphos wearing her Light Armour set.
It's when you put on the gear that some of the biggest problems with this set (and presumably the series) show themselves. The actual build quality of the figure is average at best. There are some QC issues with regards to joints and size of openings. For some reason, someone thought it was a good idea to pair soft rubber hands with a hard wrist joint, which results in the hands coming off the wrist if the rubber becomes warmed up. Finishes on the pieces isn't the greatest either.
The paint work is also a mess, so much so I'm almost tempted to redo the paint myself. Perhaps the worst thing is that not only is there poor paint apps, it's also the fact there's a significant number of paint apps missing compared to the box art, and the colours themselves are all sorts of messed up. From a paint perspective, it's almost like I picked up a Hasbro toy or some other American figure, where paint is cut to maximize that profit margin.
The good news is that even fully decked out, you don't lose any of the articulation or range of motion, presuming you can keep the damn weapons in the hands/sockets.
The Heavy Armour set is actually pretty neat looking, but it would have looked much, much cooler if they had actually painted the thing properly. Basically, everything except for the armour on the legs gets replaced with larger and bulkier pieces. You also keep the average build quality and the poor quality of paint applications.
Xiphos also gains a head piece with a removable visor, which sadly reveals the same zombie-stare ridden face.
As with the Light Armour form, Heavy Armour doesn't take away from the actual articulation of the base body. However, due to the poor QC, actually posing the figure might be more headache than with the Light Armour.
All in all, an interesting dive into the past. I learned quite a bit about the line fiddling around with this figure, and I think I wisely avoided them. They weren't exactly cheap, and I'd probably be even more pissed off about the generally low level of quality of product. But, the line did influence many of the Armoured Girl type products since that time, so at the very least I respect its existence.
While the original line died in 2012, Kotobukiya reportedly currently holds the license. While there were plans to relaunch the line for modern times, there hasn't really been much out of that project other than a few cameo Megami Device appearances and scale statues that I'll probably never pay that much for. But who knows...maybe they're at a point where they need a fresh source of revenue and may finally greenlight things to be done.
Only time will tell.
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