Monday, October 24, 2011

Knight Rider (no, not him): A review of S.I.C. KT Kamen Rider Knight

As always, click the pictures to open a bigger resolution of the image.
Usually I'd buy these things either by getting the main rider first, before the secondary guy or get them both, but in terms of the Ryuki series, Knight kinda won out and got bought first (but admittedly if they released Alternative Zero in this line then I'd be reviewing him instead of Knight, because of my partiality to insect themed riders).



So yeah, Knight. On the show he was a cool suit design and I liked his look over Ryuki's, and with the SIC redesign he really lives up to his name. 


The silver paint they used is hella shiny, almost chrome but not quite, and it's detailed by a blue ink wash that adds a bit of a blueish  glow to the armor under the right light. What's great is how the details are enhanced by it, most notably on the chest with its carefully engraved lines and sharp edges.

Another detail I thought was nice is the chainmail-like sculpt under the arms and lower torso which , I mentioned earlier, makes him more knightly and brings out the armor look better. You'll also see this kind of detail with the Blade series KT riders.


This is the part where I go "meh" though. His range of motion is hindered by his design, from the thigh armor's raised frills (or whatever you call them) to the pointed shoulder armor, what you see above is the limit of their lateral motion. The elbows, knees, torso and ankles are fine though. Overall? Decent but not all that dynamic.

Still, he's pretty nimble. I need to mention this though, the joints can get loose very quickly but if you have some future finish or wipe and shine at home it won't be a problem.

Accessories? Well he comes with Dark Visor and Wing Lancer, as well as two sets of hands; one for gripping his weapons and another pair of open hands to recreate his advent poses.


I seriously wished they included cards you could cut out from the packaging :\


Another example of how nice the silver paint they used was. Wing Lancer looks absolutely regal to me.


Dark visor is made in hard plastic and as such isn't warped from the packaging like say, Faiz's Faiz Edge, or in this case the Wing Lancer which is a bit curvy looking. Wing Lancer's handle though is hard plastic and if you're ham handed enough, it will break off. 

Knight is one of the more visually pleasing designs for me out there, and he's highly recommendable. The only thing that would make him better for me was if he had ball jointed wrists instead of straight pegs and of course, advent cards. 

He has a decent amount of accessories with two melee weapons, though it's not as diverse as Ryuki's it is still a good set of weapons. Of course he has some nice play value but he's best as a display piece if you don't intend to get Ryuki to partner him with Knight. If you can get him and you like his looks, do it (I got mine for 640php which is roughly $15), when you do you'll find that he's a very enjoyable figure.


on a side note, I wasn't fully satisfied with the range of motion on his head and I found out that this was because of two things. First, the socket for the balljoint is too shallow to fully accommodate the neck ball, and second, the ball post was pegged into the neck way too low. With pliers in hand I set about disassembling the neck joint:

 And then I drilled a hole in the head to make the socket go deeper and inserted the ball joint peg before inserting it into the neck.

The result is seen below:


Not really a big difference but it's satisfactory to me now. 





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