Oh man, I've been anticipating this guy for a while now, having high hopes and such that he'd surpass Faiz in coolness, and in some ways he does, bringing a lot of nice features into what is primarily a heavy retool/remold of the old 2009 Faiz design. In other ways though he falls short (literally!) of what I had thought he'd be.
He looks badass enough though, with the black, steel, and gunmetal color scheme and golden trim, the mean-looking arched antennae and broad, pointed shoulders Kaixa definitely has a grimdark feel to him which I like. It also helps that he looks like a dwarf with his noticeable lack of lower torso.
The helmet and chest detailing is absolutely amazing, with cracks and seamlines everywhere, the tech greeble making him look very assymetrical and such, really making it feel like his armor assembles itself in layers and sections instead of single unified pieces. The eyes are a nice shade of dark purple, which is cool but I would have liked a lighter shade of purple, if only to enhance the ring detailing underneath the lens.
Now this is one of those improvements in design I'm talking about, having the neck joint as a double ball post with the "meat" of the neck only acting as a sleeve really adds to the poseability of the figure, too bad the neck still ended up looking a tad short though.
Another fun thing to note about these figures from the 555 series is that the designers paid attention to their specific personalities, providing enough mobility for them to do their trademark poses, like Takumi's pre-kick pose or his wrist flicking, or Kusaka's collar-popping pose. Unfortunately, no matter how well he can do it I am very very distracted by how so damn squat he looks. This is mostly because of him almost having no waist or ab crunch to speak of.
Going back to poseability, this figure suffers a little. What you see above is the limit of the figure's lateral motion. It's not as limited as say Blade or Knight but it really falls short of Hibiki, Agito or Faiz, at least to me.
Frontal motion though, not much of a problem, he can do high-kicks and stuff, punching poses are also negligible. Also another nice detail is the tech greeble on his foot soles, very nice.
Kaixa comes with a lot of accessories, namely two sets of hands aside from the fists (yes, fists. Something faiz could have used) with hands that are noticeably more bony and claw-like, his Kaixa Gear which includes; the Kaixa -shot, -phone (with blaster mode), -pointer (which opens up for his Gold Smash kick) the -blaygun holster, the -blaygun, and the sword blade.
One fun detail I like is how the blaygun, pointer and phones all have individual Kaixa mission memories molded on them. Faiz only had it on his phone and phone blaster. Weird.
Here's the Blaygun in action, the holster was really a great touch and I think the figure would lose a lot if they only made a peg on the side of the blaygun to attach to the waist instead of molding a separate holster part.
The Blaygun in sword mode. The yellow transluscent blade fits a little too loosely on the bottom of the gun, it hasn't exactly fallen off everytime, but it's less than snug in the mounting hole.
the Phone blaster. I never understood exactly how the phone would look good as a swing-type phone, but the blaster mode makes a lot more sense. It reminds me of a Sentai weapon.
Kaixa's really a decent figure overall, but there's just one teeny tiny detail that derails all of the good points about him.
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| The only consolation for this is if they made Delta. |
What. The. Fuck.
Why is he short? Why is the greatest antagonist of Faiz (no, Kiba doesn't count. He was more of a rival, Kusaka though was an absolute dick) so damn tiny? He looks like friggin' Wolverine standing there next to Faiz. What the hell? It's not even funny how squat he looks.
Would I recommend him?
Let's recap:
Nice, detailed molding, decent articulation (slightly better than Faiz), a lot of fun accessories, but he's short.
at 680 php ($16 more or less) he's a good buy, definitely a fun toy, and worth picking up. Get him if only for his eventual ride: Sidebasher. There will be more reason to pick him up once Kiba (Horse Orphenoch) and Takumi (Wolf Orphenoch) reach your specialty stores.
Just ignore the height issue and you will be fine.
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